Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
/ //The attention schema theory satisfies two problems of understanding consciousness, said Aaron Schurger, a senior researcher of cognitive neuroscience at the Brain Mind Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland who received his doctorate from Princeton in 2009. The easy problem relates to correlating brain activity with the presence and absence of consciousness, he said. The hard problem has been to determine how consciousness comes about in the first place. Essentially all existing theories of consciousness have addressed only the easy problem. Graziano shows that the solution to the hard problem might be that the brain describes some of the information that it is actively processing as conscious because that is a useful description of its own process of attention, Schurger said.// // //Michael's theory explains the connection between attention and consciousness in a very elegant and compelling way, Schurger said.// // //His theory is the first theory that I know of to take both the easy and the hard problems head on, he said. That is a gaping hole in all other modern theories, and it is deftly plugged by Michael's theory. Even if you think his theory is wrong, his theory reminds us that any theory that avoids the hard problem has almost certainly missed the mark, because a plausible solution — his theory — exists that does not appeal to magic or mysterious, as-yet-unexplained phenomena./ Read the rest: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/91/90C37/index.xml?section=featured 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: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
On 3/6/2015 7:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That might depend on the context. Usually, in our computationalist context it means true in the standard model of arithmetic, which is this reality if you want. In the modal context, it means true in this world (which in our arithmetical context is NOT necessarily among the accessible world, because we don't have []p - p). With the logic of provability, we cannot access the world we are in. p does not imply p I wonder about such definitions of modal operators. WHY doesn't p imply p? We */could/* define so that it did. Is there some good reason not to? 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: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
On 05 Mar 2015, at 19:42, meekerdb wrote: On 3/5/2015 7:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 04 Mar 2015, at 21:32, meekerdb wrote: On 3/4/2015 7:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: If we are in a simulated world, we are in all simulated world, some normal, or some perverse bostromian (made by our normal descendents who would like to fake our reality). We can test computationalism V perverse bostromism, if you want. Why should that be true. We weren't in this simulated world for the fire 13.8e9yrs. Are you saying it's impossible to create/ simulate a world without Bruno Marchal in it? Yes. It follows from our having infinity of virtual bodies in arithmetic. ?? How does it follow? If you simulate Bruno Marchal + the real world/physical laws: you will fail to entangle his first person experience with yours (outside the simulation). So what? The simulated Bruno need only be entangled with things in the simulated world. But the question was not whether you could simulate Bruno Marchal without entangling him in the outside (real?) world. There is no real world. There is only the sheaf of computations in arithmetic. You cannot a priori simulate what happens below my substitution level, unless QM is correct, the quantum dovetailing is enough, etc. But in that case, from my first person perspective I am both in the simulation, and outside it. Or you simulate a fake world, and I will notice it, like in a lucid dream, soon or later. The question was whether you could create a simulated world that did not contain Bruno Marchal. Ah? Then world is a bit too much fuzzy terms. I can certainly simulate some reality in which I do not belong. If it's possible to simulate a world at all, it should be possible to simulate this world as it existed a billion years ago or a 100yrs ago - when there was no Bruno Marchal. Simulate, yes. Emulate? It might not have sense, because such world is not well defined. Bruno Brent From its perspective he is as much in the simulated world than it is not. If you simulate Bruno Marchal + some fake world: Bruno Marchal will soon or later be able to discover it, at least IF Bruno Marchal bet on computationalism. Of course, if each time Bruno Marchal see that it belongs in a simulation, you can correct it or change his mind. But you will need to do that infinitely often, or make BM into someone mad, or something like that. (But then you are no more simulating him). In that case, doing that infinite work, you can fail him. To test if we are in a simulation, assuming comp, it is necessary and sufficient to compare the physics extracted from comp, with the physics allowed by observation. 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: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
On 05 Mar 2015, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote: On 3/5/2015 9:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But that would entail: provable(false) - false, which is equivalent with: not-provable(false). But that is consistency, and is not provable. So in general, due to the second theorem of incompleteness, we don't have in general that: provable(p) - p. I'm not sure what in general we don't means here. Do you mean: For every p, it is false that provable(p) - p? No. By Löbs' theorem []p - p is provable IFF p is provable. Or do you mean: For some p, it is false that provable(p) - p? Yes, that one. But Ep~([]p-p) is equivalent to Ep([]p~p), which asserts inconsistency. You don't want to assert inconsistency, only the possibility of inconsistency. Yes, p - (p []~p) (=Löb, written with diamond); You can't assert false (when consistent), but you can assert your inconsistency. PA + not consistent (PA) is a consistent theory. 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: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
