Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 3:21 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: That's why he can say consciousness is all-or-nothing (potentialities are all-or-nothing). That's why he thinks an infant is more conscious than an adult - it has more potential (but less realization). That's why he thinks losing all your memories would leave you with the same consciousness. That's all follows from his definition and it's OK, although it's not the common meaning of conscious. What's not OK is to then rely on the intuition that everybody knows what consciousness is and that no one can seriously doubt it's existence. Those statements are true of common usage of conscious, but not necessarily true of Bruno's definition. Brent Are we not conflating slightly (to be) conscious - the fact of being aware and sensate; experiencing being as it were.with consciousness that woolly philosophical football? I think even in comman usage we don't do that. I am conscious of this or that. My consciousness is kind of my whole psyche (whatever that is - could be the whole universe or a lotus blossum or whatever). Bruno merely asserts that nobody can mistake the fact that they exist. To be conscious is to experience being. My consciousness on the other hand, is the me the self, the subject, the I - you could probably say soul if you wanted to allude to the fact that this platonic thing you are is immortal. K -- 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: BICEP2 results even more in question
Dust, damned dust. Told yer. K On 22 Sep 2014, at 10:58 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: So cosmic inflation is apparently even less confirmed. http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.5738 -- 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: BICEP2 results even more in question
Here is an alternative paper suggesting the dust is not negligible but also not disastrous: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4491 published 3 days before the Planck paper (above). On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:15 AM, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Dust, damned dust. Told yer. K On 22 Sep 2014, at 10:58 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: So cosmic inflation is apparently even less confirmed. http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.5738 -- 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: AI Dooms Us
On 20 Sep 2014, at 6:22 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Does this mean evolution is intelligent but (probably) not conscious? The Blind Watchmaker K On 20 September 2014 03:01, Stephen Paul King stephe...@provensecure.com wrote: Dear Bruno, I agree, this introduces the possibility that the inhibiting or activation of gene aspect is the running of the particular algorithm while the mutation and selection aspect might be seen as a process on the space of algorithms. On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 9:04 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2014, at 17:57, Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Brent, Have you seen any studies of the Ameoba dubia that look into what their genome is expressing? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933061/ seems to suggest to me the possibility that the genome is acting as a brain! Interesting. But in my opinion, you don't need dynamical change in the genome (deletion or addition of genes). The usual regulation (inhibiting or activation of gene) is enough. Bruno On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 3:05 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/31/2014 9:36 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 12:24:37PM +1200, LizR wrote: As per what I was saying about Watson (or whatever it's called), the baby needs to be immersed in an environment in order to develop any form of consciousness beyond the rudimentary raw feels provided by nature - that is, it needs to be educated by interaction with the environment, and with other people (i.e. assimilate culture). This actually supplies a good reason for why we should find ourselves in a regular, lawlike universe. We can get by with a smaller genome, and learn the rest of the stuff that makes up our mental life, which is a more likely scenario (even evolutionary speaking) than having a large genome directly encoding our knowledge. Of course, that is only possible if in fact the environment is regular enough to be learnable. So that's why Amoeba dubia has a genome 200x bigger than ours? It must live in a very irregular environment. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/YJeHJO5dNqQ/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- 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 a topic in the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/YJeHJO5dNqQ/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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. -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 stephe...@provensecure.com http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you
Re: AI Dooms Us
On 22 September 2014 20:57, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: On 20 Sep 2014, at 6:22 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Does this mean evolution is intelligent but (probably) not conscious? The Blind Watchmaker Yes. -- 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 + supervenience
