Re: MGA revisited paper
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of machine psychology over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the postulated reversal. What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be run in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains. -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 5:00:10 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 8/18/2014 4:38 AM, Pierz wrote: On Saturday, August 9, 2014 2:48:48 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 8/8/2014 8:34 PM, Pierz wrote: In The Conscious Mind, Chalmers bases his claim that materialism has failed to provide an explanation for consciousness on a distinction between 'logical' and 'natural' supervenience, where logical supervenience simply means that if A supervenes on B, then B logically and necessarily entails A. Because we can logically conceive of a (philosophical) zombie, then it seems that consciousness cannot *logically* supervene on the physical. This kind of argument is very weak. Logically anything can be true that doesn't entail x and not-x, i.e. direct contradiction. When a philosopher slips in can logically conceive, it is the conceive that does all the work. No one could logically conceive of particles that were two places at once, or became correlated by future instead of past interactions - until quantum mechanics was invented. It's at base an argument from incredulity. I agree - partially. The devil is in the detail. Chalmers asks whether one can logically conceive of a universe in which mathematicians disprove (something like) the fact that there are infinite primes. He claims such a world is not logically conceivable, but only one in which mathematicians are wrong. But this illustrates the problem. The more complex a scenario becomes, the more difficult it is to say whether it is logically possible. For example, I can conceive of a people living in a world with four extended spatial dimensions, but it may well be that such a scenario is logically impossible, due to the fact that no self-consistent set of physical laws can describe it. But who can be sure? Perhaps everything logically conceivable happens. Some physicists such as Tegmark would seem to believe so. However I'm not sure that your objection has it the right way round. Usually it's the philosophers arguing for the logical possibility of something against objectors who finds it inconceivable for mistaken reasons such as common sense. So the argument from incredulity usually goes in the reverse direction to what you're suggesting. With respect to the problem of zombies though, he's pointing out that **within the definitions given** of what matter is, within the current understanding of matter's properties, the philosophical zombie is extremely conceivable, and in fact is exactly what the model could be said to predict. It's just that we happen to know first-hand that prediction to be wrong. There is simply nothing in the physical description that entails or even *suggests* the arising of subjective experiences in any system, biological or otherwise. This is a well-trodden path of argumentation that I'm sure we're all familiar with. However, since it does appear that, empirically, consciousness supervenes on physical processes, then this supervenience must be natural rather than logical. I agree. It must arise due to some natural law that demands it does. So far so good, though what we end up with in Chalmers' book - property dualism - hardly seems like the nourishing meal a phenomenologically inclined philosopher might have hoped for. Bruno's version of comp seems like more nourishing fare than the the watery gruel of property dualism, but Chalmers' formulation of logical supervenience got me thinking again about the grit in the ointment of comp that I've never quite been able to get comfortable with. This is only another way of formulating an objection that I've raised before, but perhaps it encapsulates the issue neatly. We can really only say we've explained something when explicated the relationships between the higher order explanandum and some ontologically prior basis, demonstrating how the latter necessarily entails the former. Alternatively we might postulate some new brute fact, some hitherto unknown principle, law or entity which we accept because it does such a good job of uniting disparate, previously unexplained observations. Now the UDA does a good job of making the case that if we accept the premise of comp (supervenience on computational states), then materialism can be seen to dissolve into machine psychology as Bruno puts it, or to emerge from arithmetic. But the problem here is that we can no more see mathematical functions as necessarily entailing subjective experience as we can see physical entities as doing so. It is perfectly possible to imagine computations occurring in the complete absence of consciousness, and in fact nearly everybody imagines precisely this. I would say that it is an undeniable fact that no mathematical function can be said to* logically entail *some correlated conscious state. Rather, we must postulate some kind of law or principle which claims
Re: Comp and logical supervenience
On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 4:12:17 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 8/18/2014 1:49 AM, Pierz wrote: On Monday, August 18, 2014 5:33:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 8/17/2014 5:43 AM, Pierz wrote: Thank you Bruno for your response. Honestly I don't know if I'd say yes to the doctor. It's cowardly of me, but I think I'd like to see the device work on someone else first. If they appear to be fine after the operation then I guess I'll go under the knife - and have to swallow the logical consequences whole! Your reply helps. I suppose what I feel is missing from the account is the *necessity* of qualia, because it seems to me that everything that exists, necessarily exists, and as it stands in the comp account, the necessity for there to be an interior to mathematics remains mysterious. My guess is that comp is wrong, but it may be that it is still a whole lot more right than materialism. It may be wrong in the same way that general relativity and QM are wrong, i.e., correct, but to some limit. My next step is to read the Amoeba's Secret and see if I can start to wrap my head around the S4Grz and the []p p - the maths is still largely a mystery to me. However I wanted to put some less argumentative and more curious questions to you about the way you imagine the comp-driven universe to be (yes, there's no universe, I know, but I lack words: this apparent space we inhabit?). The question comes up in the comp account about the physical explanation for the origin of the Löbian organism the self-consistency of whose mind creates the appearance of matter (allegedly). Liz and Brent were throwing around this if a tree falls in the forest question on the MGA thread. The account whereby the observer arises out of the long, deep history of matter sure looks convincing. What is the status of this alternative origin story if the observer is actually grounded in Platonia? I seem to recall you talking about the idea that the observer's self consistency demands that it also find a consistent account of itself in the material hypostases. OK, I can go with that, but something here still troubles me. We can't surely dismiss these origins as fictive any more than we can dismiss the other observers we find in our environment as fictive. How do you see the relationship between these accounts (the exterior physical and the machine psychological)? It occurs to me that in some ways the anthropic explanation of the fluky coincidences of the laws of nature resembles the machine psychology account - in that the requirements of existing as a complex self-aware machine in a sense cause the laws of the universe to be what they are. The need for logical consistency constrains the environment and its laws in very specific, complex ways. It's almost strange that it's taken us so long to realize just how extraordinary it is that the laws work, that they are capable of creating the complexity and beauty we see. Check out the book The Comprehensible Cosmos by my friend Vic Stenger. It goes *part* way in explaining this. I'm not sure how much more explanation it requires. The anthropic principle plus multiverse will do it, won't it? Stenger's approach to physics is that it is based on point-of-view-invariance, i.e. we want physical laws to hold for everyone in every time and place and direction and state of motion, and...whatever else we can include. It's sort of what we mean by physical law in contrast to geographical or historical accident. He shows that we can get a suprising amount out of this (at least surprising if you don't already know who Emma Noether was). Only a huge, unfathomable amount of selective work could lead to a structure like the calabi yau manifolds etc, with its staggeringly elegant capacity to generate complexity from simplicity. So... that work I describe would be the infinite computations in the UD, and just as all the complexity in the UD is surrounded by a vastly greater region of garbled junk, so the physical account relies on a similar surrounding region of incoherence. Which makes me wonder: are the two accounts just mirror images somehow? Are the garbled, dead, sterile, incoherent universes the reflection of those infinite sterile computations? Is there an observer of these dead regions? Or are the observers like fleeting Boltzmann brain or quantum fuzz in the void: incoherent, fleeting, barely aware, but just there enough? I hope I make sense... Now a second thing. Comp suggests, or predicts, Many Worlds, and says physics arises from the measure of the observer computations. But string theory suggests many physics(es!). So this is intriguing. Are we humans (and other animals in this multiverse) bound to one set of physics as it were, while
