date:20150308

On 3/8/2015 11:05 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:

On 3/8/2015 9:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb wrote:

On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb wrote:

I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that
natural
selection
can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so
consciousness
is either
a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.
But under
Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving
intelligence within
constraints of limited computational resources. So it would
be
subject to
natural selection. It also shows how to make intelligence
machines without
consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's
state of
attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious
machine?

Because doing it makes the machine conscious.

It might, but as presented it's begging he question.

It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize
consciousness.
It's something that, in principle at least, could be constructed and
one could
interact with it and determine whether it seemed as conscious as you or I.
What would you consider a non-question begging theory?

A proof that that kind of architecture necessarily realises consciousness.

What kind of proof? Science doesn't provide proof - except maybe in the
legal sense
of "beyond reasonable doubt" which my proposed test does provide.
Mathematical proof
depends on some axioms which one hypothetically assumes for purposes of the
argument. Mathematical inference ensures that the conclusions are implicit
in the
axioms - so any axioms that prove something about consciousness necessarily
include
the conclusion and so beg the question.

Well, I think the argument I have presented before (due to Chalmers) proves that if
consciousness is due to activity in the brain, making a substitution that preserves
brain function will necessarily also preserve consciousness. If not, then the idea of
consciousness becomes absurd.

OK, but Graziano is taking it a step further and trying to identify exactly which activity
in the brain.

Brent

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:

>  On 3/8/2015 9:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>>  On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>>
 On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:

> I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.
>
> http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/
>
> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
> can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
> either
> a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
> Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence
> within
> constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be
> subject to
> natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines
> without
> consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).
>
 Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
 attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?

>>>
>>> Because doing it makes the machine conscious.
>>
>>
>>  It might, but as presented it's begging he question.
>>
>>
>> It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize
>> consciousness. It's something that, in principle at least, could be
>> constructed and one could interact with it and determine whether it seemed
>> as conscious as you or I.  What would you consider a non-question begging
>> theory?
>>
>
>  A proof that that kind of architecture necessarily realises
> consciousness.
>
>
> What kind of proof?  Science doesn't provide proof - except maybe in the
> legal sense of "beyond reasonable doubt" which my proposed test does
> provide. Mathematical proof depends on some axioms which one hypothetically
> assumes for purposes of the argument.  Mathematical inference ensures that
> the conclusions are implicit in the axioms - so any axioms that prove
> something about consciousness necessarily include the conclusion and so beg
> the question.
>

Well, I think the argument I have presented before (due to Chalmers) proves
that if consciousness is due to activity in the brain, making a
substitution that preserves brain function will necessarily also
preserve consciousness. If not, then the idea of consciousness becomes
absurd.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness


On 3/8/2015 9:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb > wrote:


On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:

On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:

I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural 
selection
can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so 
consciousness is
either
a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But 
under
Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving 
intelligence within
constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be 
subject to
natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence 
machines without
consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?


Because doing it makes the machine conscious.


It might, but as presented it's begging he question.


It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize 
consciousness. It's
something that, in principle at least, could be constructed and one could 
interact
with it and determine whether it seemed as conscious as you or I.  What 
would you
consider a non-question begging theory?


A proof that that kind of architecture necessarily realises consciousness.


What kind of proof?  Science doesn't provide proof - except maybe in the legal sense of 
"beyond reasonable doubt" which my proposed test does provide. Mathematical proof depends 
on some axioms which one hypothetically assumes for purposes of the argument.  
Mathematical inference ensures that the conclusions are implicit in the axioms - so any 
axioms that prove something about consciousness necessarily include the conclusion and so 
beg the question.


Brent

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Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb > wrote:

>  On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>> On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:
>>>
 I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

 http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

 I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
 can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
 either
 a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
 Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence
 within
 constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be subject
 to
 natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines
 without
 consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

>>> Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
>>> attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?
>>>
>>
>> Because doing it makes the machine conscious.
>
>
>  It might, but as presented it's begging he question.
>
>
> It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize
> consciousness. It's something that, in principle at least, could be
> constructed and one could interact with it and determine whether it seemed
> as conscious as you or I.  What would you consider a non-question begging
> theory?
>

A proof that that kind of architecture necessarily realises consciousness.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015  Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> Mater doesn't have to be fundamental for your lab to work.

I never said one word about matter being fundamental, in fact I think if
anything is fundamental it's consciousness not matter; however I did say
that a non-materialistic theory is not falsifiable and you said I was
confused. So cure my confusion by giving me a EXAMPLE (not a loquacious
definition that is so general it's useless) of a non-materialistic theory
that is falsifiable.

> I don't know. I assume you accept wikipedia as a reasonable gauge of the
> credibility of terms

Yes, I do indeed. If you run across a technical term or acronym you don't
understand when reading Nature or Science or Physical Review Letters you
can just look it up in Wikipedia and it will tell you all about it, but
Wikipedia has never heard of UDA or FPI or any of Bruno's  peepee
terminology, and yet Bruno acts as if they were household words that any
educated person should know.

> I am still waiting for your comment on this, by the way:

Then you may rejoice, your wait is over.

 John K Clark

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Re: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic

2015-03-08 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Mar 06, 2015 at 08:08:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >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?
> 

Yes, of course. I think you just paraphrased me - that is good!