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 2:24 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 22 September 2014 12:07, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like *elan vital*, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. My point was that on this theory, which is basically eliminativism, consciousness doesn't actually exist, in the same way as there was no special ingredient needed to animate living matter, to distinguish it from dead matter, it turned out to be merely a question of how the constituents were organised. Ok, but I would say that this happened because we learned more things about matter. We learned about its building blocks, how they can be combined in a complex carbon-based chemistry and how certain stochastic processes can create pockets of complexity like we have on earth. This is a full model based on stuff that we can observe and then reason about, Similarly there *may* be no special ingredient needed to turn bundles of sensations into consciousness. Indeed, but nobody knows what bundles of sensations even mean, let alone how to measure such a thing. Se we are in a very different situation with this one. Zero progress has been made after centuries of science, and I would say that this is a clue that we are missing some fundamental insight that might make the rest of the edifice crumble. I agree that materialism has magic matter, however that isn't in itself an argument against an eliminativist explanation of consciousness. I agree. My problem is with the lack of falsifiability of such a claim, and where it becomes apparent that strong materialism is a religious belief. It was this realisation that made me an agnostic (while previously I was a strong atheist). Otherwise it could be used as an argument for elan vital, or souls, or anything else. This is too binary. There are other options between rejecting emergentism and embracing souls. It just means the chain of explanation doesn't appear to end with matter. However, I don't agree that the MUH *necessarily* has magic maths, it's at least possible that maths is a logical necessity. Since it's the only thing we know of that couldn't be otherwise (except in very abstruse ways, at least) it is at least a candidate for being fundamental, i.e. the last link in the chain of explanation. Magic in the sense that it pre-exists everything else without any further explanation on its origin. It exists without cause. I don't believe we can get rid or magic in this sense, I'm just saying that it is useful to point out where the magic is in each model. In reply to John's comment, we *don't* know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). Right. Hence my use of appear to be above. It's very reasonable to assume that consciousness requires a fairly complex central nervous system, which somehow generates it It is reasonable to assume these things iff you also assume that intelligence=consciousness. - this theory isn't contradicted by any evidence I know of, except perhaps for NDEs, and has quite a lot of (apparent) explanatory power. That doesn't make it true, of course. -- 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
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:58 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like *elan vital*, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. True. But matter explains lots of other stuff. Consciousness as a pure potentiality, distinct from any content, doesn't explain anything. In reply to John's comment, we *don't* know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. And we don't know that other people are conscious. But as JKC pointed out we do know that things that affect our brain affect our consciousness. Quite aside from anesthesia and concussions that make it go away (modulo your theory that we merely forget), it's affected by whiskey and pot and salvia and LSD, and the effects are even amenable to some explanation at the molecular level. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). That's true on Bruno's definition of consciousness. I don't understand what you're driving at. Telmo seems to be asserting ignorance of types of statements concerning consciousness. Yes, this is all I'm claiming. If you negate this, don't you have to show your hand more than resorting to discourse examples? But that's not the consciousness that we are told is indubitable and which we all intuititively know we have. This would be true concerning sufficiently rich machines as well...which is why I don't see if/how your distinction leads anywhere. We attribute consciousness to other things as we perceive their behavior to be intelligent and goal directed; because that's how we recognize it in people: How many fingers do you see? What day is it? Do you know where you are?. 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.
The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem
http://lesswrong.com/lw/t6/the_cartoon_guide_to_l%C3%83%C6%92%C3%86%E2%80%99%C3%83%E2%80%A0%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2%C3%83%C6%92%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C5%A1%C3%83%E2%80%9A%C3%82%C2%B6bs_theorem/ -- 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 + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 00:13, meekerdb wrote: On 9/21/2014 9:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Sep 2014, at 21:10, John Clark wrote: although his name wasn't on the original paper Bohr was without a doubt the greatest teacher of quantum mechanics who ever lived and he was extraordinarily generous in giving away his good ideas to his students. You don't like Aristotle, but for a Platonist QM is rather natural, if not obvious. Then why didn't Plato discover Quantum Mechanics 2500 years ago? Because no sane person would propose such a crazy idea if they weren't forced to do so by the crazy outcome of certain experiments. Plato got the most crazy idea of all time: the idea that perhaps reality is not what we see. It is at the origin of science and religion, with science = the tool, and religion the goal. Unfortunately we have separate them, and science took a look of pseudo-religion (in the metaphysical domain) and religion took the look of political power having no genuine relation with the original theological idea: to unify all branches of knowledge, including the mystical one, which are in our head. I think you've got that backwards. Plato's idea that reality is not what we see got distorted into we need not observe, we can discover the truth by just thinking, feeling, wishing, imagining perfect forms. This led to the Christian Dark Ages in Europe when reason and curiosity bordered on sin and faith and belief based on authority was the cardinal virtue. Not at all. This led to mathematics