Re: Re: A test for solipsism
Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you. But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists, without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is no solipsist. There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition, almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable, and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to some theory. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36 Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ? On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that consciousness, arises at (or above ?) the level of noncomputability. He just seems to say that intuiton does. But that just seems to be a conjecture of his. ugh, rclo...@verizon.net 10/16/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Hi Roger, IMHO, computability can only capture at most a simulation of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ... So you do say no to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie? 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 . 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.
Sense and sensation
Hi Bruno Marchal Obviously, my statement wasn't very clear. All living things can sense their environments. Plants turn themselves sometimes to the light and know night from day. I don't know if they have the sensation of light, which is a clear indication of what is produced in the mind by consciousness. To the degree that a plant can do that would be how conscious it is. I would say that a plant's consciousness would be more like the consciousness we have when we dream. But that's just a speculation. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-18, 10:39:33 Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness or it cannot perceive its environment. Are you sure? Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am not sure they have self-consciousness. Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having some important mass. all life is a very fuzzy notion. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37 Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb wrote: If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed. I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw. Evolution, as you've noted, is not a paradigm of efficient design. Consciousness might just be a side-effect But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong. Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. 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 . 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.
What's the difference between sense and sensation ?
The dictionary makes little or no differentiation between sense and sensation, but there is a difference to psychology. Senses come from the body, sensations are what the mind makes of the the sensual input. Psychology has this to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation_%28psychology%29 In psychology, sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses in human and animal systems, such as vision, auditory, vestibular, and pain senses. These topics are considered part of psychology, and not anatomy or physiology, because processes in the brain so greatly affect the perception of a stimulus. Included in this topic is the study of illusions such as motion aftereffect, color constancy, auditory illusions, and depth perception. Sensation is the function of the low-level biochemical and neurological events that begin with the impinging of a stimulus upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ. It is the detection of the elementary properties of a stimulus.[1] Perception is the mental process or state that is reflected in statements like I see a uniformly blue wall, representing awareness or understanding of the real-world cause of the sensory input. The goal of sensation [I think they meant to say sense] is detection, the goal of perception is to create useful information of the surroundings.[2] In other words, sensations are the first stages in the functioning of senses to represent stimuli from the environment, and perception is a higher brain function about interpreting events and objects in the world.[3] Stimuli from the environment is transformed into neural signals which are then interpreted by the brain through a process called transduction. Transduction can be likened to a bridge connecting sensation to perception. Gestalt theorists believe that with the two together a person experiences a personal reality that is greater than the parts. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 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.
a criticism of comp
Hi Bruno Marchal Comp cannot give subjective content, can only provide an objective simulation on the BEHAVIOR of a person (or his physical brain). This behavioral information can be dealt with by the philosophy of mind called functionalism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/ Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third of the 20th century. Though the term ‘functionalism’ is used to designate a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states. A criticism of functionalism and hence of comp is that if one only considers his physical behavior (and possibily but not necessarily his brain's behavior), a person can behave in a certain way but have a different mental content. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:31:54 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if ratherthanis On 17 Oct 2012, at 15:28, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/17/2012 8:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:00, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 8:23 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:02:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: There is of course the idea that the universe is actually a simulation but that is more controversial. A tempting idea until we question what it is a simulation of? We can close this by considering when is a simulation of a real thing indistinguishable from the real thing! What law states that computations exist ab initio, but the capacity to experience and participate in a simulated world does not? Good point! Why not both existing ab initio? But they exists ab initio in the arithmetical truth. So with comp, we can postulate only the numbers, or the computations (they are ontologically equivalent), then consciousness is semantical fixed point, existing for arithmetical reason, yet not describable in direct arithmetical term (like truth, by Tarski, or knowledge by Scott-Montague. The Theaetetical Bp p is very appealing in that setting, as it is not arithmetically definable, yet makes sense in purely arithmetical term for each p in the language of the machine (arithmetic, say). So we don't have to postulate consciousness to explain why machine will correctly believe in, and develop discourse about, some truth that they can know, and that they can also know them to be non justifiable, non sharable, and possibly invariant for digital self-transformation, etc. Bruno Hi Bruno, We seem to have a fundamental disagreement on what constitutes arithmetic truth. In my thinking, the truth value of a proposition is not separable from the ability to evaluate the proposition I agree for mundane truth, but not for the truth we can accept to built a fundamental theory. If you accept comp, you know that the ability to evaluate a proposition will be explained in term of a functioning machine, and this is build on elementary arithmetical truth. So, with comp, you statement would make comp circular. Bruno (as Jaakko Hintikka considers) and thus is not some Platonic form that has some ontological weight in an eternal pre-established harmony way. I do not believe that our reality is merely some pre-defined program since I am claiming that the pre-definition is an NP-Hard problem that must be solved prior to its use. The best fit for me is an infinity of 1p, each that is a bundle of infinite computations, that eternally interact with each other (via bisimulation) and not some frozen and pre-existing Being. My philosophy is based on that of Heraclitus and not that of Parmenides. Being is defined in my thinking as the automorphisms within Becoming, thus what is stable and fixed is just those things that relatively do not change within an eternally evolving Universe. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal I think if you converse with a real person, he has to have a body or at least vocal chords or the ability to write. As to conversing (interacting) with a computer, not sure, but doubtful: for example how could it taste a glass of wine to tell good wine from bad ? Same is true of a candidate possible zombie person. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:09:59 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 18 Oct 2012, at 20:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think you can tell is 1p isn't just a shell by trying to converse with it. If it can converse, it's got a mind of its own. I agree with. It has mind, and its has a soul (but he has no real bodies. I can argue this follows from comp). When you attribute 1p to another, you attribute to a shell to manifest a soul or a first person, a knower. Above a treshold of complexity, or reflexivity, (L?ianity), a universal number get a bigger inside view than what he can ever see outside. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 13:36:13 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 17 Oct 2012, at 13:07, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Solipsism is a property of 1p= Firstness = subjectivity OK. And non solipsism is about attributing 1p to others, which needs some independent 3p reality you can bet one, for not being only part of yourself. Be it a God, or a physical universe, or an arithmetical reality. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-16, 09:55:41 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather thanis 2012/10/11 Bruno Marchal On 10 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/10 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 18:58, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It may be a zombie or not. I can? know. The same applies to other persons. It may be that the world is made of zombie-actors that try to cheat me, but I have an harcoded belief in the conventional thing. ? Maybe it is, because otherwise, I will act in strange and self destructive ways. I would act as a paranoic, after that, as a psycopath (since they are not humans). That will not be good for my success in society. Then, ? doubt that I will have any surviving descendant that will develop a zombie-solipsist epistemology. However there are people that believe these strange things. Some autists do not recognize humans as beings like him. Some psychopaths too, in a different way. There is no authistic or psichopathic epistemology because the are not functional enough to make societies with universities and philosophers. That is the whole point of evolutionary epistemology. If comp leads to solipsism, I will apply for being a plumber. I don't bet or believe in solipsism. But you were saying that a *conscious* robot can lack a soul. See the quote just below. That is what I don't understand. Bruno I think that It is not comp what leads to solipsism but any existential stance that only accept what is certain and discard what is only belief based on ?onjectures. It can go no further than ?cogito ergo sum OK. But that has nothing to do with comp. That would conflate the 8 person points in only one of them (the feeler, probably). Only the feeler is that solipsist, at the level were he feels, but the machine's self manage all different points of view, and the living solipsist (each of us) is not mandate to defend the solipsist doctrine (he is the only one existing)/ he is the only one he can feel, that's all. That does not imply the non existence of others and other things. That pressuposes a lot of things that I have not for granted. I have to accept my beliefs as such beliefs to be at the same time rational and functional. With respect to the others consciousness, being humans or robots, I can only have faith. No matter if I accept that this is a matter of faith or not. ? I still don't see what you mean by consciousness without a soul. Bruno 2012/10/9 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 13:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote: But still after this reasoning, ? doubt that the self conscious philosopher robot have the kind of thing, call it a soul, that I have. ? You mean it is a zombie? I can't conceive consciousness without a
The circular logic of Dennett and other materialists