> 
> >
> >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.
> 
> 

Maybe when you have time, you could explore this. I don't know what
"Bayesianism" means. Someone once accused me of being a "Bayesian
epistomologist" on FOR, but didn't satisfactorily explain what that
is, and why it might be a derogatory term. Its a bit like someone
calling you a "Frooble", chuckling under their breath, then going
away. What is a frooble, and why are they objects of derision? Why
aren't frooble-deriders a valid object of derision?

> 
> 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.
> 

I strongly suspect we don't live in a reality where this
matters. Measure applies always to an infinite set of potential future
histories. 

> 
> You might try to make all this clearer, but I know it asks for a lot
> of work, especially if you take into account the constraints of
> computationalism. But I think that what you say makes sense.
> Probably a bit weak on God,... aah that is perhaps your Nothing.
> 
>  I might think that Nothing is not God, but is God's Mother :)
> 

Might be good for poetry, but I don't think that means anything :).


-- 


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)


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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:

On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb wrote:

I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural
selection
can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness
is either
a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel. But under
Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving
intelligence within
constraints of limited computational resources. So it would be
subject to
natural selection. It also shows how to make intelligence machines
without
consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?

Because doing it makes the machine conscious.

It might, but as presented it's begging he question.

It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize consciousness. It's
something that, in principle at least, could be constructed and one could interact with it
and determine whether it seemed as conscious as you or I. What would you consider a
non-question begging theory?

Brent

Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread LizR

ISTM that consciousness has an evolutionary benefit - but it could just be
that the ability to pay close attention to everything that's happening, and
to do so in an integrated manner, is of evolutionary benefit, and
consciousness is a necessary by-product of this process once it become
sufficiently advanced. Modelling other people's behaviour and hence
internal states, and modelling ones own to wonder what one might do in a
given situation, and then modelling ones behaviour that results from having
modelled one's behaviour ... at some point the feedback loops get complex
enough that it probably makes sense to "reify" the internal model of
oneself.

(Either that or I need to drink less coffee...)

On 9 March 2015 at 11:34, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:

>
>
> On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>> On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>> On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:
>>>
 I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

 http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

 I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
 can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
 either
 a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
 Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence
 within
 constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be subject
 to
 natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines
 without
 consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

>>> Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
>>> attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?
>>>
>>
>> Because doing it makes the machine conscious.
>
>
> It might, but as presented it's begging he question.
>
>
>>  It's valid as psychological theory, but it does not address the Hard
>>> Problem. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is more to be
>>> gained from investigating the Easy Problem.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, it comports with my idea that the "hard problem" will be dissolved
>> by engineering solutions.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>> --
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>>
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
>  --
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Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?


On 3/8/2015 2:07 PM, LizR wrote:
On 9 March 2015 at 05:36, Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> 
wrote:



On 07 Mar 2015, at 09:36, LizR wrote:

I thought <>P meant P was possible?

In the alethic interpretation of modal logic, <> means possible, and [] 
means necessary.


Before I get lost in logic, just going by the verbal descriptions...
Am I right in thinking that "p" means "p is true" ?
So p -> <>p would mean "p is true implies that it's possible p is true"

In the temporal interpretation of modal logic, <> means sometime, and [] 
means always.


p is true implies that p is sometimes true

In the locus interpretation of modal logic, <> means somewhere, and [] 
means everywhere.


...somewhere...

In the deontic interpretation of modal logic, <> means permitted, and [] 
means
obligatory.


p is permitted (by whom?!)

etc.

Note that all "<>" interpretation are form of possibility (alethic, 
temporal,
locative, ...).

In our interview of the Löbian machine, <> is translated in arithmetic with 
Gödel
beweisbar predicate:

In particular: <>t is consistency.
<>t = ~[] f = ~ beweisbar ("0 = 1"), with "0=1" being a number coding the 
sentence
"0 = s(0)".


OK, so this is saying that p -> <>p would mean "if p is true then that implies that p is 
consistent" - which, roughly speaking, is what Godel showed to be wrong.


Beweisbar(x) = Ey proof(y, x), that is: it exist a proof (y) of x. Proof 
must be
mechanically checkable, and so, like sentences, they can be coded into 
numbers, and
the predicate proof just decode the proof named by y and looks if it proves 
the
sentence coded by x.

<>t = ~[] f means intuitively, as said by PA: "PA does not prove the false", or 
"PA
is consistent".



So to summarize you don't want p->[]p as a modal axiom because it particularizes to t->[]t 
which says all true propositions are provable, contrary to Godel's theorem.  Godel proved 
PA incompleteness by diagonalization on classes of numbers.  But this applies to PA, not 
to every axiom set.  So why not conclude there is something wrong with PA?  To me it seems 
more intuitively compelling to say p-><>p than to say every number has a successor and 
deny p-><>p.


Brent

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb  wrote:

> On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:
>>
>>> I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.
>>>
>>> http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/
>>>
>>> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
>>> can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
>>> either
>>> a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
>>> Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence
>>> within
>>> constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be subject
>>> to
>>> natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines
>>> without
>>> consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).
>>>
>> Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
>> attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?
>>
>
> Because doing it makes the machine conscious.


It might, but as presented it's begging he question.


>  It's valid as psychological theory, but it does not address the Hard
>> Problem. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is more to be
>> gained from investigating the Easy Problem.
>>
>
> Yes, it comports with my idea that the "hard problem" will be dissolved by
> engineering solutions.
>
> Brent
>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 3/8/2015 12:17 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent,
do you (or the authors) really think Ccness - as we use the term - a (deeply) HUMAN (or
'thinking' animal?) phenomenon? Are we so special?