and to the opening of the mind for mathematical explanation(s) of the physical and perhaps reality. The main inspiring idea for something simple, non observable and which might be at the origin of the observable was arithmetic and music. The curriculum of the platonist theologian was arithmetic, music, logic, geometry, and astronomy/cosmology. The Dark age was just unavoidable when occident separate science from religion, allowing the use of non-modesty in the filed which needs it the most. They banish the rational and mystic theologian, close the academy of Plato, and used a perversion of theology/religion as a tool to control people. It was eventually broken by astronomical observation and a conflict between what is observed and what was deduced from armchair philosophizing. It has ben broken on the observable, but the delire has continued to be tolerated if not encouraged on the non-observable. It has also imposed the religious (and apparently wrong) idea that observable = real, non-observable = unreal, where, well, both the theories (comp, QM) and the facts (the verified quantum weirdness, like Aspect, quantum computations, etc.) suggest that the real is not observable and the observable is one aspect of the non observable. As I said aoften, the Enlightened Period was only half-enlightenment. On the main thing (the theory of everything, theology) we remain half in the dark age. We continue to put minds and persons under the rug. Bruno 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. 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 + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 00:33, meekerdb wrote: On 9/21/2014 10:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Sep 2014, at 02:44, meekerdb wrote: On 9/19/2014 9:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Sep 2014, at 03:09, meekerdb wrote: On 9/18/2014 5:46 PM, Russell Standish wrote: Consciousness has a state (which we call the observer moment). If that state differs, then the state of the supervened must also differ. Thus consciousness cannot supervene on the UD* as it doesn't change for a change of state of consciousness. This seems to me to arise from equivocation about consciousness. You are treating it, as I experience it, as a temporal phenomenon - a succession of thoughts, an inner narrative. That's the consciousness I'd like to be able to program/engineer/understand. But Bruno make's consciousness a potentiality of an axiomatic system, for which he seems almost everything alive as a model (in the mathematical sense), anything that could instantiate an if-then or a controlled- controlled-not. And he says that salvia makes him think consciousness need not be temporal - which might be like whiskey sometimes makes me think the ground sways. From Bruno's viewpoint the UD* just IS and Alice's different thoughts as different times are just computations of those thoughts which are correlated with computations of those times. That may resolve the atemporal UD vs the temporal experience, but it still doesn't explain consciousness. It doesn't explain what computations of Alice's are constitute her consciousness as opposed to her subconsciousness or her brain functions or other stuff going on. It is not an answer to say, well maybe everything in conscious. When you say Bruno make's consciousness a potentiality of an axiomatic system, it would be more correct to say, that I attribute an actual conscious state, very raw, to the machine having that universal potentiallity. But you've said you don't believe in observer moments, so I don't know what an actual conscious state can refer to. Oh, I just mean a raw particular conscious state, like the state of Alice in the room, or the state of someone in some particular circonstances. Mathematically this has to be defined in arithmetic, and some instinctive belief in p can work, in a first 3-1p approximation. (p v p) works better in the 1p-1p approximation. It is an act of faith, where we are not conscious of the 'faith act, and quickly based, as we repeat that act every second since birth, perhaps before. If it refers to a universal potentiality I'd say you're just muddling words. A potentiality and a actual state are contradictory things. No problem. I really (currently) tend to think that RA has a raw (even statical) form of consciousness, close to the consciousness of all babies, animal and perhaps plants. In other words, something completely different from our inner experience of which we have first-person knowledge. Not at all. It is the inner experience of which babies, simple animals and perhaps plants have their first person knowledge. With salvia or Telmo's isolation tank, it seems most person can remember it. I try to convey it sometimes by a progressive amnesy enlarging itself in a complete amnesy. You can get that state in an instant, sometimes, when looking at shining water. To attribute consciousness to non universal object, will not make much sense, as object somehow exists only in the imaginations of universal machines. That raw basic consciousness is shared by my and yours laptop, it is the same consciousness, and it can differentiate maximally on all computational histories. All that means is you've completely redefined conscious in you own special language so that it has nothing to do with with direct experience, or any experience at all. Not at all. It is a natural state of consciousness, but that we are not aware of, Consciousness is something we are not aware of.? That borders on double-talk. I forgot to say what we are not aware of, in consciousness. We are not aware it ask already for faith. Consciousness is an interrogative state, like 'am I real?', but we are not aware of the interrogation mark, because that question is done automatically by the brain since birth, probably before. This double-talk works along Helmholtz theory of perception seen as an automated theorization/induction. because we focus so much on the everyday content. There are technic, like stopping thinking, medicating, or with some plants, to access more easily such state. You can also conceive it, with enough imagination, by doing thought experience involving amnesia. Forgetting memories does not diminish consciousness (sometimes it can even been felt as liberating, especially when forgetting trauma, or annoying contexts, etc). Nobody has suggested that forgetting diminishes consciousness. Nice to hear
