Re: Atheist
Dear John, Thank you for sharing your amazing life story! You ask: 'Allow me please one more question: how is it balanced with the Day of the Divine Final Sentencing that people die now and some go to Heaven and some to Hell? (I am referring to the 72 virgins vs. the fire-created Satan-helpers torture in Hell).' I am not too clear on what exactly is the question, but let me share my understanding of trial and retribution, and please feel free to ask again if this does not meet your query. This life on Earth is a trial for each human, we each have a unique set of questions, situations, backgrounds, aptitudes, etc, and we all have a potential for good and evil, as well as the free-will to choose and intend. The trial ends with death. Everything that we think, do, believe, wish, hope, desire, imagine, etc., is all being continuously recorded. God is ever-present and witness to everything (including the trials set forth for each one), and never forgets. Further, God has arranged for it all to be recorded, and there are angels recording everything, which will be presented as a scroll, so completely detailed that we ourselves will be able to evaluate ourselves and know whether we belong in Heaven or Hell. The operating principle about Divine Judgement is that nobody will be wronged in the least. I think that includes God, since ascribing partners to God is stated as the greatest and most unforgivable wrong. Hell is something over which all will have to pass (Quran 19:70, 71). It is imagined as a bridge which each one must cross to make it to Heaven. There are many suggested prayers in the Quran to ask for protection from the fire. However, Heaven is only mentioned as a reward and final destination for those whom God blesses with His Approval. Those who are blessed by God, will be able to pass over the bridge upon Hell, and reach Heaven. Those who have earned Hell will fall therein. Those whose scales are neither titled in favour of Heaven or Hell will be assigned either Heaven or Hell in God's infinite wisdom and knowledge, the operating principle again being that none will be wronged in the least. According to a scholar, there are three categories upon death: (1) the large general category who will remain in a state of sleep till resurrection and will then face their deeds. (2) the few who have lived their lives so well that they have earned God's approval and are greeted by angels with the good news of Heaven, and continue to live (in another world veiled from us, not reincarnation here) or dream in a state of bliss till resurrection (3) the few who have earned and incurred divine wrath and will endure torture and suffering from the moment they die till the day of resurrection when they will finally enter Hell I do not find the count of 72 virgins in the Quran. Yes, other books do refer to such things and attribute such sayings as explanations from the Prophet. If I may borrow your phrase: I dunno :) What I do know is that the Quran says so many things and gives so many analogies and similitudes of Paradise. It speaks of a magnificent realm, gardens with subterranean rivers, moderate weather and shades, plentiful and delicious fruits and meats, milk and honey, and non-intoxicating drinks in crystalline silver goblets, fine clothing of silk and gold, family, pairs or spouses (soul-mates?), fulfilment of all desires, such peace and serenity that no one would ever desire any change of state, ... and it also mentions 'hurs' or virgins with beautiful eyes, but as I've mentioned in an earlier exchange, the word itself is neuter gender, so again, I dunno. Another thing that is mentioned in the Quran, and which makes a lot of sense to me in terms of the widely differing trials and lifestyles of the haves and have-nots in this world, is that good things in the life of this world are actually for the good people to expect and know what awaits them in a better, more excellent, perfected form in Heaven, and deprivation and suffering is also a preview of a much more intense form of what will be given as punishment in Hell. However, please note that what we enjoy or endure in this life is neither reward nor punishment, it's just our question paper, and the easier it seems, the more sternly will it be judged. We will be questioned about all the good that we are given, including all comforts, conveniences and abilities, and will have to account for how we used them. Does the above address your question? Samiya On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 5:31 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Samiya, thanks unlimitedly for your kind and information-laden response that opens eyes (mine included). I fell into political turmoil at an early age (WWII) and struggled to learn how to make a living in science/technology. I learned Latin and Gothic alphabets at 4-5 (on my own), Cyrillic and Hebrew at 7, Greek a bit later. Learned 2 mother-tongues at ~3, Latin for 8 years, French over 4+, English for 2, speak a little Italian
Re: Atheist
PGC, I do not assume that you don't read religious text. I do get the feeling though that you do not hold them in esteem, due to the reasons you cite against them, particularly the blasphemy point you keep raising. Also, I do not think the Quran is yet on your reading list. Is that correct? If anything, I get the feeling that you are not merely having an intellectual debate, but rather seeking earnestly in your own way. No, I haven't read Søren Kierkegaard, and just looked up on Wikipedia. Sounds interesting, so thanks, will try to read up some of his works. Coming back to the blasphemy issue you raise, in my estimation, I'm convinced that the Quran is not a human work and has been compiled and revealed by Divine Decree. When read from cover to cover, it addresses and explains many general and recurring issues of good and evil, and sets a certain moral and ethical framework of values that should be the basis of addressing the real-life problems of good and evil. Of course, we do not know everything, and with our limited knowledge and given the complexity of our mind-heart (rational thinking-inclinations-hopes-desires-loves-lusts-hates and so on), we are definitely going to be indecisive, and falter and fail at times, while at other times transcend our lower selves and realise our potential for good. Perhaps I'm blaspheming by considering Quran to be from God, but I do so in earnestness and sincerity, as I find the historical and natural world references in it to be accurate, and the moral and ethical fibre of the message based upon good and justice. I think looking for theology in works of fiction or philosophy, which we know are human works, is a faulty premise to start with, hence I do not take my theology from such books. Since you categorise Quran and other scriptures as human works as well, hence I agree in principle, but differ in detail. Samiya On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:05 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: Your statements presuppose that you have solved the problem of evil. Let us suppose for argument's sake, that we indeed can distinguish good from evil. Even so, for every evil act, one can find some higher religious purpose or belief to justify the supposedly evil act. Take murder, for example. Was it evil of Stauffenberg to try to murder Hitler? What if god had personally appeared to him, and told him to act? Could we see this from the outside? How can we judge something as evil, when we never have all the information, perhaps pertaining to a higher cause we do not see/comprehend? And if we believe that we can easily tell the difference, do we not run the risk of seeing what we wish of the world, instead of its truth? How can we know this beyond our inner selves, for others? Søren Kierkegaard, a Christian, was extremely critical of how Christian faith was practiced: just acting the religion and abusing faith for comfort to abandon the search for what evil really means and how to cope with it. He saw it as a deep and confusing problem that religious practice ignores, and questions how we could ever know to do god's work if we are not brave enough to admit our ignorance and attack the problem. I don't want to suggest in any way that you read him, and merely use this example to point out, that what your statements suppose to know, nature of good and evil, is the huge problem of ethics linked with theology, and that its complexity, is orders of magnitude removed, from this is good and this is evil statements in Bible, Quran etc. , and that thousands of mystics, shaman, thinkers, scientists, theologian have wrestled with this problem with no clear answer in sight. How do you reconcile this problem with the absolute certainty invoked in the literal interpretation of sacred scripture that says lying is bad... when somebody can lie to save lives, for example? How can we tell good religious and deeds from the opposite? Does evil even exist, and why would a god create it, if he were not an evil tester? A loving parent would not create or wish such for its children. Why would a possible god do so? You assume I don't read religious text. This is false. I just restrict my reading of text concerning fundamental search to text that can attack the kinds of question and problems I have raised with you. But I don't want to mention them or influence anybody's search. So if you have solved the problem of evil, as your statements suggest, you could elaborate on this if you feel comfortable doing so. Mere prescriptions this is good/god's will, and this is bad don't count beyond our personal horizon. Theology has a problem here, regardless of particular religion. The effect is more general. PGC On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Samiya Illias
Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf This test was also originally devised by Wellman and Estes, and involves asking the child what the brain is for. They found that *normal 3-4 year olds already know that the brain has a set of mental functions*, such as dreaming, wanting, thinking, keeping secrets, etc., Some also knew it had physi cal functions (such as making you move, or helping you stay alive, etc.). In contrast , *children with autism (but who again had a mental age above a 4 year old level) appear to know about the physical functions, but typically fail to mention any mental function of the brain* (Baron-Cohen, 1989a) This paper on autism and theory of mind really shines a light on the most intractable problem within philosophy of mind. In particular ...children from about the age of 4 years old normally are able to distinguish between appearance and reality, that is, they can talk about objects which have misleading appearances. For example, they may say, when presented with *a candle fashioned in the shape of an apple,* that it looks like an apple but is really a candle. C*hildren with autism*, presented with the 5 same sorts of tests, tend to commit errors of realism, *saying the object really is an apple, or really is a candle, but do not capture the object’s dual identity* in their spontaneous descriptions (Baron-Cohen, 1989a). This cartoon from a Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200805/empathy-mindblindness-and-theory-mind article illustrates the kinds of tests that show whether children have developed what is called a theory of mind; an understanding of the contents of other people's experience: Children with autism are virtually at chance on this test, as likely to indicate one character as the other when asked “Which one knows what’s in the box?” So often it becomes clear to me in debating the issues of consciousness that they are missing something which cannot be replaced by logic. The way that many people think, especially those who are very intelligent in math and physics, only includes a kind of toy model of experience - one which fails to fully realize the difference between the map and the territory. It makes a lot of sense to be that having a very low-res, two dimensional theory of mind would correlate with having a philosophy of mind which undersignifies privacy and oversignifies mechanistic influences. The low res theory of mind comes with a built in bias toward behaviorism, where all events are caused by public conditions rather than private feelings and experiences. There are several other interesting findings in the (brief) paper http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf. Autistic children find it difficult to tell the difference between what they meant to do and what they actually did, so that when they shoot at a target and miss, they don't understand that they intended to hit it but ended up missing it and say that they meant to miss. Overall, the list of deficits in imagination, pragmatics, social mindreading, etc has been called mindblindness. This is not to say that everyone who doesn't understand the hard problem has mindblindness, but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Gödel of the Gaps
So much of our attention in logic and math is focused on using processes to turn specific inputs into even more specific binary outputs. Very little attention is paid to what inputs and outputs are or to the understanding of what truth is in theoretical terms. The possibility of inputs is assumed from the start, since no program can exist without being ‘input’ into some kind of material substrate which has been selected or engineered for that purpose. You can’t program a device to be programmable if it isn’t already. Overlooking this is part of the gap between mathematics and reality which is overlooked by all forms of simulation theory and emergentism. Without some initial connection between sensitive agents which are concretely real and non-theoretical, there can be no storage or processing of information. Before we can input any definitions of logical functions, we have to find something which behaves logically and responds reliably to our manipulations of it. The implications of binary logic, of making distinctions between true/go and false/stop are more far reaching than we might assume. I suggest that if a machine’s operations can be boiled down to true and false bits, then it can have no capacity to exercise intentionality. It has no freedom of action because freedom is a creative act, and creativity in turn entails questioning what is true and what is not. The creative impulse can drive us to attack the truth until it cracks and reveals how it is also false. Creativity also entails redeeming what has been seen as false so that it reveals a new truth. These capabilities and appreciation of them are well beyond the functional description of what a machine would do. Machine logic is, by contrast, the death of choice. To compute is to automate and reduce sense into an abstract sense-of-motion. Leibniz called his early computer a “Stepped Reckoner”, and that it very apt. The word reckon derives from etymological roots that are shared with ‘reg’, as in regal, ruler, and moving straight ahead. It is a straightener or comb of physically embodied rules. A computer functionalizes and conditions reality into rules, step by step, in a mindless imitation of mind. A program or a script is a frozen record of sense-making in retrospect. It is built of propositions defined in isolation rather than sensations which share the common history of all sensation. The computing machine itself does not exist in the natural world, but rather is distilled from the world’s most mechanistic tendencies. All that does not fit into true or false is discarded. Although Gödel is famous for discovering the incompleteness of formal systems, that discovery itself exists within a formal context. The ideal machine, for example, which cannot prove anything that is false, subscribes to the view that truth and falsehood are categories which are true rather than truth and falsehood being possible qualities within a continuum of sense making. There is a Platonic metaphysics at work here, which conjures a block universe of forms which are eternally true and good. In fact, a casual inspection of our own experience reveals no such clear-cut categories, and the goodness and truth of the situations we encounter are often inseparable from their opposite. We seek sensory experiences for the sake of appreciating them directly, rather than only for their truth or functional benefits. Truth is only one of the qualities of sense which matters. The way that a computer processes information is fundamentally different than the way that conscious thought works. Where a consistent machine cannot give a formal proof of its own consistency, a person can be certain of their own certainty without proof. That doesn’t always mean that the person’s feeling turns out to match what they or others will understand to be true later on, but unlike a computer, we have available to us an experience of a sense of certainty (especially a ‘common sense’) that is an informal feeling rather than a formal logical proof. A computer has neither certainty nor uncertainty, so it makes no difference to it whether a proof exists or not. The calculation procedure is run and the output is generated. It can be compared against the results of other calculators or to employ more calculations itself to assess a probability, but it has no sense of whether the results are certain or not. Our common sense is a feeling which can be proved wrong, but can also be proved right informally by other people. We can come to a consensus beyond rationality with trust and intuition, which is grounded the possibility of the real rather than the realization of the hypothetical. When we use computation and logic, we are extending our sense of certainty by consulting a neutral third party, but what Gödel shows is that there is a problem with measurement itself. It is not just the ruler that is incomplete, or the book of rules, but the
Re: Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