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 19 August 2014 01:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? Well, you frequently counsel me against arguing on the basis of personal incredulity. So I could respond by asking you when was the last time you learned a fact about the world by deducing it from the molecular structure of your brain. Given that we are committed to explaining the complex in terms of something simpler, then some sort of structure, defined molecularly or otherwise, must surely be implicated in what it means to learn a fact, even though we can't yet say precisely what it is. I guess I take the logics that Bruno investigates in AUDA to be at something analogous to the molecular level vis-a-vis any explanation of cognition or perception that would strike us as intuitively familiar. So just as an understanding of the dynamics of molecular bonding has turned out to be crucial to an appreciation of the possibilities of large-scale structure, the hope (or project) is that we can derive something of analogous relevance, to the structure of human-like cognition and perception, from a rigorous study of particular classes of more basic logical relations. that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events. That's not a bad way of putting it as a general position. My point though was that if we want to start from a very general notion of computation that doesn't presuppose physics, we must seek to justify the differentiation of a sub-class of lawlike physical realities from a much larger totality. According to comp, this differentiation is rooted in the statistical dominance of certain classes of internal belief or reference that are deducible from a quasi-ubiquitous form of self-referential machine psychology. I guess it is only to be expected that a fundamental concept of this sort would strike us as being at some remove from any putative elaboration at the human scale. The devil, as ever, will be found in the detail. David On 8/18/2014 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events. Brent I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of machine psychology over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the postulated reversal. 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 19 August 2014 07:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be run in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains. Well, what I was responding to was ..I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. Virtual or digital physics, presumably taking specifically physical computations as its primitives, would characterise the brain as a physical composite object hierarchically reducible to such primitives. Comp, by contrast, seeks to justify the observed dominance of lawlike physical appearances against the background of the fractal computational explosion implied by the dovetailer. So in comp terms, the brain must ultimately correspond to a fungible class of self-referential computations that is able (somehow) to predominate statistically over a cosmic snowstorm of competing machine psychologies. All that said, as Bruno is wont to say, digital or virtual physics as a primitive appears to be self-defeating. On the assumption of CTM it will inevitably be trumped by the Vastly more extensive machine psychology extractable from the dovetailer and hence become explanatorily irrelevant. As to computations instantiating consciousness without (or as I would prefer to say, logically prior to) instantiating physics, I guess we would need more distinctions about consciousness as a general theoretical or logical concept to make sense of this. ISTM that this is just what Bruno is attempting to do with AUDA. As I remarked to Brent, it might be expected that any analysis of very basic logical relations at this level would be at quite some remove from our usual intuitions about consciousness. Nonetheless, the project, if successful, must ultimately prove capable of justifying their relevance to normal human experience. 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: MGA revisited paper
On 18 Aug 2014, at 06:24, LizR wrote: On 18 August 2014 15:49, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics. It would need to instantiate a stable enough universe that something capable of computation can evolve there, I imagine. Certainly if one assumes that the comp reversal doesn't happen. However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism. As I think Brent has pointed out previously, any process can be defined as a computation But that is unclear to me. When I ask people to give me an illustration, they get only trivial computations. - this is another form of the Chinese room, I think, the idea that since just about anything can be treated as performing a computation if looked at in the rignt way, there is no way to get any meaning into a computation - it's pure syntax without semantics. I'm not sure how this restricts comp, however, because according to comp there are an infinite number of abstract computations backing up each moment of consciousness, and if you add to these a few computations performed by rocks or Boltzmann brains (or ordinary brains) you aren't actually adding anything to the existing infinity. I am more OK with this. yet if some rock, present in your reality, was able to compute in a stable way, a continuation of you, it woiuld be counted in the measure, siginificantly, and this is because the rock, like your brain, belongs to the sheaf of the infinitely computations going through your state. But the probability that a rock does that computation is just very close to zero. 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: MGA revisited paper
On 18 Aug 2014, at 09:56, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 18 August 2014 15:20, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/17/2014 8:49 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics. That's answering the converse question. So if the early universe was instantiated by a computation (a computation that instantiated physics) then you think that part of the early universe was a sustained stream of consciousness. How do you conceive of this consciousness' relation to the physics? For example might it be some structure in the inflaton field? Or do you think of it as separate from physical structures? I think of consciousness as a side-effect of, at least, the computations that give rise to the type of behaviour we observe in intelligently-behaving entities. It could also be that much simpler computations have a much simpler consciousness, i.e. panpsychism, but I don't know how to prove this; it's hard enough to prove that even other people are conscious. However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism. Why is it arbitrary to say that a computation that is very simple, has not possible branchings for example, cannot be conscious while some more complex computation, one controlling an autonomous Mars Rover for example, may be? What is arbitrary is to say that a computer that has unused components inactivated, as per Maudlin or Bruno's MGA, is unconscious or differently conscious. Do you agree with Bruno that consciousness is all-or-nothing? No, I think there are different degrees of consciousness. Unless we have a vocabulary problem, this seems to contradict your fading qualia argument. If you allow degrees of consciousness, it becomes unclear why we can't have partial zombie. The guy would still say I don't feel any change, but actually would be less and less conscious, just unconsciously so. When I say that consciousness is all-or-nothing, I just mean that either someone is conscious, or is not. It does not mean that there are no consciousness state which looks like, when we come back from them, as being slightly conscious. Those are only special altered state of consciousness. Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 8/19/2014 2:53 AM, Pierz wrote: If you're going to stick with this argument you need to be more rigorous about it and not just lazily rely on your intuition. How specifically does the computer distinguish computation about something from computation about ... what? nothing? Why does processing data that is correlated with the physical world make a computer conscious? How could the machine distinguish between simulator data and real data? And if simulator data is OK, what exactly is data that is not OK? Please convince me, but right now I see no reason to take the idea seriously at all. You're trying to isolate the consciousness from it's context so that it's just data and patterns and 1s and 0s and neuron pulses. I'm saying consciousness requires a context, in fact I think it requires a physics. I know what you're saying. But why don't you specifically answer my questions instead of just reiterating what you already said? I thought I answered this one: How specifically does the computer distinguish computation about something from computation about ... what? nothing? The answer being that the computer, by itself doesn't; the distinction is in causal relations to a world outside the computer. I don't think this one has an answer, Why does processing data that is correlated with the physical world make a computer conscious? beyond It just does or That's what we mean by 'conscious'. How could the machine distinguish between simulator data and real data? And if simulator data is OK, what exactly is data that is not OK? A machine, by itself with no context can't. That's why a computer programmer has to provide the interpretation of a simulation. But if the machine was an autonomous Mars Rover, real data would be used for reaching it's goals while simulated data fed to it's sensors would give it illusions - just as you can be tricked by illusions and think you're seeing something you're not. Brent -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 18 Aug 2014, at 10:49, Pierz wrote: On Monday, August 18, 2014 5:33:19 AM UTC+10, Brent wrote: On 8/17/2014 5:43 AM, Pierz wrote: Thank you Bruno for your response. Honestly I don't know if I'd say yes to the doctor. It's cowardly of me, but I think I'd like to see the device work on someone else first. If they appear to be fine after the operation then I guess I'll go under the knife - and have to swallow the logical consequences whole! Your reply helps. I suppose what I feel is missing from the account is the *necessity* of qualia, because it seems to me that everything that exists, necessarily exists, and as it stands in the comp account, the necessity for there to be an interior to mathematics remains mysterious. My guess is that comp is wrong, but it may be that it is still a whole lot more right than materialism. It may be wrong in the same way that general relativity and QM are wrong, i.e., correct, but to some limit. My next step is to read the Amoeba's Secret and see if I can start to wrap my head around the S4Grz and the []p p - the maths is still largely a mystery to me. However I wanted to put some less argumentative and more curious questions to you about the way you imagine the comp-driven universe to be (yes, there's no universe, I know, but I lack words: this apparent space we inhabit?). The question comes up in the comp account about the physical explanation for the origin of the Löbian organism the self-consistency of whose mind creates the appearance of matter (allegedly). Liz and Brent were throwing around this if a tree falls in the forest question on the MGA thread. The account whereby the observer arises out of the long, deep history of matter sure looks convincing. What is the status of this alternative origin story if the observer is actually grounded in Platonia? I seem to recall you talking about the idea that the observer's self consistency demands that it also find a consistent account of itself in the material hypostases. OK, I can go with that, but something here still troubles me. We can't surely dismiss these origins as fictive any more than we can dismiss the other observers we find in our environment as fictive. How do you see the relationship between these accounts (the exterior physical and the machine psychological)? It occurs to me that in some ways the anthropic explanation of the fluky coincidences of the laws of nature resembles the machine psychology account - in that the requirements of existing as a complex self-aware machine in a sense cause the laws of the universe to be what they are. The need for logical consistency constrains the environment and its laws in very specific, complex ways. It's almost strange that it's taken us so long to realize just how extraordinary it is that the laws work, that they are capable of creating the complexity and beauty we see. Check out the book The Comprehensible Cosmos by my friend Vic Stenger. It goes *part* way in explaining this. I'm not sure how much more explanation it requires. The anthropic principle plus multiverse will do it, won't it? Only a huge, unfathomable amount of selective work could lead to a structure like the calabi yau manifolds etc, with its staggeringly elegant capacity to generate complexity from simplicity. So... that work I describe would be the infinite computations in the UD, and just as all the complexity in the UD is surrounded by a vastly greater region of garbled junk, so the physical account relies on a similar surrounding region of incoherence. Which makes me wonder: are the two accounts just mirror images somehow? Are the garbled, dead, sterile, incoherent universes the reflection of those infinite sterile computations? Is there an observer of these dead regions? Or are the observers like fleeting Boltzmann brain or quantum fuzz in the void: incoherent, fleeting, barely aware, but just there enough? I hope I make sense... Now a second thing. Comp suggests, or predicts, Many Worlds, and says physics arises from the measure of the observer computations. But string theory suggests many physics(es!). So this is intriguing. Are we humans (and other animals in this multiverse) bound to one set of physics as it were, while perhaps other (more complex?) observers occupy a world with different laws? Because it seems we have only one of two options. Either the other possible physics are all sterile, or there is something about the types of mathematical structures that we are that keeps us bound to this particular set of observer states, not letting us slip over into universes with different laws? Might we not be capable of a kind of mathematical state change that would see us metamorphose, wake up in a world with different laws? Might death and birth not be such state changes? (This last suggestion no doubt getting too
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/19/2014 3:10 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 19 August 2014 01:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? Well, you frequently counsel me against arguing on the basis of personal incredulity. So I could respond by asking you when was the last time you learned a fact about the world by deducing it from the molecular structure of your brain. But that's not my theory of epistemology. I infer the existence of my brain and molecular structures via a very long chain of inferences and hypotheses starting with my perceptions. Bruno defines []p p as knowledge, but that doesn't show any way of getting knowledge except []p, i.e. proving p from axioms (and p happening to be true, i.e. the axioms are true). So the epistemology is either mathematical proof or it's left to the hoped-for statistical mechanics analysis of the UD. Brent Given that we are committed to explaining the complex in terms of something simpler, then some sort of structure, defined molecularly or otherwise, must surely be implicated in what it means to learn a fact, even though we can't yet say precisely what it is. I guess I take the logics that Bruno investigates in AUDA to be at something analogous to the molecular level vis-a-vis any explanation of cognition or perception that would strike us as intuitively familiar. So just as an understanding of the dynamics of molecular bonding has turned out to be crucial to an appreciation of the possibilities of large-scale structure, the hope (or project) is that we can derive something of analogous relevance, to the structure of human-like cognition and perception, from a rigorous study of particular classes of more basic logical relations. that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events. That's not a bad way of putting it as a general position. My point though was that if we want to start from a very general notion of computation that doesn't presuppose physics, we must seek to justify the differentiation of a sub-class of lawlike physical realities from a much larger totality. According to comp, this differentiation is rooted in the statistical dominance of certain classes of internal belief or reference that are deducible from a quasi-ubiquitous form of self-referential machine psychology. I guess it is only to be expected that a fundamental concept of this sort would strike us as being at some remove from any putative elaboration at the human