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 01:11, meekerdb wrote: On 9/21/2014 2:30 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: And I also know for a fact that those very same chemicals degrade my ability to behave intelligently, and that's exactly what you'd expect if Darwin was right. Again, all I believe that can be said about this is that these chemicals change the contents of your experience. ALL?!! If you subtract the contents of your experience from your consciousness there is nothing remaining. Ever tried an isolation tank? Here's the crux of the equivocation on conscious that bothers me. Bruno apparently wants to define consciousness as a potentiality for self-reference (a fixed point of reference). Sorry, but you should read the post or the papers. I have never made an attempt to define consciousness, nor numbers. For the numbers I ask only to agree on PA, say. For consciousness, you understand what I mean by that when I say that this is what the comp-practitioners will keep when saying yes to the doctor, in the case that comp is true. Then in AUDA, eventually consciousness is that things the machine realize that 99% can be explained, but not a remaining 1% which is absolutely mystical, and indeed what is needed for having any genuine first person experience. This easily maps into theorems of provability in axiomatic systems. Not that easily. The first person obeys S4, and self-reference provability obeys G. You need Theaetetus, the dream argument, etc. But then you have the miracle, that Gerson could not see, the meta formal Theaetetus []p p, leads to a meta-formalization on a notion NON formalizable by the machine. This makes the first person knower being a non propositional object. It admits no representation. The most crazy thing, yet intuitively obvious, defended by all serious phenomenologist is a theorem for the (correct) machines. And that's fine. BUT he then also wants to say everybody knows what consciousness is and it's existence is indubitable. It is indubitable from the first person point of view. Descartes, the (re)founder of Mechanism made that point clear. You cannot doubt consciousness, because a genuine doubt needs to be a conscious experience. Raw consciousness, with comp, seems to be unconscious doubt, but that is another topic, yet related to my previous post to you today. Those two don't got together. You make an implicit confusion between 1) third person (the correct machine, the provability system), that is mainly what is defined in arithmetic by []p (p arithmetical proposition, and [] Gödel's provability predicate). 2) the first person (the owner of knowledge, that we got with the []p p, and which is not really a machine, but only, in the eyes of God, a filtration of God in particular realities. It has no name, and no identity card possible. Ramana Marhasi path consist in meditating on the question Who am I, which is what I ask to the machine, somehow, when defining in arithmetic the hypostases or the universal-points-of-view. The theory explains why those two things got together, and why they seem, rightly not going together. It is a key point. It is here that John Mikes should love the machine, as the honest one are agnostic, even on comp, and realize their modesty in communication, and possible infinite richness in experiences. It is this points which somehow make mechanism the less reductionist philosophy, for the human and Löbian affairs. Hume remarked that whenever he was aware he was aware of some content. I agree. That is the amazing thing in a complete amnesia. The raw consciousness, when unfiltrated by the memories and complex relations, has still a content, even an amazingly familiar content, which we can't keep (completely) in the mundane state of consciousness for some reason. It quite possible to doubt that there is any such thing as direct of experience of consciousness without content. I agree. There is always a content. It is not that astonishing. The content of memories can be seen as added to an initial content which reflect our quality of universal Turing machine and person, even if devoided of any particular memories. Computer science illustrated that this is not trivial. The price of sigma_1 completeness is the pi_1 incompleteness. t is pi_1. With computationalism, theology becomes a very hard part of arithmetic/ computer science, but this could have been expected. That axiomatic systems admit such reference is a feature of language which can seem to refer to itself. I agree. Computer science illustrates this. It invites us to interview the machine, in the scientific third person way, about its 3p self, and about its soul (when we conjunct that 3p self with truth, or/and consistency, etc.). Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 02:07, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. And with comp, assumed by most materialist to be *the* theory of mind, the MUH is a theorem, forcing matter to be explained by the FPI statistics, enlarging Everett's embedding of the physicist in the physical reality to an embedding of the dreamers in the arithmetical reality. In a sense comp offers a conceptual revolution akin to Darwin, as it offers the space and the logic explaining where the laws of physics come from (in a testable way). In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). Today a female jumping spider jumped on me. It is hard for me to not attribute consciousness to her. Even self-consciousness. I like very much planaria and amoebas, but I have never got the feeling they are self-conscious, but I am happy to attribute them at least the raw consciousness + simple bad'/good local content and also the urge feeling, when hungry. Never got the feeling from a fly or a worm that they have reciprocal empathy with me, but jumping spider, octopus, and