On 05 Mar 2015, at 20:34, meekerdb wrote: On 3/5/2015 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 04 Mar 2015, at 23:05, meekerdb wrote: On 3/4/2015 10:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 Feb 2015, at 20:40, Samiya Illias wrote: My faith encourages me to pursue the sciences, to use my faculties and intelligence for reason and logic, and the study of the sciences is not doubt. Doubt is the lack of faith! I am not sure I commented on this. It might be the heart of the matter. Science is only doubt. But as Descartes saw, we cannot doubt of everything, and so, we do trust something. The more we are able to doubt, the more we can see what remains undoubtable, and faith can build on that. So, those who have the faith have no problem doubting any theories, texts, etc. The faith rises from within, and is definitely beyond words, texts, theories, equations, etc. The universal machines are confronted to something similar when they introspect themselves (in the sense of Kleene second recursion diagonal way). In front of the absolute truth, science can only augment the doubt, but without ever needing to abandon faith. It is the faith in the ineffable which invites the doubt on *all* the fables. So you must have faith - but not in anything in particular? Why? I didn't say that. Of course you didn't. It's ineffable. :-) Lol. Of course, I meant the one which has no name/description. I can see why a logician would think that way; since he always wants to start from axioms he assumes. Not at all. Humans start from a reality and develop beliefs on that reality, and they assume axioms to have their theories, but they doubt the theory, as they trust the reality. Fundamental reality kicks back all theories, but that is nice, as it is a promise of infinite learning and surprises. But note the Google paper on Knowledge Based Trust which tries to operationalize the coherence theory of truth. Not too bad blaspheme for the practical purpose, although it can't really work, but that is another topic. Fundamentally you should not like it, as it confuse truth and reality (possibility/consistency). It confuses p and p. It confuses p is true with there is a reality in which p is true. Does p is true mean p is true in *this* reality, or what? That might depend on the context. Usually, in our computationalist context it means true in the standard model of arithmetic, which is this reality if you want. In the modal context, it means true in this world (which in our arithmetical context is NOT necessarily among the accessible world, because we don't have []p - p). With the logic of provability, we cannot access the world we are in. p does not imply p 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: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
On 05 Mar 2015, at 22:38, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 05 Mar 2015, at 06:12, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 06:06:35PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: My opinion has not much changed since the last critics. It is a very nice derivation, but too much quick at some step, assuming the reals, derivative, effectivity, etc. It go in the right conceptual direction, (from the comp perspective). The reals come with Kolmogorov's axioms. They also appear as part of measure theory. Perhaps it can be done without invoking the reals, perhaps not. Plausibly. On any rich enough topological group I presume. Why information must be preserved between observer moments? You are quick in making the observer moments into a complex vector space (your refer to 4.5, in your appendix, but you are quick in 4.5). It is interesting, but if you make things formal, there are still many assumptions, including the existence of the measure. It might help in the comp derivation of physics. Just now, I am not sure I understand the derivation of the square of the amplitude, but I will (re)read this more at ease when I have more time, and let you know. Hmm... What do you mean by uniform measure on infinite set? The only place a derivative appears is at D.13. IIUC, derivatives are well defined operators for any sort of timescale, not just continuous ones. In discrete timescales, the derivative is just a difference operator IIRC. OK, but why a derivative? Why the reals ? Effectivity? You require that phi(t') follows deterministically from phi(t) when t' t. (page 221). Lewontin's requirement is a bit like forcing the measure, which is not obvious a priori in the digital perspective. It might works, but needs deeper justifications. What is really missing, but for good reason, is the fact that even if correct, all the assumptions (sometimes implicit or argued too much quickly) must be re-extracted from self-reference, once we assume computationalism, so as to be able to benefit from the Gödel-Solovay split of the points of view. This is needed for the mind-body problem. That is a fair comment, though not one I have a ready answer for :). OK :) We can come back on this later. You might search on Lucien Hardy, as it gave a similar derivation, assuming perhaps less probability axioms than Russell. I don't believe Hardy's derivation is at all similar to mine. I agree. I cannot right now put my hand on it (unlike your book) Is this the same? http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0101012 Yes. When I have more time, I will reconsidered it, but that type of approach is still biased by Aristotelianism. Russell's is better from that perspective, if not formal enough to see if it is recoverable in the internal modalities of the machine. It