No. I think we are special only in our development of language that has given us the
ability to think more abstractly than other animals. I see Graziano's theory as pointing
to how we might make autonomous machines conscious and why it would be advantageous to do
so. I certainly doesn't imply humans are unique. In fact it implies that there may be
"higher" levels of consciousness realized by merging the consciousness of people and
machines; which is contrary to Bruno's idea that consciousness is logically a binary property.

Brent
"We are the Dyslexic of Borg. Futility is persistent. Your ass will be
laminated."

I came to believe that 'everything' (list, or not) is a wider connectivity than what we
call 'living' (you may include plants as well) and is phenomena of the complexity total
we call "Nature" (or: existence). If we take such wider stance, my speculations arrived
at a complex interconnectedness based upon 'relations' all over. (No specifics what to
call a relation - or how to respond to them).

Those relations interplay with whatever 'happens' with/out our knowledge.
I do not find it the ultimate (highest) format of Nature when we humans THINK.
Granted: we have no indication to go further than such.
HUMAN Ccness a 'subchapter"?

Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 3/8/2015 11:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 08 Mar 2015, at 17:23, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 3:42 PM, John Clark > wrote:

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com>> wrote:

>> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural
selection can't act on
consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is either a
necessary
byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.

> If you assume materialism.

In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as well
(and as
poorly) as any other theory.

It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability. A theory can be falsifiable
without assuming materialism. In fact, most scientific theories do not have to assume
materialism at all. They just make successful predictions about future observations.

That's why all non-materialistic theories of consciousness are such a
colossal
waste of time, they're so bad they're not even wrong.

Just like the materialistic ones.

Well, the materialist theories just fail.

?? They don't fail. They're third person, i.e. sharable models of the world.
Consciousness seems not to be sharable (although that might change) so it's harder to give
it material explanation. But not impossible. If we succeed in engineering beings that
behave in every respect as though they are as conscious as other people we will accept
that they are conscious and consciousness is a physically instantiated phenomenon. The
fact that most people disbelieve in the possibility of philosophical zombies already
implies this conclusion. It is just as strong an intuition as saying "Yes" to the
doctor. That's what I mean by engineering dissovling the "hard problem" of consciousness.

That *is* the mind-body problem. That is the hard problem of consciousness. The first
hard thing to do to solve it, when assuming mechanism, is to abandon the concept of
matter, which is really only a "god-of-the-gap" in both the explanation of mind and of
matter (or to abandon the notion of consciousness, of course)

The problem of the current institutionalized religions is that they take for granted
Aristotle's primary matter.

You write that often, but I don't see any evidence for it. Aquinas argues that the
material world is just sustained by God's thoughts. Where are the theologians of
Christianity or Buddhism that require primary matter (which I don't think was Aristotle's
idea anyway - it's more properly attributed to Democritus or Leucippus)

But even for Aristotle himself, this was a ... focus of attention on what happens
nearby, the greeks already got the "reversal". Some like Xeusippes and the
(neo)pythagoreans were open to a (simple?) mathematical reality.

Materialism fails, because there is no evidence for primitive matter, not does the
notion of primary explains anything.

That's just the complaint that whatever you assume as basic isn't explained.
Matter/energy/particle is just an hypothesis, like arithmetic, and it's part of a theory
of the world: "Atoms and the void" as Democritus would say. It's a theory which has been
very successful. It accounts for agreement of perception among different persons -
something comp doesn't.

Matter, like God (when used in argument) are concept equivalent with "now shut up and
obey the rules".

Like Peano's axioms or Turing machine rules.

Matter can be seen as a simplifying assumption, formally equivalent to a strong physical
induction, which in particular is violated a priori with comp. They introduce a
simplifying identity link between 1p and 3p, which is not verify in arithmetic, nor in
the SWE actually.

No, it's verified by kicking and seeing if it kicks back.

And I use "materialism" in its weaker sense of metaphysical or theologic doctrine
assuming a primitive material reality. By "primitive" I always mean something which is
estimated as having to be assumed.

Quite the contrary with elementary arithmetic or Turing equivalent. It is a Turing
universal structure, and in a simple sense, it can be shown that it has indeed to be
postulated.

Just like atoms and the void.

You cannot reduce it at anything which is not already Turing equivalent with it, and
with Church thesis, this is of a considerable generality, yet a highly non trivial
obeying precise theoretical laws.

The second recursion theorem of Kleene provides an abstract biology, an abstract
psychology/theology, and an abstract physics, on a plateau.

The machine already explains all this, the problem comes more from the humans who don't
listen. Judson Web already saw that machines can refute the Gödelian argument by Lucas,
"against mechanism". Penrose argument is a variant of Lucas, and again the machine can
refute it. Logicians knows that when they care about the question.

But "logic" isn't a single thing. You

Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

2015-03-08 Thread LizR

On 9 March 2015 at 05:36, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 07 Mar 2015, at 09:36, LizR wrote:
>
> I thought <>P meant P was possible?
>
> In the alethic interpretation of modal logic, <> means possible, and []
> means necessary.
>

Before I get lost in logic, just going by the verbal descriptions...
Am I right in thinking that "p" means "p is true" ?
So p -> <>p would mean "p is true implies that it's possible p is true"


> In the temporal interpretation of modal logic, <> means sometime, and []
> means always.
>

p is true implies that p is sometimes true


> In the locus interpretation of modal logic, <> means somewhere, and []
> means everywhere.
>

...somewhere...


> In the deontic interpretation of modal logic, <> means permitted, and []
> means obligatory.
>

p is permitted (by whom?!)