On 16 July 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. I must say I've often wondered about this very thing in the course of some online discussions. However I try not to fall prey too readily to any assumption of this sort, to at least temper any tendency on my part to debate the person rather than the argument. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 14 Jul 2014, at 21:25, David Nyman wrote: On 14 July 2014 18:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Such explanations are bottom up all the way down. Hence there is simply no place in that explanatory hierarchy for any supplementary notion of computation distinguishable from what is already fully embodied in physical action. Hmm... You do the non relevant mistake again (or I misinterpret you badly). I am afraid that what you say here for physics can be applied to arithmetic too. No doubt I may be mistaken (I'm trying to be clear enough to be wrong). Computation per se may indeed be reducible to just the basic number relations, in something like the sense that matter, under physicalism (phys), is reducible to just the basic physical relations. I think so. With complex nuances which would lead us astray. But ISTM, that comp is redeemed from (or as you say vaccinated against) reduction (and by the same token zombie-hood) by the irreducible emergence of the internal views. Yes. But the point is that to make sense of this, we will need the higher 3p description, like the arithmetical beweisbar, []p, (or any arithmetically sound extensions like you and me if comp is true), which despite being a (universal) number, will still have its own dynamic, relatively to some master universal numbers (which run it, in arithmetic). The arithmetical truth contains out of time all such relations/ computations, and indeed with comp, that defines both the ONE (arithmetical truth), and the intelligible (here the part of arithmetical truth concerning a machine []p) Then Gödel's incompleteness, more acuratly Löb's theorem (which extends Gödel a bit), makes that if we define knowledge by true (justified) belief, or more aptly (to avoid Gerson error) if we define knowing p, by (believing p) p, the knower get its new essence (as gerson thinks correctly that the ancient insisted on) *from the machine first person view, where the conjunction of probable and truth leads to a subject provably undefinable by the machine. The machine's intuition will be that she is not a machine, and she will understand the transcendence of the bet done when saying yes to a digitalist surgeon. It is much more difficult to see how phys can be redeemed in any comparable way without resorting at least tacitly to comp (at which point the difficulties begin anew). This in my opinion already does not eliminate the reality of the 3p high level description, but of course constitutes a threat to eliminate the role of consciousness. But do you think that the 3p high-level description would be equally real if (somehow) it were not ultimately redeemable by the internal views (e.g. if, counter-factually, my own high-level 3p description merely resulted in zombie-hood)? I think we have to think so. Arithmetizing meta-arithmetic, does not make disappear the meta-arithmetic. We need both that all arithmetical formula make sense, or at least the sigma_1 one, to get the UD considered existing independently of us, and which define the measure which will channel the instantiation of the first person consciousness fluxes. We need arithmetical truth (which includes many levels, not all first person perceptible) to see how from inside, consciousness grows with the G* minus G (and intensional variants). Of course all this makes sense only from inside, and consciousness get the number sense here through some reminiscence of where it all starts. Here physicalism fails, almost because it is not interested in consciousness. Here QM (and especially Everett-QM) should open the mind of the physicists that such a reductionism mind = brain state is failing. Yes, this is the point I have been making for some time now. But the machine itself has a natural knower associated to it. Forgive me for not commenting more extensively on your remarks (which I will study) but this seems to me to be the absolutely capital point. Yes, and as Gerson missed, that has been solved by Theaetetus. Socrate (and many philosophers) criticize Theaetetus definition, because it does look like a 3p description. But with beweisbar playing the role of belief, the arithmetical version of the Theaetetus provides a counter-example. []p p is provably not definable in arithmetic, or in any language that a universal can ever understand. The machine can still point on it, and give, like God, local nickname, like me or you. I will come back later on how to justify the abyssal difference of essence between '[]p and []p p. ISTM above all else that a natural knower is the crux of the redemption of the first person from exhaustive physical reduction and effective elimination. It's precisely the radical absence of such a natural knower in the reductive hierarchy of phys - indeed the irrelevance of such a knower to its defining mode of explanation - that I've continually had in
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 15 Jul 2014, at 15:53, Richard Ruquist wrote: On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Jul 2014, at 02:04, meekerdb wrote: Yet that seems to be what Quentin requires in order to say to instances of the MG compute the same function. Knowing the universal number or knowing the function is like the problem of knowing all the correct counterfactuals. The MG is supposed to have been made at some right substitution level, by us, by chance (whatever), then (and here I am not sure of Quentin's wording, but each computation at some level is emulated in parallel at infinitely many coarse grained level in arithmetic, that looks like more primitive computations. To give an example, imagine a Lisp program computing a factorial function. You have a well defined computation in term of the stepping (tracing) function associated to an interpreter Lisp and the input (factorial 5), say. As Lisp is a universal number, that *counts* as a computation. But then imagine the computation of the Lisp program emulating a boolean Graph (Nor gates and their link and delays) emulating a Z80 processor, emulating itself a Lisp interpreter computing (factorial 5) with the same algorithm as above. Does that comp for a computation of (factorial 5). It does. Is it the same computation? Not really. It is a different path in the UD*. If that process incarnate the conscious flux, then both does, but one if (by construction) at the simplest right level (program in Lisp computing fact 5), and the other is, notably, emulating a lower level, that is the Boolean graph of the Z80 processor. Are they the same because they both compute 5!; even if they used different algorithms? No. If they use different algorithm, the function computed is the same, but the computation differs. But in the above case, I suppose it is the same algorithm, but we look at the implementation at a lower level. Again the computation differ at that lower level, and does not differ at the higher level. In the UD*, this will correspond to different phi_i(j)^n, and thus different computations, but equivalent from the point of view of the factorial (say). Bruno That suggests the concept of Computation Paths (CP). And that in cases where two different CPs find the same number, the CPs form a feedback loop; hence the arithmetic is quickly self- referential; I am not sure why two CP ending on a same number would lead to a feedback loop. Self-reference exist through the solution of the second recursion theorem of Kleene, basically the Dx = XX, with the bizarre quote. and prime numbers are not self-referential, an indication of their importance.. Well, a big prime number might certainly be both universal, self- referential, and prime. But universal is not an intrinsic notion like prime, it depend on the local universal number. Bruno Richard And, yes, knowing the universal number and its data, you know, or can derive, the counterfactuals. Comp says that there is a level of description of myself such that those computation *at the correct level carries my consciousness. There's where I agree with JKC. You keep fudging what comp means. The above is *not* the same as betting that the doctor can give you a physical brain prosthesis that maintains your consciousness. I don't see this. Please explain. I think the level description would have to include not only you but your world. Well, I agree, that is why we need to distinguish []p and []p p, and []p p. Universal numbers can justify their own incompleteness and they can bet, and intuit, the thing with respect to which it is incomplete. The []p is just a believer. The p nuance is equivalent with giving him a world satisfying p. The p nuance consists in keeping intact the relation between belief and truth (or God, or Real world, etc.). The math shows that such nuances obeys different, but related, laws. So I could say yes to the doctor even though I don't think the computational brain he installs in me is sufficient, by itself, to instantiate my consciousness. Sure, me too. But Brent, and Peter Jones, adds that the computation have to be done by a real thing. This is a bit like either choosing some particular universal number pr, and called it physical reality, and add the axioms that only the phi_pr computations counts: the phi_pr (j)^n. I think Peter, like me, questions the existence of numbers as any more than elements fo language. This is conventionalism. I consider that this view is refuted by number theory implicitly, and by mathematical logic explicitly. The existence of not of infinitely many prime number twins is everythi,g but conventional. With comp, the existence of your dreams in arithmetic, and their relative proportions, are not conventional. So it is not like choosing a universal
Re: Selecting your future branch