other invertebrates might, imo. Bruno 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 + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 02:24, LizR wrote: On 22 September 2014 12:07, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. My point was that on this theory, which is basically eliminativism, consciousness doesn't actually exist, in the same way as there was no special ingredient needed to animate living matter, to distinguish it from dead matter, it turned out to be merely a question of how the constituents were organised. Similarly there may be no special ingredient needed to turn bundles of sensations into consciousness. I agree that materialism has magic matter, however that isn't in itself an argument against an eliminativist explanation of consciousness. Otherwise it could be used as an argument for elan vital, or souls, or anything else. It just means the chain of explanation doesn't appear to end with matter. However, I don't agree that the MUH necessarily has magic maths, it's at least possible that maths is a logical necessity. Alas, that is not the case. It is the failure of logicism. Hilbert programs has been implemented by Russell and Whitehead, without success as it should be by Gödel's theorem which, together with model theory explains why mathematics can't be derived from logic alone. Nor can you derive the axiom of infinity and analysis from arithmetic. But you can derive in arithmetic that numbers needs analytical tools to understand themselves, and that the axiom of infinity will be very handy for them. (Even with computationalism). Russell and Whitehead thought we can derive all mathematics from logic. Now, we know that even for arithmetic, we need a non effective infinity of effective theories to circumscribe it. We know today that, unless we got divine and usable ability, we can only scratch the arithmetical reality. It has become an unknown, perhaps richer than the observable reality. Since it's the only thing we know of that couldn't be otherwise (except in very abstruse ways, at least) it is at least a candidate for being fundamental, i.e. the last link in the chain of explanation. OK, for logic + arithmetic, but not for logic alone, or you are using a non standard logic, which I guess will be a mathematics in disguise. That is why we have those theories, like RA, PA, ZF. We can't derive their axioms from simpler. Bruno In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). Right. Hence my use of appear to be above. It's very reasonable to assume that consciousness requires a fairly complex central nervous system, which somehow generates it - this theory isn't contradicted by any evidence I know of, except perhaps for NDEs, and has quite a lot of (apparent) explanatory power. That doesn't make it true, of course. Even during the NDE there is some physical activity in the brain, according to some researcher, but the activity is quite low and quite different than the usual/ If I find the video showing the EEG I will send a link. I am not sure the NDE would contradict computationalism, but some reports (where people seems to be aware of the environment) would suggest lower substitution than the common neuronal one. 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
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 03:22, meekerdb wrote: On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. True. But matter explains lots of other stuff. Consciousness as a pure potentiality, distinct from any content, doesn't explain anything. Right. Those things have to be explained in simpler theory, like comp forces us to use arithmetic or anything Turing equivalent to arithmetic. But I thought no one (except Craig and some others) suggest that consciousness is a potentiality, although it might be related to it, (through p, indeed), and no more is suggesting this explains everything. In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. And we don't know that other people are conscious. But as JKC pointed out we do know that things that affect our brain affect our consciousness. Quite aside from anesthesia and concussions that make it go away (modulo your theory that we merely forget), it's affected by whiskey and pot and salvia and LSD, and the effects are even amenable to some explanation at the molecular level. But that explanation is partially correct, and unprecise, as it use the 1-1 identity, and not the many-1 identity needed in Everett and/or in computationalism. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). That's true on Bruno's definition of consciousness. But that's not the consciousness that we are told is indubitable and which we all intuititively know we have. ? I don't see why you say that. I have no definition of consciousness, except that I explain a bit of it when explaining why comp solves the hard part of the problem, by explaining why machine get the hard question and realize it cannot be explained at their level (they need proposition in their own G*). We attribute consciousness to other things as we perceive their behavior to be intelligent and goal directed; because that's how we recognize it in people: How many fingers do you see? What day is it? Do you know where you are?. OK. Bruno 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. 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 + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 05:30, meekerdb wrote: On 9/21/2014 6:58 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that exists are bundles of sensations (or however Hume phrased it). But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all magic assumptions. True. But matter explains lots of other stuff. Consciousness as a pure potentiality, distinct from any content, doesn't explain anything. In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know what else is conscious. And we don't know that other people are conscious. But as JKC pointed out we do know that things that affect our brain affect our consciousness. Quite aside from anesthesia and concussions that make it go away (modulo your theory that we merely forget), it's affected by whiskey and pot and salvia and LSD, and the effects are even amenable to some explanation at the molecular level. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). That's true on Bruno's definition of consciousness. I don't understand what you're driving at. Telmo seems to be asserting ignorance of types of statements concerning consciousness. If you negate this, don't you have to show your hand more than resorting to discourse examples? I'm saying that things like insect swarms or galaxies are likely to be conscious by Bruno's definition. I might have colleagues believing some swarms can be Turing universal, or learn to be Turing universal. A galaxy? This is not even defined in a way (neither in physics, nor in the comp-physics) such that we can make sense of the question. Just show me how to program the factorial function using the galaxy. All they must have is the potential for Turing computing. Not the potential. They must be universal numbers relatively to some an universal number or arithmetic, or even a turing universal physical laws (like the SWE + spins). But that's not the consciousness that we are told is indubitable and which we all intuititively know we have. This would be true concerning sufficiently rich machines as well...which is why I don't see if/how your distinction leads anywhere. It's saying that any explanation of consciousness needs to explain the conscious inner narrative I experience. It's cheap to redefine consciousness as the potential for universal computation, It is not the potential, it is the actuality of being or having a Turing universal body/representation with respect to arithmetic, or intermediate levels. because the potential for universal computation is common. If the potential for universal computation is going to explain consciousness-as-I-experience-it, the explanation can't just rely on the assumption that brains do computation. It needs to say how the computation a brain does is different from the computation a galaxy does. It would be probably an hard task to prove that the galaxy is not a universal Turing machine, given that many bodies can easily made universal by using sharp positions, but those are infinitely non probable. Complex code just can't be decoded. But now, if the galaxy does compute a creative set like a brain, then they do that same creative or Turing universal computation. perhaps at different scale, but if it is consciousness, then, with that new idea, we can attribute it some consciousness, almost by definition. Bruno Brent We attribute consciousness to other things as we perceive their behavior to be intelligent and goal directed; because that's how we recognize it in people: How many fingers do you see? What day is it? Do you know where you are?. 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
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 06:23, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 5:30 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/21/2014 6:58 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more empathy we feel (human monkey cat insect bacteria, ...). That's true on Bruno's definition of consciousness. I don't understand what you're driving at. Telmo seems to be asserting ignorance of types of statements concerning consciousness. If you negate this, don't you have to show your hand more than resorting to discourse examples? I'm saying that things like insect swarms or galaxies are likely to be conscious by Bruno's definition. All they must have is the potential for Turing computing. But most seems to agree on this here. The kinds/hierarchies of self- reference having been post subjects for the last weeks. Indeed. And potential here can be confusing. But the self-reference, and the link with consistency and truth, even explain why machines are in trouble when relating their soul (1-personhood) and their possible body/bodies. But that's not the consciousness that we are told is indubitable and which we all intuititively know we have. This would be true concerning sufficiently rich machines as well...which is why I don't see if/how your distinction leads anywhere. It's saying that any explanation of consciousness needs to explain the conscious inner narrative I experience. Tall order given current state of affairs, but sure. It's cheap to redefine consciousness as the potential for universal computation, because the potential for universal computation is common. If the potential for universal computation is going to explain consciousness-as-I-experience-it, the explanation can't just rely on the assumption that brains do computation. It needs to say how the computation a brain does is different from the computation a galaxy does. Isn't the appropriate machine relating to some axioms and models the input, from instruments of observation say, of a galactic structure in some plane or stream of its accessible neighborhood; isn't that machine just more or less correctly dreaming the thing from its intuitive 1p perspective and its histories? That machine has ultimately no way of knowing whether galaxies are conscious and has to have some finally unjustifiable and incomplete (given Theatetus' negation knowledge definition) theory of this. It will find relative to its histories, that milkshakes of nebulae, nurseries mixing in lactose tolerant orbits, superbly noval black holes and all this fun drama is plausible or false or correct given its standards of evidence, plausibility, theology etc. It might need more coffee and ask: What would galaxy ice cream taste like? Vanilla definitely as stracciatella would already be bringing process and simulation of orbits into play which ice cream is physically constrained to do in these parts, if you're not doing funky 3d modelling or something. Good stracciatella has to be fine grained, so only asteroids could be taken literally. Rocky road would be faithful to stars and solid bodies given dark background so nothing is really appropriate and we retreat to reducing things to vanilla super nova starlight. Just the light. The science theologies of ice cream deserve more attention, yes. I can relate. It makes sense only to attribute consciousness when we can guess a person, and it is wise to be just agnostic by precaution if not. May be black holes and galaxies are conscious, and communicate through gravitation and dark matter with a zest of quantum entanglement (to look serious!). It took 200.000 years for the Milky -Way to tell Magellan oops! ... 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