scale. The devil, as ever, will be found in the detail. David On 8/18/2014 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 8/19/2014 8:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 18 Aug 2014, at 09:56, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 18 August 2014 15:20, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/17/2014 8:49 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics. That's answering the converse question. So if the early universe was instantiated by a computation (a computation that instantiated physics) then you think that part of the early universe was a sustained stream of consciousness. How do you conceive of this consciousness' relation to the physics? For example might it be some structure in the inflaton field? Or do you think of it as separate from physical structures? I think of consciousness as a side-effect of, at least, the computations that give rise to the type of behaviour we observe in intelligently-behaving entities. It could also be that much simpler computations have a much simpler consciousness, i.e. panpsychism, but I don't know how to prove this; it's hard enough to prove that even other people are conscious. However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism. Why is it arbitrary to say that a computation that is very simple, has not possible branchings for example, cannot be conscious while some more complex computation, one controlling an autonomous Mars Rover for example, may be? What is arbitrary is to say that a computer that has unused components inactivated, as per Maudlin or Bruno's MGA, is unconscious or differently conscious. Do you agree with Bruno that consciousness is all-or-nothing? No, I think there are different degrees of consciousness. Unless we have a vocabulary problem, this seems to contradict your fading qualia argument. If you allow degrees of consciousness, it becomes unclear why we can't have partial zombie. The guy would still say I don't feel any change, but actually would be less and less conscious, just unconsciously so. When I say that consciousness is all-or-nothing, I just mean that either someone is conscious, or is not. It does not mean that there are no consciousness state which looks like, when we come back from them, as being slightly conscious. Those are only special altered state of consciousness. If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. Brent -- 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: MGA revisited paper
On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 6:16 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/19/2014 8:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 18 Aug 2014, at 09:56, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 18 August 2014 15:20, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/17/2014 8:49 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics. That's answering the converse question. So if the early universe was instantiated by a computation (a computation that instantiated physics) then you think that part of the early universe was a sustained stream of consciousness. How do you conceive of this consciousness' relation to the physics? For example might it be some structure in the inflaton field? Or do you think of it as separate from physical structures? I think of consciousness as a side-effect of, at least, the computations that give rise to the type of behaviour we observe in intelligently-behaving entities. It could also be that much simpler computations have a much simpler consciousness, i.e. panpsychism, but I don't know how to prove this; it's hard enough to prove that even other people are conscious. However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism. Why is it arbitrary to say that a computation that is very simple, has not possible branchings for example, cannot be conscious while some more complex computation, one controlling an autonomous Mars Rover for example, may be? What is arbitrary is to say that a computer that has unused components inactivated, as per Maudlin or Bruno's MGA, is unconscious or differently conscious. Do you agree with Bruno that consciousness is all-or-nothing? No, I think there are different degrees of consciousness. Unless we have a vocabulary problem, this seems to contradict your fading qualia argument. If you allow degrees of consciousness, it becomes unclear why we can't have partial zombie. The guy would still say I don't feel any change, but actually would be less and less conscious, just unconsciously so. When I say that consciousness is all-or-nothing, I just mean that either someone is conscious, or is not. It does not mean that there are no consciousness state which looks like, when we come back from them, as being slightly conscious. Those are only special altered state of consciousness. If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. If one assumes that physics is not Turing emulable, due to a sort of random FPI selection property, where it thus becomes measure on infinities of computations, then I don't see a problem to reason consciousness is perhaps closer in kinship to truth/reality than to some Turing emulable structure. This would be another type of brute fact, even though on the surface, it would seem that comp implies consciousness to be something Turing emulable (gotta watch out...). So, with this line of argument, in basic existential sense, consciousness just is there or it isn't. When I used degrees earlier in the thread, I was thinking altered states, that suggest that capacity of self-reference and amnesia relative to some normal level (e.g. I am really drunk, not just tipsy), is computable, so there appears to be more/less. Perhaps because the machine level of description IS amenable to influence by quantifiable things, like dosage of foods and chemicals. But I guess this would boil down to some phenomenological 1p view. It's tricky because consciousness pastes the machine to truth, so there is a lot of potential for talking nonsense here... PGC -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
Pretty interesting piece of biomimetic technology that mimics the synapses in a biological brain. Could this be the hardware that gives rise to the self aware machine? Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain | KurzweilAI Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like syna... A look inside the atomic-switch network device reveals its highly interconnected architecture, which comprises synaptic atomic switch circuit elements at View on www.kurzweilai.net Preview by Yahoo -- 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: MGA revisited paper
Stathis: you wrote Aug.19: *What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be run in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains.* Let's skip the question of defining Ccness (maybe broader than BEING ccous) and let me ask HOW do you know that the brain can generate 'it'? Do you have a brain that never had 'it' and followed a process BY it(!) generating Ccness? Those experiments in which computer etc. (NOT some 'brain'-input) 're-started' the process were all carried out on (live?) brains previously capable of doing it (whatever). I agree that *The brain is not a digital computer running a program, * Are ALL details of the so called brain(function?) mapped and correlated? Are all facets of 'brain' even knowable? we think we know some. Then newer items are detected (or thought so) and included smoothly into the previous setup. IMO we are far from being able to 'simulating' a human brain in its entirety. On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 2:10 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of machine psychology over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the postulated reversal. What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be run in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains. -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