On 15 Jul 2014, at 16:35, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 1:42 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Of course there is. You know when in Helsinki, (as a comp believer) John Clark is NOT a comp believer. This contradicts the fact that you are OK with step 0, and step 1, and step 2. what do you expect about the evolution of your subjective life, There are now 2 , so which subjective life? Any one. like the one you describe in the personal diary There are now 2 diaries just as there are now 2 yous. Yes, in the 3-1 view, but each 1-view has noted only once city, and so we can know in advance that both we write in the diary: I see only once city. And so both conclude that the W M prediction was false, even if it stay correct in the 3-1 symmetrical view. For both survivors, that symmetry is 1p broken. The W-guy can asks itself why am I the one in W and not in M, and the M-guy can asks himself the corresponding question. Both got one bit of information, by getting W *or* M, and not both. And both are genuine descendent of the H-guy, and knows that H-guy was wrong in denying that life experience of getting one bit of information. Do you expect to die, or to vanish? No. that would contradict step 0. Why did Bruno Marchal use the personal pronoun you in the above sentence that attempts to explain the nature of personal identity? You made that annoying move repeatedly. The question is not about personal identity, but about pushing on a button, opening a door, and inscribing a result in a diary. Because otherwise the ideas expressed would be exposed as vacuous. If it becomes vacuously true, go to step 4. Bruno Marchal is simply asserting early in the proof what Bruno Marchal is attempting to prove. That is always the case in deductive argument. We make explicit in the theorem what is already implicit in the axiom. But if you are OK, just move to step 4. It might be slightly less obvious, perhaps. Her first person experience is [...] Which first person experience? You don't quote enough. I think you just NOT want to understand. You believe in comp Nobody believes in comp because nobody knows what it means, especially you. I see. You just play with me. I ridicule myself to discuss with you. Bruno UDA offers simple 3p definition of the 3p and 1p pronouns, Well good for uda. AUDA offers purely arithmetical definition Well good for auda and uda. for the 3p notion, and then take the Theaetetus' definition for the 1p notion Well good for Plato even though he was a ignoramus by today's standards; a hillbilly schoolboy knows more about how the world works. the question of prediction is always asked BEFORE we push on the button John Clark isn't interested in when the question was asked, and right now John Clark isn't even interested what the answer is. John Clark just wants to know exactly and unambiguously what the question is. if in Helsinki you (John Clark, the guy I send this post to, arriving at Helsinki by plane, etc.) predict I will [...] Why did Bruno Marchal use the personal pronoun I in the above sentence that attempts to explain the nature of personal identity? Because otherwise the ideas expressed would be exposed as vacuous. Bruno Marchal is simply asserting early in the proof what Bruno Marchal is attempting to prove. We have agree many times that both copies are genuine older helsinki man. Yes indeed that has been agreed to, but then in the next breath Bruno Marchal will say that according to comp even though the Helsinki Man will certainly see Moscow there is less than a 100% chance that the Helsinki man will see Moscow. And that is why John Clark doesn't understand what the Helsinki Man means and that is why even Bruno Marchal doesn't understand what comp means. from the 1p view, the view are unique, even if there are many 1p views, And that is the idea that is simply asserted into the proof, there is something mysterious that makes one and only one of those views unique ; so it's little wonder that in later steps it is proven. John Clark will admit that asserting what is attempted to be proven does leads to proofs that are simpler and shorter. Just ask John Clark to answer the 2^(16180 * 1) * (60 * 90) * 24 - iterated multiplication experience. What can John Clark, before pushing the button, expect about the first person experience that John Clark will live John Clark will have 2^(16180 * 1) * (60 * 90) * 24 first person experiences as viewed from the 1P and NONE OF THEM ARE UNIQUE, there is no such thing as *the* first person experience that John Clark will live. And there is another problem, ALL views are views of the present, nobody can view the future, guesses can be made about what things will happen but there is no future 1P. By definition of the first
Re: Atheist
On 15 Jul 2014, at 22:05, meekerdb wrote: On 7/15/2014 12:27 PM, John Clark wrote: Yes, the Bible contains its own sadistic lunacy--but the above quotations can be fairly said to convey the central message of the Qur'an--and of Islam at nearly every moment in its history. The Qur'an does not contain anything like a Sermon on the Mount. Nor is it a vast and self-contradictory book like the Old Testament, in which whole sections (like Leviticus and Deuteronomy) can be easily ignored and forgotten. The result is a unified message of triumphalism, otherworldliness, and religious hatred that has become a problem for the entire world. And the world still waits for moderate Muslims to speak honestly about it. The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But there's something beneath it, something we don't want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of respect. What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again. So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God. --- Salman Rushdie 2002 I don't think so. the problem is not God. The problem is the human use of God's name to terrestrial power. That's not God, that's mote like the devil. That would not happen if theology, in the original scientific sense of the Ancients would have been kept in the academy. All children today would know that nobody can invoke publicly God to justify any terrestrial decision. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Atheist
On 15 Jul 2014, at 22:14, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-15 22:10 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
On 14 Jul 2014, at 17:25, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-14 17:13 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
On 14 Jul 2014, at 12:53, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-14 12:09 GMT+02:00 Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com:
Why do you need to see God to believe in God?
Why should you believe if you can know ? If you can't, why should
you believe instead of not believing or go eating an hamburger ?
Seeing might make you know *that* you see, but it does not entail
that you know *what* you see, as you might be dreaming or
hallucinating.
That wasn't what I was implying... I see not point to believe or
not believe... Why *shoud* I believe anyway ?
Just to clear things up, I use the common part of all analytical
definition of belief theory and knowledge theory, and in particular
(knowing p) - (believing p).
If you know that there is milk in the fridge, you believe that there
is milk in the fridge.
The key difference is that the reciprocal is false. If you believe
there is milk in the fridge , you can still not know it.
Well I can accept such language in mathematics where you make clear
what is meant, not in every day use when someone says he
*believes* in god,
I use believe in the same mundane sense that I believe that there
is orange juice in the fridge, and later like in I believe in the
axiom of elementary arithmetic and in its first order logical
consequence, or in I don't believe the machine k will stop on the
input j.
that's not what he meant... That's what I don't like in your
approach to insist using everyday word in everyday language *but*
with your own mathematical meaning. It's misleading you should see it.
I use belief in the doxastic sense of the analytical philosophers.
Iuse belief in the sense of Theaetetus, Gerson, etc.
Bruno
Quentin
Bruno
In general you believe something, not because you see it, but
because it fits well with your background knowledge. I can't see
the set {0, 1, 2, ...}, nor really define it, yet I hardly doubt
that it makes sense, as it explains a lot of other things in which
I already tend to believe (like the non existence of a bigger
prime, or the existence of universal numbers, the real numbers,
etc.).
Bruno
Quentin
On 14-Jul-2014, at 2:14 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 7/13/2014 3:47 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Sure: Do you believe in a theist god?
I'd like to.
So we can keep using the word theology and keep some academic
departments that have no subject.
This would also include political science, arts, gender studies,
french literature. Are you willing to go that far, and make what
doesn't build bridges or bake bread, something to be learned as
a podcast? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. Dump them
all. Right?
I can point to art, people with genders, and french literature.
I've run a political campaign. But I've never seen a god.