is not a critic of Hardy, just that many people are unaware of the mind-body problem (or the hard problems of consciousness and matter). The principle of QM might be derivable also from knot theory, and perhaps from the behavior of the Riemann zeta functions. That would not been so astonishing, because the distribution of prime might encode the full sigma_1 complexity of the marriage between addition and multiplication. A theorem by Voronin already shows that the Riemann zeta function can is universal for the complex analytical functions, but that is not enough to make it Turing universal, but the behavior of the non trivial zeros of the zeta function seems to possible emulate a form of quantum chaos, which *might* be a universal *quantum* dovetailer. The physical universe, as much as it is something describable, might just be a failed attempt by God to prove that some diophantine equation has no solutions. But that is an extrapolation from the formal resemblances of mathematical appearances in those field. It is neutral to the computationalist explanation that eventually the physical is a first person plural arithmetical phenomenon. (The persons does not need to be human, and world without humans make sense). The power of computationalism comes entirely by Church thesis, which makes simple reflexive structure, like PA or the combinators, or Turing equivalent, capable of defining constructively a precise Everything: all computations, the UD. Then the FPI, and the logic of self-reference imposes an internal multiple modal views from inside, with a sructured imposed by theoretical computer science/number- combinators theory. That does not make computationalism true, but that makes it mathematical and transparent, so if we have left the key there, we have some chance to find them back. Bruno Jason I actually found his postulates rather hard to accept on first principles. The approach that seems most similar to mine is Gunther Ludwig's (Grundlagen der Quantum Mechanik), but that is a seriously formal approach that is
Re: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
On 05 Mar 2015, at 22:44, LizR wrote: On 6 March 2015 at 06:22, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Mar 2015, at 21:36, LizR wrote: On 5 March 2015 at 04:37, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So it is not the state of the halting problem which are physical, it is the physical which needs to be redefined in term of a measure (or the logic of the measure one, of that measure) on the halting programs. Yes, that's what I was trying to say, in my roundabout way. Using physical confuses the matter, if you'll pardon the pun. There is no reversal in Tegmark. He misses the mind-body problem in general, and the computationalist one in particular. Yes, he is in the interesting position of being what might be called a mathematical materialist - deriving the material world from maths and finding he still has the mind-body problem, which he then solves by saying it isn't a problem (as for example Dennett does. Of course he may be right...) He may be right? Well, even if right, he has to prove it, and by definition, that is the mind-body problem! Yes, you clever logic chopper! But that doesn't mean the problem can't be solved by showing that it's only an apparent problem. Fair enough. I imagine Dennett would say something like this: Consciousness is a complex illusion This is self-defeating. Without consciousness, no one can be deluded on consciousness. generated as a sort of user interface between the brain and the world. Assuming there is a word, and that the brain is unique into that unique world. Or assuming the brain infinitely complex and the world infinitely complex and some unknown means on normalization or renormalization. That is the problem of many people working on consciousness, they believe that the problem of matter has been solved, but as QM illustrates, the problem has only deepen. We cannot take the notion of physical world or universe for granted. It is more like consciousness select the consistent enough histories/ dreams/computation (to sump on the alternate intensional nuances). It is no more fundamental to reality Which one? If consciousness is not fundamental for reality, then reality will be not fundamental for consciousness. than the pattern of pixels on my screen is a real desktop. That type of argument can make me doubt of many things, perhaps all content of my consciousness, but one: consciousness. (I think I know you do agree with this, but may be not all months). It is an attempt to explain how we have experiences that is based on Cartesian dualism, while science tells us that the world is made of matter, energy, etc - there are no ghosts in the machine - eventually the idea of consciousness being anything more than what I have said will look as outdated as elan vital and phlogiston. This like saying that the high programming language LISP or C++ is phlogiston, because we can reduce them to number theoretical relations. And then it ignores that such high level structure, when they become able to refer to themselves are confronted to complex self- identification procedure. It is the confusion of level. A confusion between a program, and its compilation into another program. To believe that consciousness can be outdated is outrageous. It eliminates the person, which with comp is the main selector of computational histories, at the logical origin of physics. If Dennett would apply that form of reductionism in the arithmetic TOE, he should say that consciousness is outdated, but also matter energy time particles, as they are reduced to natural numbers and some first person limits. Dennett ignores the problem. Of course this doesn't address the consequencs of taking this view to its logical extreme as Bruno has done (or I should say claims to have done, since I haven't been able to follow the whole argument). I'd be interested to