> etc.
>
> Note that all "<>" interpretation are form of possibility (alethic,
> temporal, locative, ...).
>
> In our interview of the Löbian machine, <> is translated in arithmetic
> with Gödel beweisbar predicate:
>
> In particular: <>t is consistency.
> <>t = ~[] f = ~ beweisbar ("0 = 1"), with "0=1" being a number coding the
> sentence "0 = s(0)".
>

OK, so this is saying that p -> <>p would mean "if p is true then that
implies that p is consistent" - which, roughly speaking, is what Godel
showed to be wrong.


> Beweisbar(x) = Ey proof(y, x), that is: it exist a proof (y) of x. Proof
> must be mechanically checkable, and so, like sentences, they can be coded
> into numbers, and the predicate proof just decode the proof named by y and
> looks if it proves the sentence coded by x.
>
> <>t = ~[] f means intuitively, as said by PA: "PA does not prove the
> false", or "PA is consistent".
>
> Similarly and more generally <>p means (PA + p) is consistent, or "p is
> consistent with PA", or PA does not prove "0= 1" when assuming p, ...  as
> formulated in the language of PA.
>
> PA=Peano arithmetic, yes? So p asserts that p is true relative to PA?

> If so wouldn't P imply <>P? Or have I misremembered what <>P means?
>
> Note that p -> <>p is the contrapositive of [] ~p  ->  ~p.
>
> As a axiom, it is valid for all p, so, as an axiom, p -> <>p and []p -> p
> are equivalent.
>
> But []p -> p cannot be an axiom of the modal logic of provability (G),
> that is when [] is the arithmetical beweisbar, given that []f -> f cannot
> be proven by PA (PA would prove ~[]f, that <>t, that is, its own
> consistency. PA is consistent, and cannot prove its own consistency.
>
> So we don't have []p -> p, nor p -> <>p.
>

Given that <>p means consistency, yes.

>
> In fact, by Löb's theorem, we have that []p -> p is provable if and only p
> itself is provable. And the machine can prove that: []([]p -> p) -> []p
> (and the reverse which is trivial, if the machine proves p, she can prove
> that anything implies p).
>
> "Consistency of p" is a form of possibility.
>
> In fact "p -> <>p"  *is* true, for all p, but the machine cannot prove all
> such formula, like she can't prove for all p that  []p -> p.
>
> This is made nice and precise by saying that "[]p -> p" and "p -> <>p"
> belongs to G* minus G, the corona of the proper theology of the machine. It
> contains all (3p) truth *about* the machine that the machine cannot
> rationally justified, yet that she can intuit or produce as true in a high
> number of different ways.
>
> OK?
>

Yes, I think so.

It also answers Brent's "why can't we just define <> differently so
that..." whatever he said - the answer being that redefining <> would mean
we got something completely different and probably nonsensical. We could in
theory define a new whatever-you-call-it however Brent thinks that could be
done (I don't think he filled in that minor detail?). But that would be a
huge exercise, and probably impossible given Godel's theorem, because maths
kicks back. (Of course it maths was "just something we made up", this
wouldn't be a problem I guess.)

>
> Now, that is why the "rational believability predicate" acts like a
> believability and not a knowability, and that is why to get a knower, we
> need to impose explicitly the link with the truth: that is, we have to
> apply Theaetetus' idea, and get the new operator []p & p. That one, unlike
> the G box (beweisbar), is NOT translatable in the language of the machine.
> The first person has no name, no 3p description, and that explains why it
> match so nicely with Plotinus universal soul or with the greek inner god.
>
> I can almost hear someone preparing to tell you that the Ancient Greeks
were a bunch of nincompoops. Watch out!


> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> On 7 March 2015 at 21:08, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 07 Mar 2015, at 02:51, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>  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

Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread Jason Resch

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 5:12 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Well, here's a thought. Intelligence/Consciousness as humans experience
> needs lots and lots of spindle cells, or something manufactured that
> imitates it. This is neurobiology, and thus, materialism. Could there be
> other things that do what spindle cells do? Yes. I mean, there could be gas
> clouds or boltzmann brains doing thinking way above our pay grade. But back
> down to earth, we need spindle cells.
>
>
Spindle cells appear to just be shortcuts between more distant brain
regions. I don't think there's anything particularly special special about
them, they appear in animals with very large brains.

Jason



>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John Clark 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 10:25 pm
> Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
>
>
>
>  On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 5:33 PM, meekerdb  wrote:
>
>   > I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.
>>
>
>  He says consciousness is just another name for attention, but computers
> have been paying attention to some things and not others form almost as
> long as they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a billion
> particle collisions per second and each collision produces about one
> megabyte of data, so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in
> operation to store that much information, and it's designed to be in
> operation 20 hours a day 300 days a year. Even a computer can't remember
> all that, Instead the computers looks at each collision and quickly decides
> if there is anything that *might* be worthy of its attention and remembers
> only them.
>
>  So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only remembers
> and pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other
> data is just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information
> to store. There is always the possibility you're throwing away something
> important but there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all.
>
>  > under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving
>> intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.
>
>
>  Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious computer
> than a intelligent non-conscious computer.
>
>John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List

Ah! But I never claimed that neurobiology, also know as materialism, is the 
single, best, explanation for consciousness. It might be the best working 
theory in our case though. I tend to refer to our passions as from the 
amygdala, and our reasoning from the neocortex/cerebrum. Am I correct? I think 
so, but is there room for a more complex process? Yes. The brain could be both 
a computer and a transceiver. But we'd have to detect or infer more evidence or 
plausibility for this. Could different things in the universe be conscious? 
Well, i did weakly refer to Hoyle's The Black Cloud and boltzmann brains. I 
don't hold that dirt, and clouds, and stones, are conscious, as some have 
asserted. I am also a bit doubtful of the Beckenstein Bound which asserts that 
the maximum calculating power of the universe is 1x10^123. I think its an 
estimation, without calculating the solids, liquids, and gases, and plasma, 
that comprise the cosmos. It's not that I am saying I am smarter then a big 
physicist, but that I think I sometimes see logical flaws in what they say. 
This doesn't mean I am smarter, just a bit more observant. 