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 22 Sep 2014, at 06:46, LizR wrote: Surely Bruno doesn't think anything capable of (or having the potential for) computation is conscious? I hope my answer to Brent has clarified this. It is clearer when said in the theory. We have the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... Some are universal, and most are not. They are universal, it means that they have some non trivial coding (in most base). The universal numbers, I tend to think nowadays, are conscious. But that consciousness too is, from its 1p view, indeterminate on complex FPI domains, very large, and it takes some (logical) time for such consciousness to be aware of the differentiations. The universal (or sub-universal, technically) might be the initial consciousness state which differentiates on most cogent personal histories. What is counterintuitive is that this state of consciousness is so much amnesic that it is literally out of time. Here, contrary to Brouwer theory of consciousness, which Brouwer relate to time, it seems the brain can delude you up to make you identifying with something out of time. It is pure madness? Is it inconsistent? Well, it helps to get how He lost Himself in His, or Her Mother Creation. Why soul falls? Why consciousness differentiates? In a sense it is just universal machines reflecting their incompleteness and building layers and layers of universal domains. A physical universe is a sort of tool by which universal numbers explore the arithmetical reality. There are just tuns of unknown awaiting us in all directions. Somehow we build the measure, through dialog with universal layers, but we is more general than humans. The 1p of the machine (S4Grz) is close to Brouwer, but it is an open problem if that can be used to make that consciousness out of time a genuine 1p logical contradiction. That assumption would provide the comp explanation to illumination in some rough way, by PA getting amnesic up to forget the induction axioms. PA would be enlightened when he remember what is feels like being RA. Again, I am close to rambling perhaps. I don't use this in my publication, to be sure. That includes my PCwhich I must admit has been reluctant to open the DVD drive bay doors recently... Concrete machines get that human ability to fail you, certainly. A machine a bit complex without a bug simply does not exist. Even in Platonia, those are rare, and they are only very numerous in the relatively rare histories. not to mention that someone with a pencil, paper and a lot of time could by this definition create a conscious being. He will not create it, like you don't need to count up to some number for that number to exist. That someone will only enable a person (already distributed in the whole sigma_1 arithmetic) to chat with you, if you are patient enough. I thought you agree that if we discuss with Einstein through manipulation of a book describing Einstein brain, and the interconnection (cf Hofstadter), we do discuss genuinely to Einstein. I mean assuming comp, of course. OK? 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 + supervenience
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Sep 2014, at 06:46, LizR wrote: Surely Bruno doesn't think *anything *capable of (or having the potential for) computation is conscious? I hope my answer to Brent has clarified this. It is clearer when said in the theory. We have the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... Some are universal, and most are not. They are universal, it means that they have some non trivial coding (in most base). The universal numbers, I tend to think nowadays, are conscious. But that consciousness too is, from its 1p view, indeterminate on complex FPI domains, very large, and it takes some (logical) time for such consciousness to be aware of the differentiations. The universal (or sub-universal, technically) might be the initial consciousness state which differentiates on most cogent personal histories. What is counterintuitive is that this state of consciousness is so much amnesic that it is literally out of time. Here, contrary to Brouwer theory of consciousness, which Brouwer relate to time, it seems the brain can delude you up to make you identifying with something out of time. It is pure madness? Is it inconsistent? Well, it helps to get how He lost Himself in His, or Her Mother Creation. Why soul falls? Why consciousness differentiates? In a sense it is just universal machines reflecting their incompleteness and building layers and layers of universal domains. A physical universe is a sort of tool by which universal numbers explore the arithmetical reality. There are just tuns of unknown awaiting us in all directions. Somehow we build the measure, through dialog with universal layers, but we is more general than humans. The 1p of the machine (S4Grz) is close to Brouwer, but it is an open problem if that can be used to make that consciousness out of time a genuine 1p logical contradiction. That assumption would provide the comp explanation to illumination in some rough way, by PA getting amnesic up to forget the induction axioms. PA would be enlightened when he remember what is feels like being RA. I speculate something like this can be related to by some poison experience, trance, sexual peak from 1p. Perhaps a strange kind of perspective closer to internal statement like It's certainly something rather than nothing., Amazing, Me is and other rather than I think about myself or past, present, future, more like pain is! or pleasure is! rather than I feel pain/pleasure, which can even be quite pleasant from time to time. Again, I am close to rambling perhaps. I don't use this in my publication, to be sure. If you are rambling, than I am rambling times rambling. Apologies for weird speculation, but it's the kind I find fascinating. 