Hi Bruno Marchal This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind but it can still behave just as a real person would. But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least to a realist. Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person does not need to have a mind. But that's in his definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:30:47 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 19 Oct 2012, at 11:41, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Russell Standish Not so. A zombie can't converse with you, a real person can. By definition a (philosophical) zombie can converse with you. A zombie is en entity assumed not having consciousness, nor any private subjective life, and which behaves *exactly* like a human being. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/19/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-18, 17:48:57 Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 01:58:29PM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou If a zombie really has a mind it could converse with you. If not, not. If true, then you have demonstrated the non-existence of zombies (zombies, by definition, are indistinguishable from real people). However, somehow I remain unconvinced by this line of reasoning... -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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: Re: Re: Why self-organization programs cannot be alive
Hi Russell Standish But the robot plants could not grow more robot structure for free nor produce seeds. Or produce beautiful sweet-smelling flowers. If they could produce more robot structure, we ought to use them to produce more manf capabilities (including producing more chips for free). Roger Clough Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 19:26:04 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Why self-organization programs cannot be alive On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 05:39:58AM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Russell Standish Bernard cells are mechanical, not caused by a self as agent but by laws of physics. They may be self-organizing, but there's no self to organize things. Photosynthesis is a life process, not mechanical because it does things no computer program can do, namely turn light into energy, and CO2 in O2. The former can be done with traditional photovoltaic cells made from silicon. As for the latter, there are a variety of ways of doing this mechanically (ie chemical, but not biological). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis for more details. Also suggested was the following: Alternatively, you could heat CO2 over a catalyst of iron doped zeolite and hydrogen to produce water and ethylene. A nonthermal plasma applied to ethylene will generate carbon soot and recover the hydrogen. Electrolysis of water gives back the extra hydrogen and produces oxygen. (Hey! I didn't say it was efficient.) It might be useful to someone on Mars who has endless power in the form of a nuclear reactor and plenty of CO2 but not so much oxygen. (see http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-154820.html) I remember reading a New Scientist article on artificial photosynthesis. It is possible today, although not with the same efficiency as plants. The aim is ultimately produce something far more efficient (plants aren't exactly optimal - as John Clark would say, they are good enough). This requires intelligence, which can't be programmed, Why do you say that? Chloroplasts don't seem particularly intelligent. They produce oxygen in the presence of light and CO2, otherwise metabolise as a normal cell when one or other of these ingredients is missing. since it must be free choice, even if just a wee bit. Even more bizarre - have you evidence of a chloroplast deciding not to produce oxygen when light and CO2 are present, just because it didn't feel like it? Choice is needed because like Maxwell's Demon, it goes against entropy. You mean the second law. No it doesn't, as the light provides plenty of free energy to drive the reaction. Self-organization has neither a self nor intelligence, since it is purely mechanical. Only life has intelligence and self. I can't object to that statement, per se:). Of course, distinguishing between life processes and mechanical processes is a bit dubious. Most scientists think that life _is_ mechanical. Someone who doesn't is the late Robert Rosen - but his arguments are rather difficult to follow, and I don't find myself in 100% agreement with them. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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: The objective world of autopoesis
Hi Terren Suydam Thanks, I have been confusing what the senses provide (which I call senses) with what the mind converts them into (which I call sensations). I don't know how Dennett could know the ways things seem to us without a mind. Apparently he thinks seems is a derogatory word. But in the mind, everything seems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia Qualia (play /'kw??li?/ or /'kwe?li?/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: ['kwa?le]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term derives from a Latin word meaning for what sort or what kind. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the perceived redness of an evening sky. Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.[1] Erwin Schr鰀inger, the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take: The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so. [2] The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term that is used, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. As such, the nature and existence of qualia are controversial. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Terren Suydam Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 13:37:23 Subject: Re: Re: Re: The objective world of autopoesis Hi Roger, I'm not sure your notion of quale is the one commonly held, for instance see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quale. Arguing and otherwise communicating about this stuff is hard enough even when everyone is using the same definition. It's impossible if words can mean what we want them to. Terren On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Terren Suydam IMHO a quale is the stuff of an unperceived-as-of-yet input sensory signal. It is unprocessed Firstness, so not sure of its status. My less than certain opinion is that being unprocessed, it is not yet an experience. IMHO nobody knows much about how that Firstness is turned into experience in any detail, although Kant and Hume and Locke had some philosophical remarks. Kant perhaps the most, as he added that the raw signal is categorized. That might be Secondness. However, Penrose theorized that neurons maintain a coherent quantum field and in a process he calls OR or orchestrated reduction, in which, as I understand it, the quantum field collapses to produce a unit of conscious experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/19/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Terren Suydam Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-18, 15:28:22 Subject: Re: Re: The objective world of autopoesis Hi Roger, A quale as I understand it is simply a unit of subjective experience. It's a bit of an abstraction since experience does not reduce to constituent units, but as a convention for talking about subjective experience, I suppose it is sometimes useful to be able to refer to a singular 'quale' rather than the plural qualia. Personally I think we could do away with the word and not suffer much for it. To go further and refer to qualia as raw unprocessed input signals presupposes a theory, namely that it is possible to experience qualia without any processing, or even that they correspond with input signals. It is not necessary to imbue qualia with the baggage of a particular theory to make it a useful construct for discussion. In the present conversation, it would hinder our ability to understand one another, as the autopoietic model cannot make sense of a phrase like raw unprocessed input signals. I would say that the autopoietic model I am considering would posit that human subjective experience as we know it is the *result* of the processing of the output signals produced by various neuroreceptors, as they are perturbed (or not) by the environment outside the body. IOW in this model it is not helpful to identify quales with the inputs to the receptors, as we don't have access to whatever is perturbing the receptors, due to the autopoietic closure. This is the same as saying that our
Re: RE: RE: A test for solipsism
Hi William R. Buckley Thank you for reminding me that materialists do believe that there is a mind identical to or in some fashion related to the brain. Since I see no possibility that one substance (mind) can act on another substance (brain), I don't take their concept of mind seriously, but I have remember that many (most) people believe in the materialist view of mind. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: William R. Buckley Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 08:42:36 Subject: RE: RE: A test for solipsism Hi William R. Buckley You can speak to a potential test subject, but it can only reply if it indeed has a mind. This is an assumption you make. This is the Turing test, the results of which are not certain. But it is the only test I can think of unless you want to get into the Chinese room argument, etc. If it does not reply, it's a zombie. Another assumption. In this case, you can talk to me and I will refuse to reply. That make me a zombie? But just to be certain, if it does, as a Turing test, I would ask a series of questions a zombie (someone without a mind) would probably not know, such as 1) what color are your eyes ? 2) What color are my eyes ? 3) What is your mother's name ? 4) How many fingers am I holding up ? 5) What color is a plenget ? 6) Who are you going to vote for in the upcoming election? 7) What is your birth date? 8) Where were you born? 9) How tall am I ? 10) Am I taller than you are ? 10) Do you prefer vanillaberries to Mukle pudding ? If one is able to fabricate (lie) with perfect recall (remembering all the lies), then one need not know anything in order to give you answer to all questions. Your thought process is muddled, Mr. Clough. wrb etc. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/19/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: William R. Buckley Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-18, 21:36:39 Subject: RE: A test for solipsism Just because the individual holds the position that he/she is the only living entity in all the universe does not imply that such a person (the solipsist) is incapable of carrying on a conversation, even if that conversation is with an illusion. For instance, I have no logical reason to believe that you, Roger Clough, exist. You may in fact exist, and you may in fact be a figment of my imagination; logically, I cannot tell the difference. Yet, I can exchange written dialog with you, in spite of any belief I may hold regarding your existence in the physical universe. wrb -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Roger Clough Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:13 AM To: everything-list Subject: A test for solipsism Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36 Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ? On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that consciousness, arises at (or above ?) the level of noncomputability. He just seems to say that intuiton does. But that just seems to be a conjecture of his. ugh, rclo...@verizon.net 10/16/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Hi Roger, IMHO, computability can only capture at most a simulation of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ... So you do say no
Re: Re: A test for solipsism
Roger Different Qualia are a result fo different phisical effect in the senses. So a machine does not need to have qualia to distinguish between phisical effectds. It only need sensors that distinguish between them. A sensor can detect a red light and the attached computer can stop a car. With no problems. http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/ 2012/10/20 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you. But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists, without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is no solipsist. There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition, almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable, and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to some theory. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36 Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ? On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that consciousness, arises at (or above ?) the level of noncomputability. He just seems to say that intuiton does. But that just seems to be a conjecture of his. ugh, rclo...@verizon.net 10/16/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Hi Roger, IMHO, computability can only capture at most a simulation of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ... So you do say no to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie? 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 . 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
Measurability is not a condition of reality.