-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sun, Mar 8, 2015 12:51 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 08 Mar 2015, at 12:12, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:  

   Well, here's a thought. Intelligence/Consciousness as humans experience 
needs lots and lots of spindle cells, or something manufactured that imitates 
it. This is neurobiology, and thus, materialism.   

Not at all. This is neurobiology and thus *mechanism*.   

But then, looking at the detail, (see UDA) mechanism is incompatible with 
materialism.   

Neurobiologist detect functions, or number relations. They don't detect matter. 
Even the Hadron collider does not detect "matter".  

   Could there be other things that do what spindle cells do? Yes. I mean, 
there could be gas clouds or boltzmann brains doing thinking way above our pay 
grade. But back down to earth, we need spindle cells. 

We need what they seem able to do, perhaps.  

Bruno  

-Original Message- 
 From: John Clark < johnkcl...@gmail.com> 
 To: everything-list < everything-list@googlegroups.com> 
 Sent: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 10:25 pm 
 Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness 

 On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 5:33 PM, meekerdb   
wrote: 

 > I like Graziano's theory of consciousness. 

 He says consciousness is just another name for attention, but computers have 
been paying attention to some things and not others form almost as long as 
they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a billion particle 
collisions per second and each collision produces about one megabyte of data, 
so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in operation to store that 
much information, and it's designed to be in operation 20 hours a day 300 days 
a year. Even a computer can't remember all that, Instead the computers looks at 
each collision and quickly decides if there is anything that *might* be worthy 
of its attention and remembers only them.   

 So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only remembers and 
pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other data is 
just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information to store. 
There is always the possibility you're throwing away something important but 
there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all.   

   > under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving 
intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.  

 Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious computer than a 
intelligent non-conscious computer. 

   John K Clark  

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread John Mikes

Brent,
do you (or the authors)  really think Ccness - as we use the term - a
(deeply) HUMAN (or 'thinking' animal?) phenomenon? Are we so special?
I came to believe that 'everything' (list, or not) is a wider connectivity
than what we call 'living' (you may include plants as well) and is
phenomena of the complexity total we call "Nature" (or: existence). If we
take such wider stance, my speculations arrived at a complex
interconnectedness based upon 'relations' all over. (No specifics what to
call a relation - or how to respond to them).
Those relations interplay with whatever 'happens' with/out our knowledge.
I do not find it the ultimate (highest) format of Nature when we humans
THINK.
Granted: we have no indication to go further than such.
HUMAN Ccness a  'subchapter"?




On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 8:06 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>
>
> *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
>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 3/8/2015 7:33 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 11:52 PM, meekerdb > wrote:

>> He [Graziano]says consciousness is just another name for attention,
but computers
have been paying attention to some things and not others form almost as
long as
they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a billion particle
collisions per second and each collision produces about one megabyte of
data, so
you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in operation to store
that much
information, and it's designed to be in operation 20 hours a day 300
days a
year. Even a computer can't remember all that, Instead the computers
looks at
each collision and quickly decides if there is anything that *might* be
worthy
of its attention and remembers only them.
So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only
remembers and
pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other
data is
just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information to
store.
There is always the possibility you're throwing away something
important but
there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all.

> As I understand it the proper analogy would not be selecting which
collisions to analyze in real time, it would
be a level up from that: managing the allocation computer resources (most
of which
are off the LHC site) to the selection process.

I don't understand your distinction. The LHC just can't record a billion collisions a
second, it can only remember about 200 and even that takes a herculean effort, so it
uses a fast but very well crafted algorithm to pick out the 200 out of that billion that
seem most interesting to it and pays attention only to them. Likewise when you spot a
Saber Toothed Tiger you pay attention only to the sense data that is related to the
tiger, so even though it's within your field of view you ignore the fact that your shoes
don't seem to be polished. And it's the same with internal signals, you stop thinking
about Plato's philosophy and stop reminiscing about the birthday party you had when you
were ten the instant you spot the tiger and devote the entire computational resources of
your brain to matters that you judge to be of more immediate concern.

But, as I understand Graziano, consciousness consists in having another higher level model
that can record that you're now paying attention to the tiger. So afterward you can
report,"And that's when I noticed the tiger and..."

Brent

Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness


On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:

I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is either
a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence within
constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be subject to
natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines without
consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).

Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?


Because doing it makes the machine conscious.


It's valid as psychological theory, but it does not address the Hard
Problem. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is more to be
gained from investigating the Easy Problem.


Yes, it comports with my idea that the "hard problem" will be dissolved by engineering 
solutions.


Brent

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 08 Mar 2015, at 15:42, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes  
 wrote:

>> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural  
selection can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so  
consciousness is either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or  
it's a spandrel.

> If you assume materialism.

In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as  
well (and as poorly) as any other theory. That's why all non- 
materialistic theories of consciousness are such a colossal waste of  
time, they're so bad they're not even wrong.