Sorry for being again a bit out of phase. On 18 Aug 2014, at 15:15, Pierz wrote: On Monday, August 18, 2014 9:19:32 PM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Aug 2014, at 14:43, Pierz wrote: Thank you Bruno for your response. Honestly I don't know if I'd say yes to the doctor. Nor do I. Actually, even if comp is true, I might say no, because I might not trust the doctor's skill, or the choice of the level. It's cowardly of me, but I think I'd like to see the device work on someone else first. If they appear to be fine after the operation then I guess I'll go under the knife - and have to swallow the logical consequences whole! Me too. Your reply helps. I suppose what I feel is missing from the account is the *necessity* of qualia, because it seems to me that everything that exists, necessarily exists, and as it stands in the comp account, the necessity for there to be an interior to mathematics remains mysterious. All machines introspecting itself, in the standard sense of Gödel, or Kleene, is bound up to develop discours about something unnameable which transcend them. But when you study the mathematical sructure of that transcendent reality, it fits with previous analysis of qualia and quanta. Discourse, unnameable, transcendant: how the qualia sneak in even as we try to explain them! Yes, it is in their nature. What I mean is, your formulation, the words you use, add a certain numinous quality to the description of what seem (to a non- mathematician) to be dry abstract numerical transformations. Do they truly develop a discourse about the transcendant? Good question. The fact is that I could explain to you the notion of arithmetical truth. I can define it in the same sense that I can define you what is an Hilbert space. Arithmetical Truth, although not definable in the arithmetic language admits definition in slight extension of arithmetic, on which machines can points correctly too. yet, as far the very notion of arithmetical truth is unnameable (Tarski theorem, also found by Gödel). Nor can the machine generates, even working an infinite time, the whole set of arithmetical truth. If she tries, she will be lead to adding recurrently new axioms. There are no finite or constructively-infinite machine/theory capable of unifying the simple arithmetical reality. Or do they merely mechanically prove their inability to compute everything? Well, they are universal with respect to the computable, so they can compute everything computable. of course, we knows that there are many non computable functions. But there are other nuances: there prpositions which they cannot prove, yet are true, and they can find it (by betting, etc.). There are true propositions that they can not prove, and neither bet. There are truth that the machine can bet, yet cannot even express, without becoming inconsistent. there are truth that the machine cannot express at all, etc. The incompleteness does not just separate the arithmetical truth in two parts (the provable/the true but not provable), it introduces nuance between justification ([]p), knowledge ([]p p), observable ([]p p), sensible ([]p p p). And most of those nuances inherit the separation with truth. That is why we end with 8 typically different views in and on the (nont nameable by such by the machine) arithmetical reality. Perhaps you see all this drama playing out in the maths not because it is there in the maths intrinsically, not because you are a machine, but because you are a man of imagination, seeing your own soul in the numbers the way early astrologers saw their soul in the stars. Maybe the fit with the analysis of qualia truly means that is where the qualia fit. To me it's more of a sketchy fit, suggestive perhaps, like the bear in the sky which I can see if I squint. But I can't argue the case until I understand the maths better. No. The link with consciousness is made clear by the yes doctor hypothesis, and the rest in math, verified by peers, etc. I submit a problem (UDA), and I show that the machines of today can already solves the propositional part of the solution, making the theory testable empirically. My guess is that comp is wrong, but it may be that it is still a whole lot more right than materialism. It may be wrong in the same way that general relativity and QM are wrong, i.e., correct, but to some limit. My next step is to read the Amoeba's Secret and see if I can start to wrap my head around the S4Grz and the []p p - the maths is still largely a mystery to me. OK. It is also in the second part of the sane04 paper. However I wanted to put some less argumentative and more curious questions to you about the way you imagine the comp-driven universe to be (yes, there's no universe, I know, but I lack words: this apparent space we inhabit?). The question comes up
Re: Comp and logical supervenience
On 18 Aug 2014, at 15:17, David Nyman wrote: On 18 August 2014 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Then the arithmetical realism suggests the existence of approximation of physical realities, without observers. The falling leaf will make a sound (a 3p wave), but of course, without observers, there will be no perception or qualia actualized there. Isn't it perhaps more the case that without observers there is no there there (as Gertrude Stein might have put it)? Imagine someone making a video game. The game is such that if the user kill this dragon, he can go to the basement, and if he can kill the bats, he can go in the attic. He has managed enough counterfactuals so that the user can do things, in both the basement, and in the attic. But, unfortunately, he made a bug, which made the dragon just invincible, so that no user at can ever go in the basement. I want to say that there is still a there there (to pursue with Gertrude Stein way to put this). Because the realtive there is defined by the correct number relation, that the programmer did. there would not be there, in case he would have forget to program that part. Of course those are neither physical in the materialist sense, nor in the comp sense, where physics emerge from the infinite sum, a priori not computable. The indexical reality attributable to observation is a bit like one of the rare intelligible books adrift in the ocean of dross that constitutes the Library of Babel. But unlike Borges's alphabetic Library, the structure of the programmatic Library generated by the dovetailer entails the presence of books that are self- interpreting and self-locating. It's only in the context of such self-actualisation that one could truly say that there is a physical there there, if you see what I mean. I can agree, as the term physical is used in two senses: the real one (the comp one or the physicalist one), and the locally emulated by this or that program. Like the program which emulates at the level of quark or strings the observable portion of the universe, starting from one huge number which describes the state of the universe 10 years. That program and its execution is contained in the arithmetical relations, but his role in the measure might be negligible, perhaps even compared to another program doing the same thing, except that it start at 10^(- 73) seconde after the big bang, which might still negligible compared to ... etc. The pre-observational approximation you mention above strikes me more as the prerequisite potential for the actualisation of intelligible physical realities, somewhat in the sense that the Library of Babel might represent an analogous potential for the actualisation of intelligible books. Perhaps this is a quibble, but personally I find the notion of physical reality as something that exists independent of us to be a slippery, not to say equivocal, concept. It might be, we just don't know what gives the sum on all computations, but notion of there makes sense, independently of us, and of physics, in the natural geometrical situations, embedded in number relation, so that those geometries are independent of us, exactly in the sense that 17 is prime is independent of us. Obviously some kind of *potential* for such reality must exist independently of observation, and comp indeed is a thesis about precisely what might constitute that potential. If comp is correct, physical realities are like flecks of gold filtered from the Vastly redundant dross spewed from the dovetailer. The filtration is in turn a consequence of the self-referential statistics encountered by a plurality of natural knowers directly entailed by the theory. OK. So in point of fact, if comp is correct, there isn't a physical reality that can truly be seen as entirely independent of us; Well it has to be for its laws, as it has to be the same laws for all machine. But that physics contains also the non communicable parts, which is the only which really makes no sense at all, without observers or subjects. indeed this is what prevents the mind from being swept under the rug of physics. According to comp, physics is nothing other than the summation of lawlike constraints on the possibilities of observation; OK. it's this that constitutes the reversal of physics and machine psychology. I can agree. But it is not entirely, as I suspect you might prefer, a reversal between 3p reality and 1p reality, as we continue to have a big 3p reality: the arithmetical reality which contains computer science and the machine's dream-support (the relevant computations). So the reversal is made possible and sensical, because it is supported by the arithmetical relations driving the consciousness fluxes in the relatively most probable continuations. Bruno David -- You received this message
Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