Hi Alberto G. Corona I have no problem with that, the problem I have is that I believe that nonphysical things (things, like Descartes' mind, not extended in space) like spirit, truly exist. But to materialists, that's nonsense, because being inextended it can't be measured and so doesn't exist. And life is just a unique form of matter, so can be created. And what is man but a bunch of atoms ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-20, 08:48:39 Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism Roger Different Qualia are a result fo different phisical effect in the senses. So a machine does not need to have qualia to distinguish between phisical effectds. It only need sensors that distinguish between them. A sensor can detect a red light and the attached computer can stop a car. With no problems.? http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/ 2012/10/20 Roger Clough Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you. But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists, without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is no solipsist. There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition, almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable, and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to some theory. Bruno ? ? ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36 Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ? On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that consciousness, arises at (or above ?) the level of noncomputability. He just seems to say that intuiton does. But that just seems to be a conjecture of his. ugh, rclo...@verizon.net 10/16/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Hi Roger, IMHO, computability can only capture at most a simulation of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ... So you do say no to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie? 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
Re: A test for solipsism
On 20 Oct 2012, at 12:38, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. Yes. Qualia are the subjective 1p view, sometimes brought by percepts, and supposed to be treated by the brain. And yes a zombie as no qualia, as a qualia needs consciousness. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop No, a zombie will stop at the red light. By definition it behaves like a human, or like a conscious entity. By definition, if you marry a zombie, your will never been aware of that, your whole life. (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. There exists already detector of colors, smells, capable of doing finer discrimination than human. I have heard about a machine testing old wine better than human experts. Machines evolve quickly. That is why the non-comp people are confronted with the idea that zombie might be logically possible for them. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you. But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists, without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is no solipsist. There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition, almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable, and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to some theory. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36 Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ? On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that consciousness, arises at (or above ?) the level of noncomputability. He just seems to say that intuiton does. But that just seems to be a conjecture of his. ugh, rclo...@verizon.net 10/16/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Hi Roger, IMHO, computability can only capture at most a simulation of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ... So you do say no to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie? 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 . 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: a criticism of comp
On 20 Oct 2012, at 13:35, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Comp cannot give subjective content, This is equivalent to saying that comp is false. By definition of comp, our consciousness remains intact when we get the right computer, featuring the brain at a genuine description level. Then the math confirms this, even in the ideal case of the arithmetically sound machine, and this by using the most classical definition of belief, knowledge, etc. can only provide an objective simulation on the BEHAVIOR of a person (or his physical brain). This behavioral information can be dealt with by the philosophy of mind called functionalism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/ Here you defend a reductionist conception of what machines and numbers are. It fails already at 3p level, by the incompleteness phenomena. (functionalism is an older version of comp, with the substitution level made implicit, and usually fixed at the neuronal level for the brain, and in that sense comp is a weaker hypothesis than functionalism, as it does not bound the comp subst. level. Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third of the 20th century. Though the term ‘functionalism’ is used to designate a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states. A criticism of functionalism and hence of comp is that if one only considers his physical behavior (and possibily but not necessarily his brain's behavior), a person can behave in a certain way but have a different mental content. Good point, and this is a motivation for making explicit the existence of the level of substitution explicit in the definition. To survive *for a long time* I would personally ask a correct simulation of the molecular levels of both the neurons and the glial cells in the brain. The UD Argument does NOT depend on the choice of the substitution level, as long you get a finite digital description relatively to a universal number/theory/machine. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:31:54 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if ratherthanis On 17 Oct 2012, at 15:28, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/17/2012 8:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:00, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 8:23 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:02:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: There is of course the idea that the universe is actually a simulation but that is more controversial. A tempting idea until we question what it is a simulation of? We can close this by considering when is a simulation of a real thing indistinguishable from the real thing! What law states that computations exist ab initio, but the capacity to experience and participate in a simulated world does not? Good point! Why not both existing ab initio? But they exists ab initio in the arithmetical truth. So with comp, we can postulate only the numbers, or the computations (they are ontologically equivalent), then consciousness is semantical fixed point, existing for arithmetical reason, yet not describable in direct arithmetical term (like truth, by Tarski, or knowledge by Scott-Montague. The Theaetetical Bp p is very appealing in that setting, as it is not arithmetically definable, yet makes sense in purely arithmetical term for each p in the language of the machine (arithmetic, say). So we don't have to postulate consciousness to explain why machine will correctly believe in, and develop discourse about, some truth that they can know, and that they can also know them to be non justifiable, non sharable, and possibly invariant for digital self- transformation, etc. Bruno Hi Bruno, We seem to have a fundamental disagreement on what constitutes arithmetic truth. In my thinking, the truth value of a proposition is not separable from the ability to evaluate the proposition I agree for mundane truth, but not for the truth we can accept to built a fundamental theory. If you accept comp, you know that the ability to evaluate a proposition will be explained in term of a functioning machine, and
Re: Solipsism = 1p
On 20 Oct 2012, at 13:55, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think if you converse with a real person, he has to have a body or at least vocal chords or the ability to write. Not necessarily. Its brain can be in vat, and then I talk to him by giving him a virtual body in a virtual environnement. I can also, in principle talk with only its brain, by sending the message through the hearing peripherical system, or with the cerebral stem, and decoding the nervous path acting on the motor vocal cords. As to conversing (interacting) with a computer, not sure, but doubtful: for example how could it taste a glass of wine to tell good wine from bad ? I just answered this. Machines becomes better than human in smelling and tasting, but plausibly far from dogs and cats competence. Same is true of a candidate possible zombie person. Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By definition it behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only God knows, if you want. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:09:59 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 18 Oct 2012, at 20:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think you can tell is 1p isn't just a shell by trying to converse with it. If it can converse, it's got a mind of its own. I agree with. It has mind, and its has a soul (but he has no real bodies. I can argue this follows from comp). When you attribute 1p to another, you attribute to a shell to manifest a soul or a first person, a knower. Above a treshold of complexity, or reflexivity, (L?ianity), a universal number get a bigger inside view than what he can ever see outside. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 13:36:13 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 17 Oct 2012, at 13:07, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Solipsism is a property of 1p= Firstness = subjectivity OK. And non solipsism is about attributing 1p to others, which needs some independent 3p reality you can bet one, for not being only part of yourself. Be it a God, or a physical universe, or an arithmetical reality. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-16, 09:55:41 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather thanis 2012/10/11 Bruno Marchal On 10 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/10 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 18:58, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It may be a zombie or not. I can? know. The same applies to other persons. It may be that the world is made of zombie-actors that try to cheat me, but I have an harcoded belief in the conventional thing. ? Maybe it is, because otherwise, I will act in strange and self destructive ways. I would act as a paranoic, after that, as a psycopath (since they are not humans). That will not be good for my success in society. Then, ? doubt that I will have any surviving descendant that will develop a zombie-solipsist epistemology. However there are people that believe these strange things. Some autists do not recognize humans as beings like him. Some psychopaths too, in a different way. There is no authistic or psichopathic epistemology because the are not functional enough to make societies with universities and philosophers. That is the whole point of evolutionary epistemology. If comp leads to solipsism, I will apply for being a plumber. I don't bet or believe in solipsism. But you were saying that a *conscious* robot can lack a soul. See the quote just below. That is what I don't understand. Bruno I think that It is not comp what leads to solipsism but any existential stance that only accept what is certain and discard what is only belief based on ?onjectures. It can go no further than ?cogito ergo sum OK. But that has nothing to do with comp. That would conflate the 8 person points in only one of them (the feeler, probably). Only the feeler is that solipsist, at the level were he feels, but the machine's self manage all different points of view, and the living solipsist (each of us) is not mandate to defend the solipsist doctrine (he is the only one existing)/ he is the only one he can feel, that's all. That does not imply the non existence of others and other things. That pressuposes a lot of things that I have not for granted. I have to accept my beliefs as such beliefs to be at the same time rational and functional. With respect to the others consciousness, being humans or robots, I can only