The current computationalist theory of consciousness does not assume  
the primitiveness of the physical reality, only some stable Turing  
universal aspect of it.

The only materialist theory of consciousness I know are von Neuman  
wave collapse by consciousness, O r Penrose gravity/consciousness  
variant. Those are non mechanist (non computationalist) theories.

Hamerov theory, where the mind needs a quantum computer/brain does not  
explicitly invoke a primitive material universe, either.

Everett is neutral and does not address the question, and he missed  
the fact that it has to extend the FPI on the whole of the sigma_1  
reality. His approach is valid with computationalism, but incomplete.

Primitive matter fails. It is phlogiston. Arithmetic explains why some  
number are hallucinated by some true and stable, or false, and  
sometimes persisting, measurable number relations. Some explanations  
are testable.

Bruno

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 08 Mar 2015, at 17:23, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 3:42 PM, John Clark   
wrote:
On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes  
 wrote:

>> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural  
selection can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so  
consciousness is either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or  
it's a spandrel.

> If you assume materialism.

In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as  
well (and as poorly) as any other theory.

It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability. A theory  
can be falsifiable without assuming materialism. In fact, most  
scientific theories do not have to assume materialism at all. They  
just make successful predictions about future observations.

That's why all non-materialistic theories of consciousness are such  
a colossal waste of time, they're so bad they're not even wrong.

Just like the materialistic ones.

Well, the materialist theories just fail. That *is* the mind-body  
problem. That is the hard problem of consciousness. The first hard  
thing to do to solve it, when assuming mechanism, is to abandon the  
concept of matter, which is really only a "god-of-the-gap" in both the  
explanation of mind and of matter (or to abandon the notion of  
consciousness, of course)

The problem of the current institutionalized religions is that they  
take for granted Aristotle's primary matter. But even for Aristotle  
himself, this was a ... focus of attention on what happens nearby, the  
greeks already got the "reversal". Some like Xeusippes and the  
(neo)pythagoreans were open to a (simple?) mathematical reality.

Materialism fails, because there is no evidence for primitive matter,  
not does the notion of primary explains anything. Matter, like God  
(when used in argument) are concept equivalent with "now shut up and  
obey the rules".
Matter can be seen as a simplifying assumption, formally equivalent to  
a strong physical induction, which in particular is violated a priori  
with comp. They introduce a simplifying identity link between 1p and  
3p, which is not verify in arithmetic, nor in the SWE actually.

And I use "materialism" in its weaker sense of metaphysical or  
theologic doctrine assuming a primitive material reality. By  
"primitive" I always mean something which is estimated as having to be  
assumed.

Quite the contrary with elementary arithmetic or Turing equivalent. It  
is a Turing universal structure, and in a simple sense, it can be  
shown that it has indeed to be postulated. You cannot reduce it at  
anything which is not already Turing equivalent with it, and with  
Church thesis, this is of a considerable generality, yet a highly non  
trivial obeying precise theoretical laws.

The second recursion theorem of Kleene provides an abstract biology,  
an abstract psychology/theology, and an abstract physics, on a plateau.

The machine already explains all this, the problem comes more from the  
humans who don't listen. Judson Web already saw that machines can  
refute the Gödelian argument by Lucas, "against mechanism". Penrose  
argument is a variant of Lucas, and again the machine can refute it.  
Logicians knows that when they care about the question.

Bruno

Telmo.

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 6:31 PM, John Clark  wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
> >> In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as
>>> well (and as poorly) as any other theory.
>>>
>>
>> > It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability.
>>
>
> You sound like Bruno, for the last 3 years in every other post he keeps
> telling me that I confuse this peepee thing with that peepee thing.
>

These are both well-defined and widely known concepts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Maybe wikipedia should tag them as "pee pee things"? I don't know. I assume
you accept wikipedia as a reasonable gauge of the credibility of terms,
given that you keep using it to make fun of Bruno.

> But never mind, in order for me to falsify your theory I've got to show
> that the numbers I come up with in my lab don't match the numbers your
> theory predicts, but everything in my lab is material so if your theory is
> non-material there is nothing I can do.
>

Mater doesn't have to be fundamental for your lab to work. We can do the
verification while remaining agnostic on other hypothesis (as matter being
fundamental). Without the ability to test hypothesis independently, science
would have been vastly less successful.

> For example, if your theory is that the planets move in their orbits
> because invisible angels push them in a way that is identical to Newton's
> laws then I can't prove it wrong,
>

Correct, but then this theory in unfalsifiable and thus not a valid
scientific theory. We agree, you just have an allergy for certain
terminology. I gave up a long ago on trying to figure out what terminology
you find acceptable or not, or for what reasons.

> but if your theory says the angels are visible then it is falsifiable
> because then it would be material, then it would interact with
> electromagnetic waves. Even Dark Matter is a materialistic theory, yes Dark
> Matter doesn't emit or absorb electromagnetic waves but it does change its
> trajectory, and this change in light can be detected by material
> telescopes, but angels that do nothing  but mimic Newton's laws can't be.
>

I think you misunderstand what materialism means. The non-materialistic
stance does not require denying the phenomenology of matter. It just
requires denying that matter is fundamental and that everything (including
consciousness) is a byproduct of fundamental particles interacting.

Science does not require mater to be fundamental. It just requires the
universe to behave in some predictable fashion, independently of what the
universe is.

I am still waiting for your comment on this, by the way:

>
> That's why all non-materialistic theories of consciousness are such a
> colossal waste of time, they're so bad they're not even wrong.
>

Just like the materialistic ones.