Brent
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Re: Atheist
2014-07-16 19:22 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
On 15 Jul 2014, at 22:14, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-15 22:10 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
On 14 Jul 2014, at 17:25, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-14 17:13 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
On 14 Jul 2014, at 12:53, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-14 12:09 GMT+02:00 Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com:
Why do you need to see God to believe in God?
Why should you believe if you can know ? If you can't, why should you
believe instead of not believing or go eating an hamburger ?
Seeing might make you know *that* you see, but it does not entail that
you know *what* you see, as you might be dreaming or hallucinating.
That wasn't what I was implying... I see not point to believe or not
believe... Why *shoud* I believe anyway ?
Just to clear things up, I use the common part of all analytical
definition of belief theory and knowledge theory, and in particular
(knowing p) - (believing p).
If you know that there is milk in the fridge, you believe that there is
milk in the fridge.
The key difference is that the reciprocal is false. If you believe there
is milk in the fridge , you can still not know it.
Well I can accept such language in mathematics where you make clear what
is meant, not in every day use when someone says he *believes* in god,
I use believe in the same mundane sense that I believe that there is
orange juice in the fridge,
I believe in *god* is not like I believe there is orange juice in the
fridge.
and later like in I believe in the axiom of elementary arithmetic and in
its first order logical consequence, or in I don't believe the machine k
will stop on the input j.
that's not what he meant... That's what I don't like in your approach to
insist using everyday word in everyday language *but* with your own
mathematical meaning. It's misleading you should see it.
I use belief in the doxastic sense of the analytical philosophers. Iuse
belief in the sense of Theaetetus, Gerson, etc.
You use those words in a misleading way... You do what you want of
course... but you're clearly totally misunderstood when you talk to a
believer.
Quentin
Bruno
Quentin
Bruno
In general you believe something, not because you see it, but because it
fits well with your background knowledge. I can't see the set {0, 1, 2,
...}, nor really define it, yet I hardly doubt that it makes sense, as it
explains a lot of other things in which I already tend to believe (like the
non existence of a bigger prime, or the existence of universal numbers, the
real numbers, etc.).
Bruno
Quentin
On 14-Jul-2014, at 2:14 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
On 7/13/2014 3:47 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Sure: Do you believe in a theist god?
I'd like to.
*So we can keep using the word theology and keep some academic
departments that have no subject.*
This would also include political science, arts, gender studies,
french literature. Are you willing to go that far, and make what doesn't
build bridges or bake bread, something to be learned as a podcast? Sauce
for the goose, sauce for the gander. Dump them all. Right?
I can point to art, people with genders, and french literature. I've
run a political campaign. But I've never seen a god.
Brent
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Re: Atheist
On 15 Jul 2014, at 22:17, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: From: Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com Well I can accept such language in mathematics where you make clear what is meant, not in every day use when someone says he *believes* in god, that's not what he meant... That's what I don't like in your approach to insist using everyday word in everyday language *but* with your own mathematical meaning. It's misleading you should see it. Quentin I am confused as well when words such as god that have powerful well known and widely used meanings become used to mean something very different than the commonly understood meaning What makes you know it is that different? A lot of Christian, Jewish, Muslims (at least in the past and still among sufis) love Plotinus and neoplatonism. before christinism get trapped in secular power, a large proportion of Chirstian theologian, or student in theology, were knowing vey well Greek theology. And there are many people thinking that Plotinus, and its own master perhaps, were influenced by Indians. I guess it is not really plausible that the God of the neoplatonist comp looks like a male with a beard, nor a female with wings, but as a scientist I am agnostic before some progress is made. I use god in the sense used by all comparative theologians. You might read Aldous Huxley philosophia perennis. I think that using another nickname, at this stage, might be quite misleading. My own understanding of Plotinus came with the help of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theologians. We just don't know. Bruno Chris -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The subtle distinction between belief faith
On 16 Jul 2014, at 04:23, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: Some quoted passages from Alan Watts (author of The Wisdom of Insecurity - 1951) regarding the distinction between belief and faith that seemed pertinent to me to several of the discussion threads going on here. Chris Quoting him: We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would lief or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self- deception. [...] The present phase of human thought and history ... almost compels us to face reality with open minds, and you can only know God through an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear window. You will not see the sky if you have covered the glass with blue paint. But religious people who resist the scraping of the paint from the glass, who regard the scientific attitude with fear and mistrust, and confuse faith with clinging to certain ideas, are curiously ignorant of laws of the spiritual life which they might find in their own traditional records. A careful study of comparative religion and spiritual philosophy reveals that abandonment of belief, of any clinging to a future life for one's own, and of any attempt to escape from finitude and mortality, is a regular and normal stage in the way of the spirit. Indeed, this is actually such a first principle of the spiritual life that it should have been obvious from the beginning, and it seems, after all, surprising that learned theologians should adopt anything but a cooperative attitude towards the critical philosophy of science. Nice quote. Note that Conscience Mécanisme gives Alan Watts all its due. That guy saves my life and perhaps my afterlife :) Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:02, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf This test was also originally devised by Wellman and Estes, and involves asking the child what the brain is for. They found that normal 3-4 year olds already know that the brain has a set of mental functions, such as dreaming, wanting, thinking, keeping secrets, etc., Some also knew it had physi cal functions (such as making you move, or helping you stay alive, etc.). In contrast , children with autism (but who again had a mental age above a 4 year old level) appear to know about the physical functions, but typically fail to mention any mental function of the brain (Baron-Cohen, 1989a) This paper on autism and theory of mind really shines a light on the most intractable problem within philosophy of mind. In particular ...children from about the age of 4 years old normally are able to distinguish between appearance and reality, that is, they can talk about objects which have misleading appearances. For example, they may say, when presented with a candle fashioned in the shape of an apple, that it looks like an apple but is really a candle. Children with autism, presented with the 5 same sorts of tests, tend to commit errors of realism, saying the object really is an apple, or really is a candle, but do not capture the object's dual identity in their spontaneous descriptions (Baron-Cohen, 1989a). This cartoon from a Psychology Today article illustrates the kinds of tests that show whether children have developed what is called a theory of mind; an understanding of the contents of other people's experience: Children with autism are virtually at chance on this test, as likely to indicate one character as the other when asked Which one knows what's in the box? So often it becomes clear to me in debating the issues of consciousness that they are missing something which cannot be replaced by logic. The way that many people think, especially those who are very intelligent in math and physics, only