Re: The circular logic of Dennett and other materialists
On 20 Oct 2012, at 14:04, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind but it can still behave just as a real person would. But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least to a realist. Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person does not need to have a mind. But that's in his definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic. I agree with you on this. Dennett is always on the verge of eliminativism. That is deeply wrong. Now, if you want eliminate the zombie, and keep comp, you have to eventually associate the mind to the logico-arithmetical relations defining a computation relative to a universal number, and then a reasoning explains where the laws of physics comes from (the number's dream statistics). This leads also to the arithmetical understanding of Plotinus, and of all those rare people aware of both the importance of staying rational on those issue, *and* open minded on, if not aware of, the existence of consciousness and altered consciousness states. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:30:47 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 19 Oct 2012, at 11:41, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Russell Standish Not so. A zombie can't converse with you, a real person can. By definition a (philosophical) zombie can converse with you. A zombie is en entity assumed not having consciousness, nor any private subjective life, and which behaves *exactly* like a human being. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/19/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-18, 17:48:57 Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 01:58:29PM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou If a zombie really has a mind it could converse with you. If not, not. If true, then you have demonstrated the non-existence of zombies (zombies, by definition, are indistinguishable from real people). However, somehow I remain unconvinced by this line of reasoning... -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- 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: A test for solipsism
On 19 Oct 2012, at 23:41, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/19 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 19 Oct 2012, at 12:26, Alberto G. Corona wrote: A few discoveries of evolutionary psichology may help. According with EP the mind is composed of many functional modules, each one for a different purpose. many of them are specific of each specie. Each of these modules is the result of the computation of certain areas of the brain. A functional module in the mind has´nt to be an area of the brain. Because the model of the mid in EP assumes comp, and assumes an specific, testable model for mind-brain design (natural selection) it is well suited for issues like this. Severe autists lack a module called theory of mind . this module make you compute the mental states of other people. It gather information about their gestures, acts etc. It makes people interesting object to care about. Autists can learn rationally about the fact that other humans are like him, they can learn to take care of them. But they are not naturally interested in people. They dont care about if you have a mind, because they do not know what means a mind in another being. they just experience their own. For them, yuou are robot that they do not understand. That is possible, but I would say that empathy, your module of a theory of mind is already present for all universal machine knowing that they are universal. Autist, in your theory, would be a L¨bian entity with some defect in that module, with respect to its local representation/body. Possible. But the theory of mind in the case of an universal machine conscious of himself lack the strong perception of another selves that humans have from the visual clues of the gestures and reactions of others. The human theory of mind is not an abstract theory of mind, but a human theory of mind, which evoques mirror feelings like worry, compassion, anger that we would never have when contemplating a machine. It´s not a philosophical-rational notion, but a instinctive one. And because this, it does not permits to fall into solipsism. Unless a robot mimic an human, he can never trigger this instinctive perception. Yes. It is a general theory of the consciousness and matter of all universal (Löbian) machines. Humans are special case. In the other side an autist may have the rational theory of mind of an universal machine, but lack the strong perception of there are others like me around. This is a very important difference for practical matter but also for theoretical ones, since the abstract, rational theory of mind is a rationalization that builds itself from our instinctive perception of a soul-mind in others. No. The rational and the non rational is part of all Löbian machine. In a sense Löbianity requires two universal machines, in front of each others. And one will dominate on the rational part of the truth, and the other will dominate on the not completely rational part. The lobian machine can recognize another machine, even when alone. Of course nature has exploited this a lot at many levels, and even more so with the mammals, including especially the humans. Bruno We ask ourselves about the existence of the mind in others because we have a innate capacity for perceiving and feeling the mind in other. However, a robot without human gestures, without human reactions would not excite our theory of mind module, and we would not have the intuitive perception of a mind in that cold thing. However this has nothing to do with the real thing.The theory of mind module evolved because it was very important for social life. But this is compatible with a reality in with each one of us live in an universe of zombies (some of them with postdoc in philosophy, church pastors etc) where we have the only soul. Of course I dont belive that. I have the normal belief. But this is one of the most deep and most widespread beliefs, because it is innate and you must fight against it to drop it out. This belief save you from a paralizing solipsism. That´s one of the reasons why I say I believe, therefore I can act I follow you well. I agree. Comp is the inverse of solipsim, as it attributes a soul to a larger class of entity than usually thought: machines, and even relative numbers in arithmetic. Bruno 2012/10/17 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On 20 Oct 2012, at 07:15, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. I have no idea what that means, not a clue, Probably for the same reason that you stop at step 3 in the UD Argument. You assume a physical reality, and you assume that our consciousness is some phenomenon related exclusively to some construct (brain, bodies) in that physical reality. But once you grasp the first person indeterminacy, and take into account its many invariance features (they can't distinguish immediately real, virtual, arithmetical, they can't be aware of the delays of reconstitution) you can see that comp make the existence of a physical universe a from of vague wishful thinking kind of thing, as your future, from your first person points of view will depend on all the computations going through your actual current relative state(s). Comp generalized Everett (on QM) to arithmetic. No doubt we share deep linear computations. Everett saves comp from solipism. But QM has to be retrieved from number dreams statistics to confirms this. Advantage? The subtlety of arithmetical self-reference makes possible to distinguish many sorts of points of view, and suggests explanation for the difference between the qualia and the quanta. but I do know that Evolution can't select for something it can't see, OK. and I do know that Evolution can see intelligence because it produces behavior. OK. Evolution can't see consciousness directly any better than we can, Plausible. so if it produced it No. With comp, consciousness was there before. It just get lost on relatively coherent sheafs of computational histories. We share dreams. (a dream is a computation to which a first person is attributable) (and it did unless Darwin was dead wrong) Darwin explains the evolution of species, in an Aristotelian framework. Comp refutes the Aristotelian framework, and saves the main part of Darwin, indeed, it generalizes it on a realm where the laws of physics themselves arises by a process of arithmetical self-selection. then consciousness MUST be a byproduct of something that it can see. The contrary, if you say yes to the doctor by betting on comp, consciously. I think anybody can see that once he/she/it takes comp seriously and stay cold rationalist on the subject. I don't think it is so much more alluring than Everett QM. Bruno 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 . 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: Continuous Game of Life
On Friday, October 19, 2012 3:29:39 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Oct 2012, at 17:04, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 10:16:52 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:56, Craig Weinberg wrote: Two men and two women live together. The woman has a child. 2+2=5 You mean two men + two women + a baby = five persons. You need the arithmetical 2+2=4, and 4+1 = 5, in your argument. Bruno I only see that one person plus another person can eventually equal three or more people. With the operation of sexual reproduction, not by the operation of addition. Only if you consider the 2+2=5 to be a complex special case and 2+2=4 to be a simple general rule. It could just as easily be flipped. I can say 2+2=4 by the operation of reflexive neurology, and 2+2=5 is an operation of multiplication. It depends on what level of description you privilege by over-signifying and the consequence that has on the other levels which are under-signified. To me, the Bruno view is near-sighted when it comes to physics (only sees numbers, substance is disqualified) and far-sighted when it comes to numbers (does not question the autonomy of numbers). What is it that can tell one number from another? What knows that + is different from * and how? Why doesn't arithmetic truth need a meta-arithmetic machine to allow it to function (to generate the ontology of 'function' in the first place)? It's all sense. It has to be sense. It depends when you start counting and how long it takes you to finish. It depends on what we are talking about. Person with sex is not numbers with addition. You are just changing definition, not invalidating a proof (the proof that 2+2=4, in arithmetic). I'm not trying to invalidate the proof within one context of sense, I'm pointing out that it isn't that simple. There are other contexts of sense which reduce differently. Craig Bruno Craig 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/-/QjkYW9tKq6EJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/ma4il48CDGAJ. 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: Continuous Game of Life
On Saturday, October 20, 2012 1:01:51 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: So lets see, a giant junkyard magnet is a devastating logical argument but a junkyard car crusher is not. Explain to me how that works. Because talking about how you want to kill me in an argument about computers is pointless ad hominem venting, but talking about the effect of magnetism on computers in an argument about computers is relevant A strong magnetic field will disrupt the operation of a computer and it will disrupt the operation of your brain too, and a junkyard car crusher will disrupt the operation of both as well. I get your point, but at the same time, we aren't outfitting Apache helicopters with giant magnets to immobilize armies of people. Craig John K Clark -- 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/-/xqCdYrXGzBcJ. 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: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?