Telmo.

>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> But then, looking at the detail, (see UDA) mechanism is incompatible with
> materialism.


And if anybody wants to learn more about "UDA" then they can always look it
up on Google, go ahead and click on the link below and see what you get:

https://www.google.com/search?q=UDA&lr=&as_qdr=all&ei=L4j8VOSZEJLvgwSmzYDgDg&start=10&sa=N#as_qdr=all&q=UDA

Or they can look it up on Wikipedia, just click the next link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uda

I urge people to look at both links.

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>> In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as well
>> (and as poorly) as any other theory.
>>
>
> > It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability.
>

You sound like Bruno, for the last 3 years in every other post he keeps
telling me that I confuse this peepee thing with that peepee thing. But
never mind, in order for me to falsify your theory I've got to show that
the numbers I come up with in my lab don't match the numbers your theory
predicts, but everything in my lab is material so if your theory is
non-material there is nothing I can do. For example, if your theory is that
the planets move in their orbits because invisible angels push them in a
way that is identical to Newton's laws then I can't prove it wrong, but if
your theory says the angels are visible then it is falsifiable because then
it would be material, then it would interact with electromagnetic waves.
Even Dark Matter is a materialistic theory, yes Dark Matter doesn't emit or
absorb electromagnetic waves but it does change its trajectory, and this
change in light can be detected by material telescopes, but angels that do
nothing  but mimic Newton's laws can't be.

 John K Clark

>

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On 08 Mar 2015, at 12:12, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:

Well, here's a thought. Intelligence/Consciousness as humans  
experience needs lots and lots of spindle cells, or something  
manufactured that imitates it. This is neurobiology, and thus,  
materialism.

Not at all. This is neurobiology and thus *mechanism*.

But then, looking at the detail, (see UDA) mechanism is incompatible  
with materialism.

Neurobiologist detect functions, or number relations. They don't  
detect matter. Even the Hadron collider does not detect "matter".

Could there be other things that do what spindle cells do? Yes. I  
mean, there could be gas clouds or boltzmann brains doing thinking  
way above our pay grade. But back down to earth, we need spindle  
cells.

We need what they seem able to do, perhaps.

Bruno

-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 10:25 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 5:33 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

> I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

He says consciousness is just another name for attention, but  
computers have been paying attention to some things and not others  
form almost as long as they've existed. For example the LHC produces  
nearly a billion particle collisions per second and each collision  
produces about one megabyte of data, so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each  
second the LHC is in operation to store that much information, and  
it's designed to be in operation 20 hours a day 300 days a year.  
Even a computer can't remember all that, Instead the computers looks  
at each collision and quickly decides if there is anything that  
*might* be worthy of its attention and remembers only them.

So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only  
remembers and pays attention to what happened in about 200  
collisions, all the other data is just thrown away. Even so that's  
still a HUGE amount of information to store. There is always the  
possibility you're throwing away something important but there is no  
alternative, you just can't keep it all.

> under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving  
intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.

Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious  
computer than a intelligent non-conscious computer.

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness



On 08 Mar 2015, at 10:26, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb  wrote:

I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural  
selection
can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness  
is either

a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.  But under
Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving  
intelligence within
constraints of limited computational resources.  So it would be  
subject to
natural selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines  
without

consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).


Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of
attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine?
It's valid as psychological theory, but it does not address the Hard
Problem.


I agree. And he eliminates the 'consciousness without attention',  
which is important for many conscious states, and indeed most of those  
close to "spiritual one".





That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is more to be
gained from investigating the Easy Problem.


OK.

Bruno





Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness



On 07 Mar 2015, at 23:33, meekerdb wrote:


I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural  
selection can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so  
consciousness is either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or  
it's a spandrel.  But under Graziano's theory it's a way of  
augmenting or improving intelligence within constraints of limited  
computational resources.  So it would be subject to natural  
selection.  It also shows how to make intelligence machines without  
consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).


It is consistent with the machine's theory of consciousness, where  
being conscious is a bet on <>t, which can lead to a self-speed-up,  
and gives a role to consciousness, even a quite important one a  
posteriori.
Self-acceleration can probably be related to economizing resources, I  
guess.


It is also close to the old theory of perception by Helmholtz, where a  
perception is an automated inductive inference.


Bruno





Brent

On 3/7/2015 5:45 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Isn't this the Graziano fellow who back in Dec. 2013 write an  
article in AEON about uploading? Ah! yes he is.


http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/virtual-afterlives-will-transform-humanity/


-Original Message-
From: meekerdb 
To: EveryThing 
Sent: Fri, Mar 6, 2015 8:06 pm
Subject: 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
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Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?



On 07 Mar 2015, at 09:36, LizR wrote:


I thought <>P meant P was possible?



In the alethic interpretation of modal logic, <> means possible, and  
[] means necessary.
In the temporal interpretation of modal logic, <> means sometime, and  
[] means always.
In the locus interpretation of modal logic, <> means somewhere, and []  
means everywhere.
In the deontic interpretation of modal logic, <> means permitted, and  
[] means obligatory.

etc.

Note that all "<>" interpretation are form of possibility (alethic,  
temporal, locative, ...).


In our interview of the Löbian machine, <> is translated in arithmetic  
with Gödel beweisbar predicate:


In particular: <>t is consistency.
<>t = ~[] f = ~ beweisbar ("0 = 1"), with "0=1" being a number coding  
the sentence "0 = s(0)".