hear what DCD would have say about comp. Dennett is computationalist. I met him in Toulouse 1988. He came to my talk, where I explained the link Cantor-Kleene-self-reproduction-self- reference (the diagonals). In brainstorms and Minds eyes (his best books) he is clearly computationalist, even high level computationalist. But if your read the beginning of Consciousness Explained, you can see him asserting that there is no more conceptual difficulties in physics. He seems unaware that we can be rationalist and non Aristotelian. It is alas frequent, and a part of academics are taboo on this, apparently. (In my time those people negated both consciousness *and* the existence of a problem of interpretation of QM) But I appreciate somehow Dennett reasoning. He is only honest with his Aristotelian faith. He saw somehow the hard problem: the incompatibility between mind and matter, and as a believer in matter, he choose to make mind into non existence. Would he take its own computationalist
Re: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
On 06 Mar 2015, at 05:09, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 07:55:42PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 05 Mar 2015, at 06:12, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 06:06:35PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: My opinion has not much changed since the last critics. It is a very nice derivation, but too much quick at some step, assuming the reals, derivative, effectivity, etc. It go in the right conceptual direction, (from the comp perspective). The reals come with Kolmogorov's axioms. They also appear as part of measure theory. Perhaps it can be done without invoking the reals, perhaps not. Plausibly. On any rich enough topological group I presume. Why information must be preserved between observer moments? Information can only change through learning or forgetting. In a multiverse (or plenitude), if I learn something, then there must be other mes that learn the complementary facts. If I forget something, then my observer moment is merged with others. This is a measure preserving property. It is also an information preserving property. The information contained in the ensemble of outcomes to a measurement must be precisely as what it was prior to measurement. Similarly going from one measurement event to the next. You are OK that in the iterated WM-self-duplication, the information available to *most* first person subject grows (it is even white noise). The global 3p information does not grow in that situation. OK? You are quick in making the observer moments into a complex vector space (your refer to 4.5, in your appendix, but you are quick in 4.5). It is interesting, but if you make things formal, there are still many assumptions, including the existence of the measure. Yes - that is indeed an assumption. I know where you're going, given that you've criticised on that point by Delahaye. It is not serious, given that the thesis is presented as a reduction of the mind-body problem into the problem of isolating that measure. Then he does not mention AUDA at all, which is the thesis: the intensional variants are tools to circumscribe that measure. Like Clark, Delahaye stops at step 3. His argument is worst than Clark's one (if we can call that argument). I justify this by Anthropic reasoning, but agree this should be explored further. Hmm... It is here that I suspect Bayesianism, which is local and can explain the geographies, but miss the absolute when made absolute. It might help in the comp derivation of physics. Just now, I am not sure I understand the derivation of the square of the amplitude, but I will (re)read this more at ease when I have more time, and let you know. Hmm... What do you mean by uniform measure on infinite set? Every element has the same weight as any other. You need infinitesimals then. Usually with the continuum we use a sigma-algebra so that point have no measure, only intervals or more abstract notion. weakening on sigma-additivity allows measure to exist on infinite discrete set, like N, but I don't use this, nor seem to have to do so for the sequel. It works best for set having an infinite number of points between any pair (assuming some sort of partial ordering). You mean dense set? On something like the integers, every subset will zero uniform measure, I believe. Maybe that's also true of the rationals... Measure works well on reals, or infinite sequence, and on finite sets. In between, there are many variants possible, like when number theorist give sense to the probability for a number to be prime. We live in a reality where we can make sense of 1+2+3+4+ ... = -1/12, so we can hope in miracle :) The global FPI is pondered on infinities of stopping programs states ... pondered by infinities of non stopping programs redundantly going through those states, so the measure might mix different cardinalities. It is because this is complex, that I content myself to interview the machine about this, and Solovay results suggests that if there is a measure it is a quantum one, the []p in the SGRz1, Z1* and X1* logics gives a quantization on the sigma_1 propositions. The only place a derivative appears is at D.13. IIUC, derivatives are well defined operators for any sort of timescale, not just continuous ones. In discrete timescales, the derivative is just a difference operator IIRC. OK, but why a derivative? Why the reals ? Real time is not assumed. But it helps to make contact with the traditional Schroedinger equation. On some other timescale, Schroedinger's equation must be generalised. Effectivity? You require that phi(t') follows deterministically from phi(t) when t' t. (page 221). Lewontin's requirement is a bit like forcing the measure, which is not obvious a priori in the digital perspective. It might works, but needs deeper justifications. Lewontin's criteria is somewhat more of an inspiration than a direct