Dear Stephen, On 19 Oct 2012, at 19:44, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/19/2012 1:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Oct 2012, at 22:02, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/17 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com 2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Life may support mathematics. Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams. Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live. So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers. OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings becomes a process with a cost that favour a low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... , In contrast, the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying... And still much of your conclussions coming from the first person indeterminacy may hold by considering living beings as ordinary material personal computers. Yes, that's step seven. If the universe is enough big, to run a *significant* part of the UD. But I think that the white rabbits disappear only on the limit of the whole UD work (UD*). Bruno Dear Bruno, Tell us more about how White Rabbits can appear if there is any restriction of mutual logical consistency between 1p and in any arbitrary recursion of 1p content? We assume comp. If a digital computer processes the activity of your brain in dream state with white rabbits, it means that such a computation with that dream exist in infinitely many local incarnation in the arithmetical (tiny, Turing universal) reality. If you do a physical experience, the hallucination that all goes weird at that moment exists also, in arithmetic. The measure problem consists in justifying from consistency, self-reference, universal numbers, their rarity, that is why apparent special universal (Turing) laws prevails (and this keeping in mind the 1p, the 1p-indeterminacy, the 3p relative distinctions, etc.) 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.
I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather than is
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comjavascript:; wrote: The universe is algorithmic insofar as a small number of physical rules gives rise to everything that we see around us. Only if we infer that is the case. Physical rules don't give rise to anything, especially beings which experience some version of 'seeing everything around them'. I'm not sure if you really don't understand what is meant by a small number of physical rules gives rise to everything that we see around us. It means there are certain regularities in the universe which we call rules or laws of nature. For example, the total momentum of two bodies before they collide is the same as the total momentum after they collide, which is called the law of conservation of momentum. This is not a law from a parliament or a law from God but a description of what happens. A philosophical zombie is not charged with an expectation of anything mental, that is one of its defining characteristics. That's what I mean by charged. If you define something as having no mental experience and give it a name of a generic undead person, you are charging your definition with an expectation of absent personhood. If I say puppet, there is no supernatural absence of personhood, there is a common sense notion of prosthetically extended personhood of the puppeteer through an inanimate object. There's no puppeteer if the computer acts autonomously. If you are going to insist that since the computer was programmed it is not acting autonomously then consider the same computer that came about through matter falling together randomly - certainly physically possible if very improbable. We have two apparently identical computers, one manufactured and programmed by humans, the other generated spontaneously. Is one potentially conscious and the other not? It's begging the question if I make the assumption in the premises of an argument that purports to prove it. But I propose it as a theory: if Bugs Bunny does do this in an interactive way, such as a real rabbit would, then Bugs Bunny is indeed as conscious as a real rabbit. If I see an old YouTube of a dead celebrity talking to Johnny Carson, does that mean that both of them are indeed conscious? Playing the YouTube has a power of resurrection? If not, please explain in detail why not. Why do you keep bringing up this example? It is obvious to anyone within a second that the video will not interact with you like the real Johnny Carson through a video link would. What we observe is that when certain physical processes happen, consciousness happens. We observe that physical processes coincide with reports of particular kinds of conscious experiences. We have no theory to link the two causally and even lack an understanding of anesthesia. A theory is that consciousness happens whenever a system interacts with the environment in the way conscious entities do, and that in fact consciousness is no more than this. Anaesthetics knock out this interaction and so knock out consciousness. Death also knocks out this interaction and so knocks out consciousness. This is a minimal theory. It's like observing the inverse square law for gravitational attraction. As a minimal theory, it is enough until new facts come along requiring further explanation. Enough to send us in the completely wrong direction. So you say, but you need to explain what aspect of the theory goes against observation. In light of The fact that intelligence has no pragmatic reason or opportunity to create or use consciousness to accomplish any unconscious purpose (even accidentally). The fact that intelligence in all observed cases evolves naturally through the development of an infant into a child and from primitive to more recent species. The fact that attempts at artificial intelligence thus far not only show no glimmer of consciousness but to the contrary continue to embody the emptiness of mechanism. The fact that the regions of the human brain involving intelligence are preceded by limbic-emotional and thalamic-sensory consciousness. The fact that human beings cannot function as intelligent agents while unconscious, but can be conscious without developing intelligence. It seems human level intelligence is sufficient but not necessary for consciousness. A minimal ability to perceive and interact with the environment seems to be necessary. Biological processes per se however are *not* sufficient. A anaesthetised human has most of his low level neurological and other biological processes functioning normally but is not conscious. That is consistent with functionalism but not with the idea that consciousness originates at the cellular or molecular level. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I have no idea what that means, not a clue Probably for the same reason that you stop at step 3 in the UD Argument. Probably. I remember I stopped reading after your proof of the existence of a new type of indeterminacy never seen before because the proof was in error, so there was no point in reading about things built on top of that; but I don't remember if that was step 3 or not. You assume a physical reality, I assume that if physical reality doesn't exist then either the words physical or reality or exists are meaningless, and I don't think any of those words are. and you assume that our consciousness is some phenomenon related exclusively to some construct (brain, bodies) If you change your conscious state then your brain changes, and if I make a change in your brain then your conscious state changes too, so I'd say that it's a good assumption that consciousness is interlinked with a physical object, in fact it's a downright superb assumption. so if it [Evolution] produced it [consciousness] No. With comp, consciousness was there before. Well I don't know about you but I don't think my consciousness was there before Evolution figured out how to make brains, I believe this because I can't seem to remember events that were going on during the Precambrian. I've always been a little hazy about what exactly comp meant but I had the general feeling that I sorta agreed with it, but apparently not. 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: Why self-organization programs cannot be alive
On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Creating structure out of a random environment requires intelligence, the ability to make choices on one's own. Thus we can conclude that when the sun evaporates salty water salt crystals do not form because a liquid is a amorphous collection of molecules while a salt crystal is a highly ordered lattice of atoms. The sun, not being intelligent, simply could not have performed this task; so you might want to contact the Morton salt company and inform them that their product does not exist. 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: Continuous Game of Life
On Oct 15, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the whole argument. Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely. Perhaps I do, but you specifically misunderstand that the argument depends on the assumption that computers don't have consciousness. No, I do understand that. Good. You also misunderstand (or pretend to) the idea that a brain or computer does not have to know the entire future history of the universe and how it will respond to every situation it may encounter in order to function. Do you have to know the entire history of how you learned English to read these words? It depends what you mean by know. You don't have to consciously recall learning English, but without that experience, you wouldn't be able to read this. If you had a module implanted in your brain which would allow you to read Chinese, it might give you an acceptable capacity to translate Chinese phonemes and characters, but it would be a generic understanding, not one rooted in decades of human interaction. Do you see the difference? Do you see how words are not only functional data but also names which carry personal significance? The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions of these atoms doing their simple thing. If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration, either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese. What are some equivalently simple, uncontroversial things in what you say that i misunderstand? You think that I don't get that Fading Qualia is a story about a world in which the brain cannot be substituted, but I do. Chalmers is saying 'OK lets say that's true - how would that be? Would your blue be less and less blue? How could you act normally if you...blah, blah, blah'. I get that. It's crystal clear. What you don't understand is that this carries a priori assumptions about the nature of consciousness, that it is an end result of a distributed process which is monolithic. I am saying NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS. Imagine that we had one eye in the front of our heads and one ear in the back, and that the whole of human history has been to debate over whether walking forward means that objects are moving toward you or whether it means changes in relative volume of sounds. Chalmers is saying, 'if we gradually replaced the eye with parts of the ear, how would our sight gradually change to sound, or would it suddenly switch over?' Since both options seem absurd, then he concludes that anything that is in the front of the head is an eye and everything on the back is an ear, or that everything has both ear and eye potentials. The MR model is to understand that these two views are not merely substance dual or property dual, they are involuted juxtapositions of each other. The difference between front and back is not merely irreconcilable, it is mutually exclusive by definition in experience. I am not throwing up my hands and saying 'ears can't be eyes because eyes are special', I am positively asserting that there is a way of modeling the eye-ear relation based on an understanding of what time, space, matter, energy, entropy, significance, perception, and participation actually are and how they relate to each other. The idea that the newly discovered ear-based models out of the back of our head is eventually going to explain the view eye view out of the front is not scientific, it's an ideological faith that I understand to be critically flawed. The evidence is all around us, we have only to interpret it that way rather than to keep updating our description of reality to match the narrowness of our fundamental theory. The theory only works for the back view of the world...it says *nothing* useful about the front view. To the True Disbeliever, this is a sign that we need to double down on the back end view because it's the best chance we have. The thinking is that any other position implies that we throw out the back end view entirely and go back to the dark ages of front end fanatacism. I am not suggesting a compromise, I propose a complete overhaul in which we start not from the front and move back or back and move front, but start from the split and see how it can be understood as double knot - a fold of folds. I'm sorry, but this whole passage is a non sequitur as far as the fading qualia thought experiment goes. You have to explain what you think would happen if part of your brain were replaced with a functional equivalent. A functional equivalent would stimulate the remaining neurons the same as the part that