includes a kind of toy model of experience - one which fails to fully realize the difference between the map and the territory. It makes a lot of sense to be that having a very low-res, two dimensional theory of mind would correlate with having a philosophy of mind which undersignifies privacy and oversignifies mechanistic influences. The low res theory of mind comes with a built in bias toward behaviorism, where all events are caused by public conditions rather than private feelings and experiences. There are several other interesting findings in the (brief) paper. Autistic children find it difficult to tell the difference between what they meant to do and what they actually did, so that when they shoot at a target and miss, they don't understand that they intended to hit it but ended up missing it and say that they meant to miss. Overall, the list of deficits in imagination, pragmatics, social mindreading, etc has been called mindblindness. This is not to say that everyone who doesn't understand the hard problem has mindblindness, but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. Craig, you beg the question in a novel interesting way. I agree with the concluding sentence, but that would describe exactly the state of a rationalist who decides to keep comp and materialism, and de facto eliminate the person and consciousness. But the big discovery is that when we look at computer science, we can apply to machine (ideally correct believer in arithmetic) the simplest notion of knowledge (Theaetetus), and the incompleteness (which already guaranty universality and the consistence of Church Thesis) prevents any possible confusion between the first person knower and any machine or 3p description, and this already for the machine in their own 1p view, so defined by Theatetus (with believability played by provability in rich enough theory of numbers or digital machines/ programs, combinators). If the theory above of autism is correct, a machine would become autistic when denying they are their unnameable []p p, and identifying themselves with their body (the describable []p part). It is a bit the correct conclusion of the materialist computationalist, and I am OK to consider the materialist eliminativism (of the 1p and consciousness) as a form of autism. Good point! But again, the machines like it too, and is not a point against mechanism, but against mechanism + materialism or non-idealism. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
Re: Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 9:53:43 AM UTC-4, David Nyman wrote: On 16 July 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. I must say I've often wondered about this very thing in the course of some online discussions. However I try not to fall prey too readily to any assumption of this sort, to at least temper any tendency on my part to debate the person rather than the argument. I want to agree, and it is important to temper tendencies to debate the person, but I think that this is one case where debating someone with low theory of mind skills is like debating about color with someone who is blind. They just have no possibility of understanding what the discussion is about, and (because of their low theory of mind skills) cannot tell the difference between a different perspective from their own and being wrong (stupid, Dualist, Solipsist, etc). David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Atheist
Salman Rushdie wrote: religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of respect. What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? It is the liberal consensus that we should always respect all religious beliefs regardless of how stupid or cruel it is; for example tune into just about any international news broadcast and you will probably see at least one story about religious violence somewhere in the world, but the media won't call it that, the media will call it sectarian violence. As for me I think there is a point beyond which a euphemism becomes a lie. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Gödel of the Gaps
On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:05, Craig Weinberg wrote: So much of our attention in logic and math is focused on using processes to turn specific inputs into even more specific binary outputs. Very little attention is paid to what inputs and outputs are or to the understanding of what truth is in theoretical terms. Come on! The possibility of inputs is assumed from the start, since no program can exist without being 'input' into some kind of material substrate which has been selected or engineered for that purpose. In which theory? You can't program a device to be programmable if it isn't already. Overlooking this is part of the gap between mathematics and reality which is overlooked by all forms of simulation theory and emergentism. You are quick. Correct from the 1p machine's view on their own 1p. You do confuse []p and []p p. Without some initial connection between sensitive agents which are concretely real and non-theoretical, there can be no storage or processing of information. Before we can input any definitions of logical functions, we have to find something which behaves logically and responds reliably to our manipulations of it. The implications of binary logic, of making distinctions between true/go and false/stop are more far reaching than we might assume. I suggest that if a machine's operations can be boiled down to true and false bits, then it can have no capacity to exercise intentionality. It has no freedom of action because freedom is a creative act, and creativity in turn entails questioning what is true and what is not. The creative impulse can drive us to attack the truth until it cracks and reveals how it is also false. Creativity also entails redeeming what has been seen as false so that it reveals a new truth. These capabilities and appreciation of them are well beyond the functional description of what a machine would do. Machine logic is, by contrast, the death of choice. To compute is to automate and reduce sense into an abstract sense-of- motion. Leibniz called his early computer a Stepped Reckoner, and that it very apt. The word reckon derives from etymological roots that are shared with 'reg', as in regal, ruler, and moving straight ahead. It is a straightener or comb of physically embodied rules. A computer functionalizes and conditions reality into rules, step by step, in a mindless imitation of mind. A program or a script is a frozen record of sense-making in retrospect. It is built of propositions defined in isolation rather than sensations which share the common history of all sensation. The computing machine itself does not exist in the natural world, but rather is distilled from the world's most mechanistic tendencies. All that does not fit into true or false is discarded. Although Gödel is famous for discovering the incompleteness of formal systems, that discovery itself exists within a formal context. The ideal machine, for example, which cannot prove anything that is false, subscribes to the view that truth and falsehood are categories which are true rather than truth and falsehood being possible qualities within a continuum of sense making. There is a Platonic metaphysics at work here, which conjures a block universe of forms which are eternally true and good. In fact, a casual inspection of our own experience reveals no such clear-cut categories, and the goodness and truth of the situations we encounter are often inseparable from their opposite. We seek sensory experiences for the sake of appreciating them directly, rather than only for their truth or functional benefits. Truth is only one of the qualities of sense which matters. The way that a computer processes information is fundamentally different than the way that conscious thought works. Where a consistent machine cannot give a formal proof of its own consistency, a person can be certain of their own certainty without proof. That doesn't always mean that the person's feeling turns out to match what they or others will understand to be true later on, but unlike a computer, we have available to us an experience of a sense of certainty (especially a 'common sense') that is an informal feeling rather than a formal logical proof. A computer has neither certainty nor uncertainty, so it makes no difference to it whether a proof exists or not. The calculation procedure is run and the output is generated. It can be compared against the results of other calculators or to employ more calculations itself to assess a probability, but it has no sense of whether the results are certain or not. Our common sense is a feeling which can be proved wrong, but can also be proved right informally by other people. We can come to a consensus beyond rationality with trust and intuition, which is grounded the possibility of the real rather than the realization of the hypothetical.