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: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 9/22/2014 12:07 AM, Kim Jones wrote: On 22 Sep 2014, at 3:21 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: That's why he can say consciousness is all-or-nothing (potentialities are all-or-nothing). That's why he thinks an infant is more conscious than an adult - it has more potential (but less realization). That's why he thinks losing all your memories would leave you with the same consciousness. That's all follows from his definition and it's OK, although it's not the common meaning of conscious. What's not OK is to then rely on the intuition that everybody knows what consciousness is and that no one can seriously doubt it's existence. Those statements are true of common usage of conscious, but not necessarily true of Bruno's definition. Brent Are we not conflating slightly (to be) conscious - the fact of being aware and sensate; experiencing being as it were.with consciousness that woolly philosophical football? I think even in comman usage we don't do that. I am conscious of this or that. My consciousness is kind of my whole psyche (whatever that is - could be the whole universe or a lotus blossum or whatever). Bruno merely asserts that nobody can mistake the fact that they exist. Some people do, but it's considered pathological. But Bruno does more than merely assert this. He then uses the same word, conscious in a different, technical sense as a potential property of an axiomatic system. And then he applies conclusions drawn from the technical sense to common sense meaning. This is isn't necessarily wrong, but as an argument it leaves a big gap. Brent To be conscious is to experience being. My consciousness on the other hand, is the me the self, the subject, the I - you could probably say soul if you wanted to allude to the fact that this platonic thing you are is immortal. -- 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 + supervenience
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 05:07:07PM +1000, Kim Jones wrote: Are we not conflating slightly (to be) conscious - the fact of being aware and sensate; experiencing being as it were.with consciousness that woolly philosophical football? I think even in comman usage we don't do that. I am conscious of this or that. My consciousness is kind of my whole psyche (whatever that is - could be the whole universe or a lotus blossum or whatever). Hi Kim, I was wondering if you could elaborate on what you think the distinction is? I, of course, conflate consciousness with the experience of being all the time. I was just wondering why you think there is a distinction? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem
(Damn you, fingers. Or even *Doctor* Who...) On 23 September 2014 14:29, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: That link doesn't work on Firefox, at least not for me. But it seems OK on chrome... I'm sure anyone who can follow a Doctro Who episode written by Steven Moffat will have no trouble with that proof. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem
That link doesn't work on Firefox, at least not for me. But it seems OK on chrome... I'm sure anyone who can follow a Doctro Who episode written by Steven Moffat will have no trouble with that proof. -- 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 + supervenience
Bruno merely asserts that nobody can mistake the fact that they exist. Some people do, but it's considered pathological. But Bruno does more than merely assert this. He then uses the same word, conscious in a different, technical sense as a potential property of an axiomatic system. And then he applies conclusions drawn from the technical sense to common sense meaning. This is isn't necessarily wrong, but as an argument it leaves a big gap. Brent A potential property of an axiomatic system is the evolution of conscious human beings who know they exist or are otherwise pathological. Richard On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 4:03 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/22/2014 12:07 AM, Kim Jones wrote: On 22 Sep 2014, at 3:21 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: That's why he can say consciousness is all-or-nothing (potentialities are all-or-nothing). That's why he thinks an infant is more conscious than an adult - it has more potential (but less realization). That's why he thinks losing all your memories would leave you with the same consciousness. That's all follows from his definition and it's OK, although it's not the common meaning of conscious. What's not OK is to then rely on the intuition that everybody knows what consciousness is and that no one can seriously doubt it's existence. Those statements are true of common usage of conscious, but not necessarily true of Bruno's definition. Brent Are we not conflating slightly (to be) conscious - the fact of being aware and sensate; experiencing being as it were.with consciousness that woolly philosophical football? I think even in comman usage we don't do that. I am conscious of this or that. My consciousness is kind of my whole psyche (whatever that is - could be the whole universe or a lotus blossum or whatever). Bruno merely asserts that nobody can mistake the fact that they exist. Some people do, but it's considered pathological. But Bruno does more than merely assert this. He then uses the same word, conscious in a different, technical sense as a potential property of an axiomatic system. And then he applies conclusions drawn from the technical sense to common sense meaning. This is isn't necessarily wrong, but as an argument it leaves a big gap. Brent To be conscious is to experience being. My consciousness on the other hand, is the me the self, the subject, the I - you could probably say soul if you wanted to allude to the fact that this platonic thing you are is immortal. -- 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.