Re: A test for solipsism
On 10/20/2012 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Oct 2012, at 12:38, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. Yes. Qualia are the subjective 1p view, sometimes brought by percepts, and supposed to be treated by the brain. And yes a zombie as no qualia, as a qualia needs consciousness. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop No, a zombie will stop at the red light. By definition it behaves like a human, or like a conscious entity. By definition, if you marry a zombie, your will never been aware of that, your whole life. (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. There exists already detector of colors, smells, capable of doing finer discrimination than human. I have heard about a machine testing old wine better than human experts. Machines evolve quickly. That is why the non-comp people are confronted with the idea that zombie might be logically possible for them. Bruno Hi Bruno and Roger, What would distinguish, for an external observer, a p-zombie from a a person that does not see the world external to it as anything other than an internal panorama with which it cannot interact? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The circular logic of Dennett and other materialists
On 10/20/2012 10:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Oct 2012, at 14:04, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind but it can still behave just as a real person would. But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least to a realist. Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person does not need to have a mind. But that's in his definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic. I agree with you on this. Dennett is always on the verge of eliminativism. That is deeply wrong. Now, if you want eliminate the zombie, and keep comp, you have to eventually associate the mind to the logico-arithmetical relations defining a computation relative to a universal number, and then a reasoning explains where the laws of physics comes from (the number's dream statistics). This leads also to the arithmetical understanding of Plotinus, and of all those rare people aware of both the importance of staying rational on those issue, *and* open minded on, if not aware of, the existence of consciousness and altered consciousness states. Bruno Dear Bruno, It seems, from this post that you do support some form of panprotopsychism! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rieo-BDTcko -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if ratherthanis
On Saturday, October 20, 2012 12:50:55 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: If you can do something for your own personal reasons then you have free will. If you demand that personal reasons still must always come from outside of the person themselves[...] But I don't demand that at all! You might picked X and not Y entirely for internal reasons, entirely because of the state of the neurons inside your very own personal head. The reasons of my neurons are not my personal reasons. Neurons deal in GABA and acetylcholine. I deal in paychecks and days off. Different levels of description. My neurons can influence my consciousness from a sub-personal level - say feeling unfulfilled when I get my paycheck, but they cannot decide for me to get a better job. I decide. Me. I might decide to deal steroids on the side instead, or make human jack-o'lanterns out of the neighbors heads and sell them at a garage sale. Of these three options, the steroids and the premeditated murder and decapitation carry a heavy super-signifying charge. My social experience and and innate sensitivity circumscribes these acts as criminal, evil, or both, so my range of seemingly *realistic* options is quite a bit narrower than the full continuum of options available to me in theory. The full scope of what * might* be available to me is relatively limitless. I can meet someone and go into business with them. I can have an idea and make money from it. I can get run over by a furniture truck and collect an insurance settlement. NONE of these possibilities are realizable on the sub-personal or super-signifying levels. They are native to the personal level of description. NOT my neurons or molecules, NOT my behavioral statistics, NOT determinism, NOT randomness. Personal Preference is the appropriate factor. Not the only factor, but a significant factor which you deny like it was the Holocaust. And my computer did X and not Y entirely because of the state of its memory banks and microprocessor inside its very own personal aluminum box. Let's compare. Does your computer worry about it's job? Does it get a feeling one way or another if it receives more or less volts? If you remove RAM does it miss it? You are welcome to believe any fairytale sophistry you like, but you can be sure that the belief in this level of stupidity dwarfs any organized religion. Rather than talking myself into entertaining the fantasy of a computer with feelings, I have a better explanation for why no computer has ever exhibited a personal preference. They have none. There is no 'they' there. Instead of a super-signifying level of acculturation and ecology, they have instruction codes which impress upon them functions which are utterly alien to whatever substance is being borrowed to do the computing. Instead of a personal level, they have only sub-personal logic, involuntary reflex dictated by the rigidity of the materials specially selected for that quality. These are not proto-organisms, they are amputated sculptures playing pre-recorded messages. They are sophisticated messages - useful messages, but ultimately nothing more than a very cleverly organized library. That would only be true if every event must have a cause, but there is no law of logic that demands that must always be true Then maybe a new law of logic just appeared out of nowhere. Maybe, if so it wouldn't be the first time something appeared out of nowhere. But I don't understand why I should be embarrassed to have an answer to the question why is there something rather than nothing? that is not entirely satisfactory, its not as if you or anybody else can do better. You don't need to be embarrassed at all. I do think that I have solved this problem though. The question assumes a background of nothing, whereas I see that in the absence of our own subjectivity, what is left is everythingness. Our awareness is a subtractive partitioning, or temporary diffraction from a boundaryless whole, not an evacuated absence. If you want to be embarrassed, it would be because you are a staunch critic of all possibilities which deviate even slightly from a reductionist logic of true or false, but don't see any contradiciton in having a deck of infinite wild-cards of 'maybe whatever out of nowhere' in your pocket. X and Y are made up. Like Pepsi and Coke. They are notations. Deep man deep, Plato and Socrates eat your heart out. Deep shmeep, I am pointing out that X and Y are information modeling symbols, not features of universal truth. Was there a part of that grousing and grumbling that resembled an answer to my question? I am asking the purpose of preference in a universe devoid of ... your favorite word. As I said before, you can't ask me why I did or wrote something because according to you I have this thing called free will
Re: Continuous Game of Life
On Saturday, October 20, 2012 1:47:28 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Oct 15, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: But since you misunderstand the first assumption you misunderstand the whole argument. Nope. You misunderstand my argument completely. Perhaps I do, but you specifically misunderstand that the argument depends on the assumption that computers don't have consciousness. No, I do understand that. Good. You also misunderstand (or pretend to) the idea that a brain or computer does not have to know the entire future history of the universe and how it will respond to every situation it may encounter in order to function. Do you have to know the entire history of how you learned English to read these words? It depends what you mean by know. You don't have to consciously recall learning English, but without that experience, you wouldn't be able to read this. If you had a module implanted in your brain which would allow you to read Chinese, it might give you an acceptable capacity to translate Chinese phonemes and characters, but it would be a generic understanding, not one rooted in decades of human interaction. Do you see the difference? Do you see how words are not only functional data but also names which carry personal significance? The atoms in my brain don't have to know how to read Chinese. They only need to know how to be carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms. The complex behaviour which is reading Chinese comes from the interaction of billions of these atoms doing their simple thing. I don't think that is true. The other way around makes just as much sense of not more: Reading Chinese is a simple behavior which drives the behavior of billions of atoms to do a complex interaction. To me, it has to be both bottom-up and top-down. It seems completely arbitrary prejudice to presume one over the other just because we think that we understand the bottom-up so well. Once you can see how it is the case that it must be both bottom-up and top-down at the same time, the next step is to see that there is no possibility for it to be a cause-effect relationship, but rather a dual aspect ontological relation. Nothing is translating the functions of neurons into a Cartesian theater of experience - there is nowhere to put it in the tissue of the brain and there is no evidence of a translation from neural protocols to sensorimotive protocols - they are clearly the same thing. If the atoms in my brain were put into a Chinese-reading configuration, either through a lot of work learning the language or through direct manipulation, then I would be able to understand Chinese. It's understandable to assume that, but no I don't think it's like that. You can't transplant a language into a brain instantaneously because there is no personal history of association. Your understanding of language is not a lookup table in space, it is made out of you. It's like if you walked around with Google translator in your brain. You could enter words and phrases and turn them into you language, but you would never know the language first hand. The knowledge would be impersonal - accessible, but not woven into your proprietary sense. What are some equivalently simple, uncontroversial things in what you say that i misunderstand? You think that I don't get that Fading Qualia is a story about a world in which the brain cannot be substituted, but I do. Chalmers is saying 'OK lets say that's true - how would that be? Would your blue be less and less blue? How could you act normally if you...blah, blah, blah'. I get that. It's crystal clear. What you don't understand is that this carries a priori assumptions about the nature of consciousness, that it is an end result of a distributed process which is monolithic. I am saying NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS. Imagine that we had one eye in the front of our heads and one ear in the back, and that the whole of human history has been to debate over whether walking forward means that objects are moving toward you or whether it means changes in relative volume of sounds. Chalmers is saying, 'if we gradually replaced the eye with parts of the ear, how would our sight gradually change to sound, or would it suddenly switch over?' Since both options seem absurd, then he concludes that anything that is in the front of the head is an eye and everything on the back is an ear, or that everything has both ear and eye potentials. The MR model is to understand that these two views are not merely substance dual or property dual, they are involuted juxtapositions of each other. The difference between front and back is not merely irreconcilable, it is mutually exclusive by definition in experience. I am not throwing up my hands and saying 'ears can't be eyes because eyes are special', I am positively asserting that there is a
Re: Measurability is not a condition of reality.