Re: Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 2:06:27 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:02, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf This test was also originally devised by Wellman and Estes, and involves asking the child what the brain is for. They found that *normal 3-4 year olds already know that the brain has a set of mental functions*, such as dreaming, wanting, thinking, keeping secrets, etc., Some also knew it had physi cal functions (such as making you move, or helping you stay alive, etc.). In contrast , *children with autism (but who again had a mental age above a 4 year old level) appear to know about the physical functions, but typically fail to mention any mental function of the brain* (Baron-Cohen, 1989a) This paper on autism and theory of mind really shines a light on the most intractable problem within philosophy of mind. In particular ...children from about the age of 4 years old normally are able to distinguish between appearance and reality, that is, they can talk about objects which have misleading appearances. For example, they may say, when presented with *a candle fashioned in the shape of an apple,* that it looks like an apple but is really a candle. C*hildren with autism*, presented with the 5 same sorts of tests, tend to commit errors of realism, *saying the object really is an apple, or really is a candle, but do not capture the object’s dual identity* in their spontaneous descriptions (Baron-Cohen, 1989a). This cartoon from a Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200805/empathy-mindblindness-and-theory-mind article illustrates the kinds of tests that show whether children have developed what is called a theory of mind; an understanding of the contents of other people's experience: Children with autism are virtually at chance on this test, as likely to indicate one character as the other when asked “Which one knows what’s in the box?” So often it becomes clear to me in debating the issues of consciousness that they are missing something which cannot be replaced by logic. The way that many people think, especially those who are very intelligent in math and physics, only includes a kind of toy model of experience - one which fails to fully realize the difference between the map and the territory. It makes a lot of sense to be that having a very low-res, two dimensional theory of mind would correlate with having a philosophy of mind which undersignifies privacy and oversignifies mechanistic influences. The low res theory of mind comes with a built in bias toward behaviorism, where all events are caused by public conditions rather than private feelings and experiences. There are several other interesting findings in the (brief) paper http://www.autism-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TOM-in-TD-and-ASD.pdf. Autistic children find it difficult to tell the difference between what they meant to do and what they actually did, so that when they shoot at a target and miss, they don't understand that they intended to hit it but ended up missing it and say that they meant to miss. Overall, the list of deficits in imagination, pragmatics, social mindreading, etc has been called mindblindness. This is not to say that everyone who doesn't understand the hard problem has mindblindness, but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. Craig, you beg the question in a novel interesting way. I agree with the concluding sentence, but that would describe exactly the state of a rationalist who decides to keep comp and materialism, and de facto eliminate the person and consciousness. Maybe all such rationalists have low theory of mind skills? But the big discovery is that when we look at computer science, we can apply to machine (ideally correct believer in arithmetic) the simplest notion of knowledge (Theaetetus), and the incompleteness (which already guaranty universality and the consistence of Church Thesis) prevents any possible confusion between the first person knower and any machine or 3p description, and this already for the machine in their own 1p view, so defined by Theatetus (with believability played by provability in rich enough theory of numbers or digital machines/programs, combinators). It's hard for me to figure out what you're saying there. By reading your book I have picked up a little better understanding of how you use modal logic, but it only makes me more sure that it is a red herring. To me, the only issue with the hard problem is feeling. Math does not allow feeling. It has no reason to create it or to use it. All of the rest - the first person and third
Re: Selecting your future branch
On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John Clark is NOT a comp believer. This contradicts the fact that you are OK with step 0, and step 1, and step 2. I'm not surprised. I've long ago forgotten what those steps were but I do know that If one starts with any contradictory concept, such as comp for example, and starts manipulating it in a logical way there is no way it can avoid generating further contradictions. Or to put it more simply, garbage in garbage out. Bruno Marchal is simply asserting early in the proof what Bruno Marchal is attempting to prove. That is always the case in deductive argument. OK, I will now prove the Riemann hypothesis. Step 1: The Riemann hypothesis is true. Step 2: Therefore the Riemann hypothesis is true. QED John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: How will air travel work in a green solar economy?
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:01 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: 18 square miles of empty Arizona desert could yield around two hundred thousand tons of high grade jet quality biofuel That sounds about right to me. And I can think of few things more disgusting or economically ridiculous that 18 square miles of stagnant salt water algae ponds in the desert. Do you really think building a monstrosity like that would make you any friends in the environmental community? And Wall street wouldn't like it any better because it's just basically a dumb idea. Does a 747, during normal operation, burn 200,000 tons of fuel a year? Well let's see, it would take 144000 gallons of gasoline every 24 hours or 5,256,000 gallons a year to keep one 747 in the sky. One gallon of gasoline weighs 6.2 lbs so that's 325,872,000 pounds. So you'd need 162,936 tons of fuel times the average number of 747's in the air at any one time to keep the fleet in the air for one year. And that's just for 747's, there are plenty of other types of airplanes. I think your numbers are off. I think they're pretty damn good for a back of the envelope calculation. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: How will air travel work in a green solar economy?
From: John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2014 12:29 PM Subject: Re: How will air travel work in a green solar economy? On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:01 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: 18 square miles of empty Arizona desert could yield around two hundred thousand tons of high grade jet quality biofuel That sounds about right to me. And I can think of few things more disgusting or economically ridiculous that 18 square miles of stagnant salt water algae ponds in the desert. Actually there are pilot installations already operating and the states involved (Arizona New Mexico are both backing them). It would be ridiculous if we applied your standards of ridiculous to any other form of agriculture -- all those miles and miles of fields and orchards, growing things... it is monstrous covering around 11% of the planet! You don't have to visit these remote low hot desert valleys where these biofuel production facilities will be sited -- providing much needed local jobs in areas of high and endemic unemployment so don't worry about the smell. These ponds would certainly smell a lot less bad than any of the thousands of feedlots scattered all over the country... it is not an issue. Do you really think building a monstrosity like that would make you any friends in the environmental community? Believe me or not I am not trying to make friends in the environmental community. Even so, when compared to alternatives (such as synthetic fuels from coal) I am fairly certain that most environmentalists will easily be brought around to support the scale out of a US domestic algae biofuel capacity. The land in question is flat low desert land that is currently very sparsely covered by nothing more than tumbleweed and an occasional cactus. It is barely worth anything even as seasonal grazing land. This is the hottest and driest areas of desert.. the low desert in the very southern parts of New Mexico and Arizona. And Wall street wouldn't like it any better because it's just basically a dumb idea. One of the principle actors in this arena is Craig Venter (of Human Genome fame) has a $600 million deal with Exxon to start doing exactly this. So evidently the largest oil company in the world has come to a very different conclusion as to the potential profit and market for algae biofuels than you have. That is a big chunk of change to bet on an early stage RD effort like this -- even for Exxon/Mobile. Apparently Wall Street loves the idea! Chris Does a 747, during normal operation, burn 200,000 tons of fuel a year? Well let's see, it would take 144000 gallons of gasoline every 24 hours or 5,256,000 gallons a year to keep one 747 in the sky. One gallon of gasoline weighs 6.2 lbs so that's 325,872,000 pounds. So you'd need 162,936 tons of fuel times the average number of 747's in the air at any one time to keep the fleet in the air for one year. And that's just for 747's, there are plenty of other types of airplanes. I think your numbers are off. I think they're pretty damn good for a back of the envelope calculation. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Atheist