But after you made one and trained it you couldn't make a copy. You'd have to start over. Brent On 8/19/2014 12:22 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: Pretty interesting piece of biomimetic technology that mimics the synapses in a biological brain. Could this be the hardware that gives rise to the self aware machine? Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain | KurzweilAI http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuromorphic-atomic-switch-networks-function-like-synapses-in-the-brain?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletterutm_campaign=ecd9b48acc-UA-946742-1utm_medium=emailutm_term=0_6de721fb33-ecd9b48acc-281942553 image http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuromorphic-atomic-switch-networks-function-like-synapses-in-the-brain?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletterutm_campaign=ecd9b48acc-UA-946742-1utm_medium=emailutm_term=0_6de721fb33-ecd9b48acc-281942553 Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like syna... http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuromorphic-atomic-switch-networks-function-like-synapses-in-the-brain?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletterutm_campaign=ecd9b48acc-UA-946742-1utm_medium=emailutm_term=0_6de721fb33-ecd9b48acc-281942553 A look inside the atomic-switch network device reveals its highly interconnected architecture, which comprises synaptic atomic switch circuit elements at View on www.kurzweilai.net http://www.kurzweilai.net/neuromorphic-atomic-switch-networks-function-like-synapses-in-the-brain?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletterutm_campaign=ecd9b48acc-UA-946742-1utm_medium=emailutm_term=0_6de721fb33-ecd9b48acc-281942553 Preview by Yahoo -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 1:43 PM Subject: Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain But after you made one and trained it you couldn't make a copy. You'd have to start over. Isn't this akin to what biological life does? We are the result not only of our DNA and neurological hardware, but of the accumulating mass of our own unique experiences and all the interactions they triggered within our neural cortex (forming memories and triggering reactions etc.) Chris Brent On 8/19/2014 12:22 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: Pretty interesting piece of biomimetic technology that mimics the synapses in a biological brain. Could this be the hardware that gives rise to the self aware machine? Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain | KurzweilAI Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like syna... A look inside the atomic-switch network device reveals its highly interconnected architecture, which comprises synaptic atomic switch circuit elements at View on www.kurzweilai.net Preview by Yahoo -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
On 8/19/2014 2:21 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: -- *From:* meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Tuesday, August 19, 2014 1:43 PM *Subject:* Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain But after you made one and trained it you couldn't make a copy. You'd have to start over. Isn't this akin to what biological life does? We are the result not only of our DNA and neurological hardware, but of the accumulating mass of our own unique experiences and all the interactions they triggered within our neural cortex (forming memories and triggering reactions etc.) Yes it is, only more so. Biological life has evolved by passing on configurations that survived and reproduced better. If you trained one of these atomic switching networks, the next one wouldn't inherit anything from it. One of the technological promises of neural networks was that while you would have to train one of them, thereafter you could just copy it. Brent -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
Why can't you make a copy? (Is that in practice, until the next breakthrough comes along, or is it impossible even in principle, like non-clonable quantum systems?) -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
On 8/19/2014 3:57 PM, LizR wrote: Why can't you make a copy? (Is that in practice, until the next breakthrough comes along, or is it impossible even in principle, like non-clonable quantum systems?) Not in principle. But as I read it the network was made by a self-assembly process that is random. I suppose that after you had trained one you could then analyze and map it and make a copy by some other means. But then it's not clear that wouldn't have been easier to start with known network and train it. Brent -- 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: MGA revisited paper
On 20 August 2014 04:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. So this is all that Brent means by degrees of consciousness, after all the waving it in everyone's faces as though it had huge explanatory power, it's now been reduced to whether or not an organism knows certain things about itself. This looks to me like a lot of backpedalling on what started out as a rather grandiose concept, but which has now ended up as something fairly trivial. So koi carp don't have a concept of self (who would have thought it? What fools you've been in the all-or-nothing camp not to realise that!) But it now appears that Brent just stepped out of the consciousness continuum camp (from thermostats, according to Dan Dennet, to us) and into the either-conscious-or-not camp. Is someone going to welcome him? -- 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: MGA revisited paper
On 8/19/2014 4:44 PM, LizR wrote: On 20 August 2014 04:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. So this is all that Brent means by degrees of consciousness, No, there might also be other differences, although Bruno would no doubt disagree. Consider my example of the autonomous Mars Rover, suppose that instead of summarizing things into a narrative memory and then reconstructing remembered events, as people seem to, it simply recorded everything and played back segments when it remembered. ISTM this might make a difference in kind. Or suppose there were many Mars Rover at different locations and were controlled by the same program. They would have different kind of sense of location. after all the waving it in everyone's faces as though it had huge explanatory power, it's now been reduced to whether or not an organism knows certain things about itself. This looks to me like a lot of backpedalling on what started out as a rather grandiose concept, Why would different kinds of consciousness be a grandiose concept? but which has now ended up as something fairly trivial. So koi carp don't have a concept of self (who would have thought it? What fools you've been in the all-or-nothing camp not to realise that!) But it now appears that Brent just stepped out of the consciousness continuum camp (from thermostats, according to Dan Dennet, to us) and into the either-conscious-or-not camp. Is someone going to welcome him? Bruno thinks there's a good chance the algae in my pond is conscious, so he probably agrees that my thermostat might be too. Brent -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 19 August 2014 21:35, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I can agree. But it is not entirely, as I suspect you might prefer, a reversal between 3p reality and 1p reality, as we continue to have a big 3p reality: the arithmetical reality which contains computer science and the machine's dream-support (the relevant computations). So the reversal is made possible and sensical, because it is supported by the arithmetical relations driving the consciousness fluxes in the relatively most probable continuations. Yes, I understand. I hope I've shaken off my former 1p absolutism in the course of familiarising myself with your ideas. That said, I suspect that there is often an illegitimate sleight of the imagination in play in discussions of the 3p reality. ISTM that there is often (though not in your case, I hasten to add) the implicit assumption of a kind of default or meta- knower that goes on interpreting what's really there in the absence of any other observer. So in that light it just seems obvious, for example, that the moon exists primarily as a brute 3p fact and any subsequent observation of it is merely some contingent secondary relation. It's almost as if we're overcompensating for the infantile belief that objects disappear when they can't be seen. In comp terms, however, it is clear that the moon can be no such brute fact, but rather the resultant of a complex potential for the lawlike appearance of a moon under suitable observational constraints. In this vein I offer the well-known limerick of Ronald Knox: There was a young man who said God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad. Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 20 August 2014 12:53, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: In this vein I offer the well-known limerick of Ronald Knox: There was a young man who said God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad. Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” Quad erat demonstrandum. -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 2:52 PM Subject: Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain On 8/19/2014 2:21 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 1:43 PM Subject: Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain But after you made one and trained it you couldn't make a copy. You'd have to start over. Isn't this akin to what biological life does? We are the result not only of our DNA and neurological hardware, but of the accumulating mass of our own unique experiences and all the interactions they triggered within our neural cortex (forming memories and triggering reactions etc.) Yes it is, only more so. Biological life has evolved by passing on configurations that survived and reproduced better. If you trained one of these atomic switching networks, the next one wouldn't inherit anything from it. One of the technological promises of neural networks was that while you would have to train one of them, thereafter you could just copy it. Agreed, but isn't this more akin to a neural network rather than the DNA of an organism. Our particular network configuration -- e.g. the actual distribution of neurons and the synaptic connections between them is not determined by our DNA. Doesn't the brain also self-assemble during embyogenesis? It is not a predetermined architecture -- at the micro scale of how neurons and the conectome between them are laid out at least. Sure the organisms DNA kicks off the embryogenesis process and no doubt is involved at every step of the way, but a lot of what is going on in early brain development seems analogous to molecular self assembly. Each brain neural cortex is itself a unique fingerprint unlike any other in existence. Wouldn't the DNA in this be the instructions on how to replicate this process of self assembly and not the much finer grained instruction set that would be required to reproduce an exact replica of a given network topology? Chris Brent -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 8/19/2014 5:53 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 19 August 2014 21:35, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I can agree. But it is not entirely, as I suspect you might prefer, a reversal between 3p reality and 1p reality, as we continue to have a big 3p reality: the arithmetical reality which contains computer science and the machine's dream-support (the relevant computations). So the reversal is made possible and sensical, because it is supported by the arithmetical relations driving the consciousness fluxes in the relatively most probable continuations. Yes, I understand. I hope I've shaken off my former 1p absolutism in the course of familiarising myself with your ideas. That said, I suspect that there is often an illegitimate sleight of the imagination in play in discussions of the 3p reality. ISTM that there is often (though not in your case, I hasten to add) the implicit assumption of a kind of default or meta- knower that goes on interpreting what's really there in the absence of any other observer. So in that light it just seems obvious, for example, that the moon exists primarily as a brute 3p fact and any subsequent observation of it is merely some contingent secondary relation. What constitutes observation is an active area of research in quantum mechanics. Is any irreversible record enough or does it take a conscious being, does the conscious being need a Ph.D.? It's almost as if we're overcompensating for the infantile belief that objects disappear when they can't be seen. I believe experiments with infants show they are surprised when an object does not persist. Today, there is consistent evidence from several different laboratories that infants aged 2.5 months and older believe that (1) a stationary object continues to exist and retains its location when occluded and (2) a moving object continues to exist and pursues a continuous path when occluded http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/infantlab/articles/aguiar_baillargeon1999.pdf.pdf I suspect it's hardwired by evolution. Brent In comp terms, however, it is clear that the moon can be no such brute fact, but rather the resultant of a complex potential for the lawlike appearance of a moon under suitable observational constraints. In this vein I offer the well-known limerick of Ronald Knox: There was a young man who said God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad. Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” 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 mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto: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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
On 20 August 2014 11:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/19/2014 3:57 PM, LizR wrote: Why can't you make a copy? (Is that in practice, until the next breakthrough comes along, or is it impossible even in principle, like non-clonable quantum systems?) Not in principle. But as I read it the network was made by a self-assembly process that is random. I suppose that after you had trained one you could then analyze and map it and make a copy by some other means. But then it's not clear that wouldn't have been easier to start with known network and train it. I'm not sure what this thing is made of. It LOOKS like a silicon chip in the illustration, but I guess that's misleading. I assume the point is that is rewires itself dynamically, and that's why it's difficult to create a copy - it's like a fantastically complex (2D?) sculpture. That does seem rather like what the brain does, assuming my limited knowledge is correct on that. -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
On 8/19/2014 6:16 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: -- *From:* meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Tuesday, August 19, 2014 2:52 PM *Subject:* Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain On 8/19/2014 2:21 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: -- *From:* meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Tuesday, August 19, 2014 1:43 PM *Subject:* Re: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain But after you made one and trained it you couldn't make a copy. You'd have to start over. Isn't this akin to what biological life does? We are the result not only of our DNA and neurological hardware, but of the accumulating mass of our own unique experiences and all the interactions they triggered within our neural cortex (forming memories and triggering reactions etc.) Yes it is, only more so. Biological life has evolved by passing on configurations that survived and reproduced better. If you trained one of these atomic switching networks, the next one wouldn't inherit anything from it. One of the technological promises of neural networks was that while you would have to train one of them, thereafter you could just copy it. Agreed, but isn't this more akin to a neural network rather than the DNA of an organism. Our particular network configuration -- e.g. the actual distribution of neurons and the synaptic connections between them is not determined by our DNA. Doesn't the brain also self-assemble during embyogenesis? It is not a predetermined architecture -- at the micro scale of how neurons and the conectome between them are laid out at least. Sure the organisms DNA kicks off the embryogenesis process and no doubt is involved at every step of the way, but a lot of what is going on in early brain development seems analogous to molecular self assembly. Each brain neural cortex is itself a unique fingerprint unlike any other in existence. Wouldn't the DNA in this be the instructions on how to replicate this process of self assembly and not the much finer grained instruction set that would be required to reproduce an exact replica of a given network topology? Right. I agree. That's why we each have to learn lots of stuff that our parents already knew. Brent -- 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: Neuromorphic ‘atomic-switch’ networks function like synapses in the brain
On 20 August 2014 13:16, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Agreed, but isn't this more akin to a neural network rather than the DNA of an organism. Our particular network configuration -- e.g. the actual distribution of neurons and the synaptic connections between them is not determined by our DNA. Doesn't the brain also self-assemble during embyogenesis? It is not a predetermined architecture -- at the micro scale of how neurons and the conectome between them are laid out at least. Sure the organisms DNA kicks off the embryogenesis process and no doubt is involved at every step of the way, but a lot of what is going on in early brain development seems analogous to molecular self assembly. Not just then, but throughout life. For example, the visual cortex wires itself up during the first year of life, I think (this can cause problems if you have an eye infection during the critical period). And I believe teenage brains are doing a lot of rewiring, hence their inability to get out of bed before midday unless pushed. But at any age I believe stroke victims can recover lost brain function by rebuilding neural pathways. -- 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: MGA revisited paper