Then the measure addict people believe in a lot of things that are not measurable: they believe in an external reality . They believe in a certain pitagoric cult to measurement, that is not measurable. They believe that their perception is transparent, and that his mind play no role, because it translates a complete objective and accurate view of reality. Therefore the mind and his relation with matter is not worth to study. They believe in things not measurable, like countries, specially their own (which they would laugh If i say that their country is a bunch of atoms. Apparently their reductionism is selective). They believe in their loved ones that are dead (they do not exist according with their point of view, but they sometimes talk with them, dedicate books to them and act like if they are observing them. They bet, trust and believe in persons, despite the fact that they are nor measurable.. They believe in their leaders. They believe in some scientist that are liars. but they believe them without making measures and experiments for themselves. It seems tha almost all that they believe derives from a sense of authority, like any other persom. And they do it well on believing in these nor measurable things, because if they doint believe, they would be paralized and will kill someone or kill themselves. 2012/10/20 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net Hi Alberto G. Corona I have no problem with that, the problem I have is that I believe that nonphysical things (things, like Descartes' mind, not extended in space) like spirit, truly exist. But to materialists, that's nonsense, because being inextended it can't be measured and so doesn't exist. And life is just a unique form of matter, so can be created. And what is man but a bunch of atoms ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-20, 08:48:39 Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism Roger Different Qualia are a result fo different phisical effect in the senses. So a machine does not need to have qualia to distinguish between phisical effectds. It only need sensors that distinguish between them. A sensor can detect a red light and the attached computer can stop a car. With no problems.? http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/ 2012/10/20 Roger Clough Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51 Subject: Re: A test for solipsism On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say ouch and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you, which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence. Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you. But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists, without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is no solipsist. There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition, almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable, and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to some theory. Bruno ? ? ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
Re: What's the difference between sense and sensation ?
On Saturday, October 20, 2012 7:10:17 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: The dictionary makes little or no differentiation between sense and sensation, but there is a difference to psychology. Senses come from the body, sensations are what the mind makes of the the sensual input. Psychology has this to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation_%28psychology%29 In psychology, sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses in human and animal systems, such as vision, auditory, vestibular, and pain senses. These topics are considered part of psychology, and not anatomy or physiology, because processes in the brain so greatly affect the perception of a stimulus. Included in this topic is the study of illusions such as motion aftereffect, color constancy, auditory illusions, and depth perception. Sensation is the function of the low-level biochemical and neurological events that begin with the impinging of a stimulus upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ. It is the detection of the elementary properties of a stimulus.[1] Perception is the mental process or state that is reflected in statements like I see a uniformly blue wall, representing awareness or understanding of the real-world cause of the sensory input. The goal of sensation [I think they meant to say sense] is detection, the goal of perception is to create useful information of the surroundings.[2] In other words, sensations are the first stages in the functioning of senses to represent stimuli from the environment, and perception is a higher brain function about interpreting events and objects in the world.[3] Stimuli from the environment is transformed into neural signals which are then interpreted by the brain through a process called transduction. Transduction can be likened to a bridge connecting sensation to perception. Gestalt theorists believe that with the two together a person experiences a personal reality that is greater than the parts. I say the Gestalt theorists have it right, and go further. It is not greater than the sum of it's parts, it is less disconnected than the un-division of its parts. I call this trans-rational algebra or apocatastatic gestalts. The rejoining of broken parts by eliding their presumed granular, sub-personal differences. I think that transduction is figurative. Like the steering column turns the axle, not be transmitting a ghostly apparition of angular momentum on one plane to another but as a confluence of circumstance. The action taking place has multiple equivalents on multiple levels or ontological castes, from the micro to the macro, personal to impersonal, under-signifying to super-signifying. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 10/20/2012 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/-/EoOEkOf4T_MJ. 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: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Doubt
On Thursday, October 18, 2012 11:19:46 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 10/18/2012 2:16 PM, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Is anyone here aware of the following? http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/66654-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-in-doubt Does it have implications for MW interpretations of quantum physics? I'd love to see comments about this. Cheers, Dan -- Hi Dan, This article is rubbish. The writer does not understand the subtleties involved and does not understand that nothing like the tittle was found to be true. I agree. I see what they were trying to get at: Measurement can cause uncertainty but not all of the uncertainty. They leave open the question of what does cause the uncertainty - i.e. perhaps the very nature of quantum is uncertain or immeasurable. The problem of course is in the assumption we're just going to make a *weak* measurement that won't have an effect on it. Sigh. I'll just stand in the bathroom with you...you won't even know I'm here. You can't fool the fabric of the universe. You can spoof it maybe, but you can't hide from it entirely. Craig -- Onward! Stephen -- 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/-/F1tDWoWhmDEJ. 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: Code length = probability distribution
This is not a consequence of the shannon optimum coding , in which the coding size of a symbol is inversely proportional to the logaritm of the frequency of the symbol?. What is exactly the comp measure problem? 2012/10/19 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net Hi, I was looking up a definition and found the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Minimum_description_lengthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length Central to MDL theory is the one-to-one correspondence between code length functions and probability distributions. (This follows from the Kraft-McMillan inequality.) For any probability distribution , it is possible to construct a code such that the length (in bits) of is equal to ; this code minimizes the expected code length. Vice versa, given a code , one can construct a probability distribution such that the same holds. (Rounding issues are ignored here.) In other words, searching for an efficient code reduces to searching for a good probability distribution, and vice versa. Is this true? Would it be an approach to the measure problem of COMP? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://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: A test for solipsism
On 10/20/2012 5:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/20 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net Hi Bruno Marchal In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red is what the body gives you, the sensation of red is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind also can recall past sensations of red to compare it with and give it a name red, which a real person can identify as eg a red traffic light and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing the fact that red and green lights are in different positions). That would be a test of zombieness. Interestingly, my father began to drive in 1926 in Texas. He was red-green color blind, and he couldn't tell a red traffic light from a green one. And in those days there was no convention as to the order of the lights and there were no yellow lights. So he had to be very careful approaching any signal light. Of course he soon memorized the position of the red and green lights in the small town where he grew up. Later, I think in the 1940's there became a convention of putting the red lights above the green with the yellow in between. Still later, in the '50's, they standardized the spectrum of lights so that the colors did look different even to red-green color blind people. But through all this, I believe my father was a real person. 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: The Peirce-Leibniz triads Ver. 2
Cool Roger, It mostly makes sense to me, except I don't understand why I. is associated with objects and substance when it is feeling, perception, and first person quale. To me, thinking is just as much first person as feeling, and they both are subjective qualia. Thinking is a meta-quale of feeling (which is a meta-quale of awarenessperceptionsensationsense) That puts the whole subjective enchilada as Firstness and leaves objects and substance to Secondness. This is Self-Body distinction. What you have is like Lower-Self/Higher-Self distinction but with objects kind of shoehorned in there. Once you see matter as a public extension and self as a private intention, then Thirdness arises as the spatiotemporal interaction of formation and information. That outlines one way of slicing the pizza. I don't know if you can see this but here: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Xz8OmKGPEjE/UIL6EtVeBEI/AZ4/iBhuMxBj9oU/s1600/trio_sml_entropy.jpg That gives a better idea of the syzygy effect of the big picture, how they overlap in different ways and set each other off in a multi-sense way. The Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness relate respectively to the respective trios: *I. Sense, Motive II. Matter, Energy, III. Space, Time* to get to morality, you have to look at the black and white: *IV. Signal *(escalating significance), *Entropy* aka Ent ntr rop opy (attenuating significance...fragmentation and redundancy obstructs discernment capacities...information entropy generates thermodynamic entropy through sense participation) I did a post on this today, but it's pretty intense: http://s33light.org/post/33951454539 Craig On Thursday, October 18, 2012 9:18:50 PM UTC-4, rclough wrote: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Xz8OmKGPEjE/UIL6EtVeBEI/AZ4/iBhuMxBj9oU/s1600/trio_sml_entropy.jpg Hi Craig Thanks very much for your comments Craig. I still need to digest them. Meanwhile, a flood of new ideas came to me and I just want to set them down. There are no doubt mistakes, esp. with regard to subjective/objective. The Peirce-Leibniz triads Ver.2 I Firstness objectsubstance perception (quale) aesthetics beauty1st person feeling subjective II Secondness sign monad thought logic truth 2nd person thinking subj/obj III Thirdness interprant supreme monad expression moralitygoodness 3rd person doing objective -- It appears that Peirce's three categories match the Leibniz monadic structures as follows: I. = object = Leibniz substance = quale II. Secondness = sign = monad representing that substance. In Peirce, the sign is a word for the experience of that object . In Leibniz, the monads are mental, which I think means subjective. III. Thirdness = interprant (meaning of I and II ) = by the monad of monads. In addition to this, Peirce says that his categories are predicates of predicates, where the first predicate (dog) is extensive and the second predicate (brown) is intensive. then the overall object might be animal--dog--brown. Leibniz says that a monad is a complete concept, meaning all of the possible predicates. I suggest that the first or extensive predicate (dog) is objective and the second predicate (brown) is qualitative or subjective. So that the object as per ceived is a quale or Firstness. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 10/18/2012 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 everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com javascript:. 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/UzPBnSWqXdgJ. 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: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?