Samiya, I can be no more appreciative to all I learned from you about the Islamic issues during my entire life. I will not change my ways of thinking now, after 92 years, but I still like to learn. So live well, have a good life (wherever it will take you) - you got a friend in me. So please do not reply my parting question anymore, which pertains to your approval-or-not of the cruelties of Sharia law and whether you accept ANY advancement of humanity over 1500 years at all. With respect John Mikes PS I found on Google a picture with your name, a gorgeous bride-face. I hope it is yours. JM On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Samiya Illias samiyaill...@gmail.com wrote: Dear John, Thank you for sharing your amazing life story! You ask: 'Allow me please one more question: how is it balanced with the Day of the Divine Final Sentencing that people die now and some go to Heaven and some to Hell? (I am referring to the 72 virgins vs. the fire-created Satan-helpers torture in Hell).' I am not too clear on what exactly is the question, but let me share my understanding of trial and retribution, and please feel free to ask again if this does not meet your query. This life on Earth is a trial for each human, we each have a unique set of questions, situations, backgrounds, aptitudes, etc, and we all have a potential for good and evil, as well as the free-will to choose and intend. The trial ends with death. Everything that we think, do, believe, wish, hope, desire, imagine, etc., is all being continuously recorded. God is ever-present and witness to everything (including the trials set forth for each one), and never forgets. Further, God has arranged for it all to be recorded, and there are angels recording everything, which will be presented as a scroll, so completely detailed that we ourselves will be able to evaluate ourselves and know whether we belong in Heaven or Hell. The operating principle about Divine Judgement is that nobody will be wronged in the least. I think that includes God, since ascribing partners to God is stated as the greatest and most unforgivable wrong. Hell is something over which all will have to pass (Quran 19:70, 71). It is imagined as a bridge which each one must cross to make it to Heaven. There are many suggested prayers in the Quran to ask for protection from the fire. However, Heaven is only mentioned as a reward and final destination for those whom God blesses with His Approval. Those who are blessed by God, will be able to pass over the bridge upon Hell, and reach Heaven. Those who have earned Hell will fall therein. Those whose scales are neither titled in favour of Heaven or Hell will be assigned either Heaven or Hell in God's infinite wisdom and knowledge, the operating principle again being that none will be wronged in the least. According to a scholar, there are three categories upon death: (1) the large general category who will remain in a state of sleep till resurrection and will then face their deeds. (2) the few who have lived their lives so well that they have earned God's approval and are greeted by angels with the good news of Heaven, and continue to live (in another world veiled from us, not reincarnation here) or dream in a state of bliss till resurrection (3) the few who have earned and incurred divine wrath and will endure torture and suffering from the moment they die till the day of resurrection when they will finally enter Hell I do not find the count of 72 virgins in the Quran. Yes, other books do refer to such things and attribute such sayings as explanations from the Prophet. If I may borrow your phrase: I dunno :) What I do know is that the Quran says so many things and gives so many analogies and similitudes of Paradise. It speaks of a magnificent realm, gardens with subterranean rivers, moderate weather and shades, plentiful and delicious fruits and meats, milk and honey, and non-intoxicating drinks in crystalline silver goblets, fine clothing of silk and gold, family, pairs or spouses (soul-mates?), fulfilment of all desires, such peace and serenity that no one would ever desire any change of state, ... and it also mentions 'hurs' or virgins with beautiful eyes, but as I've mentioned in an earlier exchange, the word itself is neuter gender, so again, I dunno. Another thing that is mentioned in the Quran, and which makes a lot of sense to me in terms of the widely differing trials and lifestyles of the haves and have-nots in this world, is that good things in the life of this world are actually for the good people to expect and know what awaits them in a better, more excellent, perfected form in Heaven, and deprivation and suffering is also a preview of a much more intense form of what will be given as punishment in Hell. However, please note that what we enjoy or endure in this life is neither reward nor punishment, it's just our question paper, and the easier it seems, the more
Re: Atheist
The latest theories of everithing admit absolutely everithing. they are no longer materialistic. Either they are no-theories or they allow any interpretation anyone may like about the know and unknow reality. In certain sense materialism has given up without being conscious of it. That is because its foundation is metaphysical and metaphysics has experimented a regression to the stone age, or at least to the level previous to the greek phylosophy. 2014-07-09 22:12 GMT+02:00, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com: I apologize for taking a new title for this over-discussed topic. Somebody (sounds like Bruno, the fonts look like Brent) wrote: ...let us do theology seriously instead of referring to fairy tales. You confirm what I said to John Clark. *Atheist* defend the God of the bible. Read Plotinus, forget the bible, unless you find some passage you like and which inspire you, but that is private, don't make that public. I refer to the generality about 'atheists' in the passage. I emphasize that I am no atheist in such a sense who IMO requires 'a god to deny' (my vocabulary includes the term as 'denying' instead of 'defending'). I simply exclude those facets which are beyond our reach at present. In speaking about Everything I think of an infinite complexity of components we cannot even understand (today) - nor the relations between them ALL. We include SOME into our 'model of the world' as of yesterday without knowing if we are right. In such sense even a (sane-minded) adilt can be an 'atheist'. John M -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Gödel of the Gaps
On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 2:22:46 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:05, Craig Weinberg wrote: So much of our attention in logic and math is focused on using processes to turn specific inputs into even more specific binary outputs. Very little attention is paid to what inputs and outputs are or to the understanding of what truth is in theoretical terms. Come on! ? The possibility of inputs is assumed from the start, since no program can exist without being ‘input’ into some kind of material substrate which has been selected or engineered for that purpose. In which theory? What theory details the ontology of inputs? You can’t program a device to be programmable if it isn’t already. Overlooking this is part of the gap between mathematics and reality which is overlooked by all forms of simulation theory and emergentism. You are quick. Correct from the 1p machine's view on their own 1p. You do confuse []p and []p p. So you are saying that programmability is universal outside of 1p views? Like infinite computational resources in a dimensionless pool? Without some initial connection between sensitive agents which are concretely real and non-theoretical, there can be no storage or processing of information. Before we can input any definitions of logical functions, we have to find something which behaves logically and responds reliably to our manipulations of it. The implications of binary logic, of making distinctions between true/go and false/stop are more far reaching than we might assume. I suggest that if a machine’s operations can be boiled down to true and false bits, then it can have no capacity to exercise intentionality. It has no freedom of action because freedom is a creative act, and creativity in turn entails questioning what is true and what is not. The creative impulse can drive us to attack the truth until it cracks and reveals how it is also false. Creativity also entails redeeming what has been seen as false so that it reveals a new truth. These capabilities and appreciation of them are well beyond the functional description of what a machine would do. Machine logic is, by contrast, the death of choice. To compute is to automate and reduce sense into an abstract sense-of-motion. Leibniz called his early computer a “Stepped Reckoner”, and that it very apt. The word reckon derives from etymological roots that are shared with ‘reg’, as in regal, ruler, and moving straight ahead. It is a straightener or comb of physically embodied rules. A computer functionalizes and conditions reality into rules, step by step, in a mindless imitation of mind. A program or a script is a frozen record of sense-making in retrospect. It is built of propositions defined in isolation rather than sensations which share the common history of all sensation. The computing machine itself does not exist in the natural world, but rather is distilled from the world’s most mechanistic tendencies. All that does not fit into true or false is discarded. Although Gödel is famous for discovering the incompleteness of formal systems, that discovery itself exists within a formal context. The ideal machine, for example, which cannot prove anything that is false, subscribes to the view that truth and falsehood are categories which are true rather than truth and falsehood being possible qualities within a continuum of sense making. There is a Platonic metaphysics at work here, which conjures a block universe of forms which are eternally true and good. In fact, a casual inspection of our own experience reveals no such clear-cut categories, and the goodness and truth of the situations we encounter are often inseparable from their opposite. We seek sensory experiences for the sake of appreciating them directly, rather than only for their truth or functional benefits. Truth is only one of the qualities of sense which matters. The way that a computer processes information is fundamentally different than the way that conscious thought works. Where a consistent machine cannot give a formal proof of its own consistency, a person can be certain of their own certainty without proof. That doesn’t always mean that the person’s feeling turns out to match what they or others will understand to be true later on, but unlike a computer, we have available to us an experience of a sense of certainty (especially a ‘common sense’) that is an informal feeling rather than a formal logical proof. A computer has neither certainty nor uncertainty, so it makes no difference to it whether a proof exists or not. The calculation procedure is run and the output is generated. It can be compared against the results of other calculators or to employ more calculations itself to assess a probability, but it has no sense of whether the results are certain or not. Our common sense is a