Just to get back to the topic for a moment. Do I read correctly that the difference between Russell and Bruno lies in whether a raw, in Bruno's usage, computation in terms of UD* is actualized (vs. what precisely? A kind of emanating non-raw computation? This is a bit fuzzy from my pov)? Also, Russell's point of view would be appreciated, as is his input/efforts in general + this thread, and his paper that presents clearly and accessibly MGA, are, which hopefully goes without saying. Respects and complements, regardless of these quibbles. If you have no time, Russell; no worries, just minor concern to continue the exchange. Cue the military march music of stoicism, with hyper grave quality: We can never get to the bottom of these things.. nor would we wish to! Who says it's at the bottom anyway? Maybe it's upstairs. My fridge certainly, truly, UD* or some alternate weirdness approved, just* is upstairs*. The fridge is true. And so is a slice of cheese. And yes, I kid. :-) PGC On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:27 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/19/2014 4:44 PM, LizR wrote: On 20 August 2014 04:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. So this is all that Brent means by degrees of consciousness, No, there might also be other differences, although Bruno would no doubt disagree. Consider my example of the autonomous Mars Rover, suppose that instead of summarizing things into a narrative memory and then reconstructing remembered events, as people seem to, it simply recorded everything and played back segments when it remembered. ISTM this might make a difference in kind. Or suppose there were many Mars Rover at different locations and were controlled by the same program. They would have different kind of sense of location. after all the waving it in everyone's faces as though it had huge explanatory power, it's now been reduced to whether or not an organism knows certain things about itself. This looks to me like a lot of backpedalling on what started out as a rather grandiose concept, Why would different kinds of consciousness be a grandiose concept? but which has now ended up as something fairly trivial. So koi carp don't have a concept of self (who would have thought it? What fools you've been in the all-or-nothing camp not to realise that!) But it now appears that Brent just stepped out of the consciousness continuum camp (from thermostats, according to Dan Dennet, to us) and into the either-conscious-or-not camp. Is someone going to welcome him? Bruno thinks there's a good chance the algae in my pond is conscious, so he probably agrees that my thermostat might be too. Brent -- 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: MGA revisited paper
Most people have assumed the truth is upstairs for a long time... On 20 August 2014 14:07, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: Just to get back to the topic for a moment. Do I read correctly that the difference between Russell and Bruno lies in whether a raw, in Bruno's usage, computation in terms of UD* is actualized (vs. what precisely? A kind of emanating non-raw computation? This is a bit fuzzy from my pov)? Also, Russell's point of view would be appreciated, as is his input/efforts in general + this thread, and his paper that presents clearly and accessibly MGA, are, which hopefully goes without saying. Respects and complements, regardless of these quibbles. If you have no time, Russell; no worries, just minor concern to continue the exchange. Cue the military march music of stoicism, with hyper grave quality: We can never get to the bottom of these things.. nor would we wish to! Who says it's at the bottom anyway? Maybe it's upstairs. My fridge certainly, truly, UD* or some alternate weirdness approved, just* is upstairs*. The fridge is true. And so is a slice of cheese. And yes, I kid. :-) PGC On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:27 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/19/2014 4:44 PM, LizR wrote: On 20 August 2014 04:16, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it still consciousness? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. So this is all that Brent means by degrees of consciousness, No, there might also be other differences, although Bruno would no doubt disagree. Consider my example of the autonomous Mars Rover, suppose that instead of summarizing things into a narrative memory and then reconstructing remembered events, as people seem to, it simply recorded everything and played back segments when it remembered. ISTM this might make a difference in kind. Or suppose there were many Mars Rover at different locations and were controlled by the same program. They would have different kind of sense of location. after all the waving it in everyone's faces as though it had huge explanatory power, it's now been reduced to whether or not an organism knows certain things about itself. This looks to me like a lot of backpedalling on what started out as a rather grandiose concept, Why would different kinds of consciousness be a grandiose concept? but which has now ended up as something fairly trivial. So koi carp don't have a concept of self (who would have thought it? What fools you've been in the all-or-nothing camp not to realise that!) But it now appears that Brent just stepped out of the consciousness continuum camp (from thermostats, according to Dan Dennet, to us) and into the either-conscious-or-not camp. Is someone going to welcome him? Bruno thinks there's a good chance the algae in my pond is conscious, so he probably agrees that my thermostat might be too. Brent -- 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. -- 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: MGA revisited paper
On 20 August 2014 12:27, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Why would different kinds of consciousness be a grandiose concept? Different *degrees* of consciousness was the grandiose concept. Different kinds is fairly mundane. -- 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: MGA revisited paper
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: Just to get back to the topic for a moment. Do I read correctly that the difference between Russell and Bruno lies in whether a raw, in Bruno's usage, computation in terms of UD* is actualized (vs. what precisely? A kind of emanating non-raw computation? This is a bit fuzzy from my pov)? Apologies, I forgot that looking at this in possible relation to the ongoing consciousness question thread would also be something to reflect on perhaps. PGC Also, Russell's point of view would be appreciated, as is his input/efforts in general + this thread, and his paper that presents clearly and accessibly MGA, are, which hopefully goes without saying. Respects and complements, regardless of these quibbles. If you have no time, Russell; no worries, just minor concern to continue the exchange. Cue the military march music of stoicism, with hyper grave quality: We can never get to the bottom of these things.. nor would we wish to! Who says it's at the bottom anyway? Maybe it's upstairs. My fridge certainly, truly, UD* or some alternate weirdness approved, just* is upstairs*. The fridge is true. And so is a slice of cheese. And yes, I kid. :-) PGC -- 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: Comp and logical supervenience
On 18 Aug 2014, at 5:33 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Is there a kind of soul that is independent of memory but is a person? Well, you'd want to hope so by now, surely. After all, if there isn't, then What's It All (been) About, Alfie? No cul-de-sacs. Consciousness sails on via FPI. You cannot experience a no-world world, so there is (apparently) no rest rest eternal for the wicked or the poor by ducking into a death world where you cease to exist. Existence for consciousness is mandatory; obviously. Consciousness then mandates unconsciousness or the dreamworld repository of all those things about our archetypal self we cannot experience at will but are subjected to via dreams, premonitions, intuitions, hunches, wisdom of all sorts. The amnesiac no-memory-between-instantiations thing might be explained by the fact that every possible instantiation of you is up and running right now and there are now very many histories smeared across the MV. Which memories would you default to following death in one universe? Why don't I possess a memory spanning from Gronk the Caveman all the way through lives scattered over 200 or so thousand years of homo sapiens to me here right now? Must have something to do with that god damned first person thing again. Bruno should get the Nobel Prize for discovering FPI. But a person is a very stable thing. Quantum Immortality: a conscious entity cannot cease to exist. That's a good basic definition of a person. Perhaps. A stable information pattern that persists and is self-conscious. Could live happily on a hard disk somewhere. Kim -- 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.