On 10/20/2012 10:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Dear Stephen, On 19 Oct 2012, at 19:44, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/19/2012 1:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Oct 2012, at 22:02, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/17 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com mailto:agocor...@gmail.com 2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Life may support mathematics. Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams. Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live. So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers. OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings becomes a process with a cost that favour a low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... , In contrast, the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying... And still much of your conclussions coming from the first person indeterminacy may hold by considering living beings as ordinary material personal computers. Yes, that's step seven. If the universe is enough big, to run a *significant* part of the UD. But I think that the white rabbits disappear only on the limit of the whole UD work (UD*). Bruno Dear Bruno, Tell us more about how White Rabbits can appear if there is any restriction of mutual logical consistency between 1p and in any arbitrary recursion of 1p content? We assume comp. If a digital computer processes the activity of your brain in dream state with white rabbits, it means that such a computation with that dream exist in infinitely many local incarnation in the arithmetical (tiny, Turing universal) reality. If you do a physical experience, the hallucination that all goes weird at that moment exists also, in arithmetic. The measure problem consists in justifying from consistency, self-reference, universal numbers, their rarity, And their very specific correlation with the physical brain states of sleep. 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: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Doubt
On 10/20/2012 3:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, October 18, 2012 11:19:46 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 10/18/2012 2:16 PM, freqflyer07281972 wrote: Is anyone here aware of the following? http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/66654-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-in-doubt http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/66654-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-in-doubt Does it have implications for MW interpretations of quantum physics? I'd love to see comments about this. Cheers, Dan -- Hi Dan, This article is rubbish. The writer does not understand the subtleties involved and does not understand that nothing like the tittle was found to be true. I agree. I see what they were trying to get at: Measurement can cause uncertainty but not all of the uncertainty. They leave open the question of what does cause the uncertainty - i.e. perhaps the very nature of quantum is uncertain or immeasurable. The problem of course is in the assumption we're just going to make a *weak* measurement that won't have an effect on it. Sigh. I'll just stand in the bathroom with you...you won't even know I'm here. You can't fool the fabric of the universe. You can spoof it maybe, but you can't hide from it entirely. Craig Hi Craig, Uncertainty is in the geometric/statistical relationship between observables themselves. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Continuous Game of Life
Bruno, especially in my identification as responding to relations. Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course). JM On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness or it cannot perceive its environment. Are you sure? Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am not sure they have self-consciousness. Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having some important mass. all life is a very fuzzy notion. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37 Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb wrote: If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed. I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw. Evolution, as you've noted, is not a paradigm of efficient design. Consciousness might just be a side-effect But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong. Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 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.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@**googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 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.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://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: Continuous Game of Life
On 10/20/2012 5:16 PM, John Mikes wrote: Bruno, especially in my identification as responding to relations. Now the Self? IT certainly refers to a more sophisticated level of thinking, more so than the average (animalic?) mind. - OR: we have no idea. What WE call 'Self-Ccness' is definitely a human attribute because WE identify it that way. I never talked to a cauliflower to clarify whether she feels like having a self? (In cauliflowerese, of course). JM If we where cauliflowers, we would have no concept of what it would be like to be human or, maybe, that humans even exist! On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:19, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO all life must have some degree of consciousness or it cannot perceive its environment. Are you sure? Would you say that the plants are conscious? I do think so, but I am not sure they have self-consciousness. Self-consciousness accelerates the information treatment, and might come from the need of this for the self-movie living creature having some important mass. all life is a very fuzzy notion. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 10:13:37 Subject: Re: Continuous Game of Life On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:37, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM, meekerdb wrote: If consciousness doesn't do anything then Evolution can't see it, so how and why did Evolution produce it? The fact that you have no answer to this means your ideas are fatally flawed. I don't see this as a *fatal* flaw. Evolution, as you've noted, is not a paradigm of efficient design. Consciousness might just be a side-effect But that's exactly what I've been saying for months, unless Darwin was dead wrong consciousness must be a side effect of intelligence, so a intelligent computer must be a conscious computer. And I don't think Darwin was dead wrong. Darwin does not need to be wrong. Consciousness role can be deeper, in the evolution/selection of the laws of physics from the coherent dreams (computations from the 1p view) in arithmetic. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 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: Why self-organization programs cannot be alive
On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 08:18:16AM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Russell Standish But the robot plants could not grow more robot structure for free nor produce seeds. Or produce beautiful sweet-smelling flowers. If they could produce more robot structure, we ought to use them to produce more manf capabilities (including producing more chips for free). All of which are irrelevant to the stated task of using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide to ocygen. Nvevertheless, self-reproducing robots exist as well, in case you're wondering. Take a look at the rep-rap project. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Code length = probability distribution
On 10/20/2012 5:45 PM, Russell Standish wrote: A UD generates and executes all programs, many of which are equivalent. So some programs are represented more than others. The COMP measure is a function over all programs that captures this variation in program respresentation. Why should this be unique, independent of UD, or the universal Turing machine it runs on? Because the UD executes every other UD, as well as itself, the measure will be a limit over contributions from all UDs. Hi Russell, I worry a bit about the use of the word all in your remark. All is too big, usually, to have a single constructable measure! Why not consider some large enough but finite collections of programs, such as what would be captured by the idea of an equivalence class of programs that satisfy some arbitrary parameters (such as solving a finite NP-hard problem) given some large but finite quantity of resources? Of course this goes against the grain of Bruno's theology, but maybe that is what it required to solve the measure problem. :-) I find myself being won over by the finitists, such as Norman J. Wildberger! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
a paper by Karl Svozil
Hi Folks, For your amusement, delight and (hopefully) comment, I present a paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305048 Computational universes Karl Svozil http://arxiv.org/find/physics/1/au:+Svozil_K/0/1/0/all/0/1 (Submitted on 12 May 2003 (v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305048v1), last revised 14 Apr 2005 (this version, v2)) Suspicions that the world might be some sort of a machine or algorithm existing ``in the mind'' of some symbolic number cruncher have lingered from antiquity. Although popular at times, the most radical forms of this idea never reached mainstream. Modern developments in physics and computer science have lent support to the thesis, but empirical evidence is needed before it can begin to replace our contemporary world view. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