Beweisbar(x) = Ey proof(y, x), that is: it exist a proof (y) of x.  
Proof must be mechanically checkable, and so, like sentences, they can  
be coded into numbers, and the predicate proof just decode the proof  
named by y and looks if it proves the sentence coded by x.


<>t = ~[] f means intuitively, as said by PA: "PA does not prove the  
false", or "PA is consistent".


Similarly and more generally <>p means (PA + p) is consistent, or "p  
is consistent with PA", or PA does not prove "0= 1" when assuming  
p, ...  as formulated in the language of PA.





If so wouldn't P imply <>P? Or have I misremembered what <>P means?


Note that p -> <>p is the contrapositive of [] ~p  ->  ~p.

As a axiom, it is valid for all p, so, as an axiom, p -> <>p and []p - 
> p are equivalent.


But []p -> p cannot be an axiom of the modal logic of provability (G),  
that is when [] is the arithmetical beweisbar, given that []f -> f  
cannot be proven by PA (PA would prove ~[]f, that <>t, that is, its  
own consistency. PA is consistent, and cannot prove its own consistency.


So we don't have []p -> p, nor p -> <>p.

In fact, by Löb's theorem, we have that []p -> p is provable if and  
only p itself is provable. And the machine can prove that: []([]p ->  
p) -> []p (and the reverse which is trivial, if the machine proves p,  
she can prove that anything implies p).


"Consistency of p" is a form of possibility.

In fact "p -> <>p"  *is* true, for all p, but the machine cannot prove  
all such formula, like she can't prove for all p that  []p -> p.


This is made nice and precise by saying that "[]p -> p" and "p -> <>p"  
belongs to G* minus G, the corona of the proper theology of the  
machine. It contains all (3p) truth *about* the machine that the  
machine cannot rationally justified, yet that she can intuit or  
produce as true in a high number of different ways.


OK?

Now, that is why the "rational believability predicate" acts like a  
believability and not a knowability, and that is why to get a knower,  
we need to impose explicitly the link with the truth: that is, we have  
to apply Theaetetus' idea, and get the new operator []p & p. That one,  
unlike the G box (beweisbar), is NOT translatable in the language of  
the machine. The first person has no name, no 3p description, and that  
explains why it match so nicely with Plotinus universal soul or with  
the greek inner god.


Bruno






On 7 March 2015 at 21:08, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 07 Mar 2015, at 02:51, meekerdb wrote:


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?



The modal logic are imposed by the fact that he box (and thus the  
diamond) are the one describing the self-reference, by Solovay  
theorem. The box is Gödel's beweisbar. It is an arithmetical  
predicate. We really assume only Robinson (and Peano) arithmetic. We  
don't have p -> <>p, because this would mean in particular t -> <>t,  
and if that was a theorem of G, then <>t would be provable,  
contradicting Gödel's incompleteness.


All modal logics are extracted from arithmetic. They are shortcuts  
provided by Solovay's completeness theorem of G and G*, and the  
Theaetetus' variants.


Bruno






Brent

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 3:42 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
> >> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
>>> can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
>>> either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.
>>>
>>
>> > If you assume materialism.
>>
>
> In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as well
> (and as poorly) as any other theory.
>

It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability. A theory can be
falsifiable without assuming materialism. In fact, most scientific theories
do not have to assume materialism at all. They just make successful
predictions about future observations.


> That's why all non-materialistic theories of consciousness are such a
> colossal waste of time, they're so bad they're not even wrong.
>

Just like the materialistic ones.

Telmo.


>
>   John K Clark
>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
>> can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
>> either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.
>>
>
> > If you assume materialism.
>

In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as well
(and as poorly) as any other theory. That's why all non-materialistic
theories of consciousness are such a colossal waste of time, they're so bad
they're not even wrong.

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 11:52 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>> He [Graziano]says consciousness is just another name for attention, but
>> computers have been paying attention to some things and not others form
>> almost as long as they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a
>> billion particle collisions per second and each collision produces about
>> one megabyte of data, so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in
>> operation to store that much information, and it's designed to be in
>> operation 20 hours a day 300 days a year. Even a computer can't remember
>> all that, Instead the computers looks at each collision and quickly decides
>> if there is anything that *might* be worthy of its attention and remembers
>> only them.
>> So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only remembers
>> and pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other
>> data is just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information
>> to store. There is always the possibility you're throwing away something
>> important but there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all.
>
>
> > As I understand it the proper analogy would not be selecting which
> collisions to analyze in real time, it would be a level up from that:
> managing the allocation computer resources (most of which are off the LHC
> site) to the selection process.
>

I don't understand your distinction. The LHC just can't record a billion
collisions a second, it can only remember about 200 and even that takes a
herculean effort, so it uses a fast but very well crafted algorithm to pick
out the 200 out of that billion that seem most interesting to it and pays
attention only to them. Likewise when you spot a Saber Toothed Tiger you
pay attention only to the sense data that is related to the tiger, so even
though it's within your field of view you ignore the fact that your shoes
don't seem to be polished. And it's the same with internal signals, you
stop thinking about Plato's philosophy and stop reminiscing about the
birthday party you had when you were ten the instant you spot the tiger and
devote the entire computational resources of your brain to matters that you
judge to be of more immediate concern.

  John K Clark






>
>
>
>  > under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving
>> intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.
>
>
>  Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious computer
> than a intelligent non-conscious computer.
>
>
> Yes, an so consciousness would be "visible" to natural selection as an
> improvement in intelligence.
>
> Brent
>
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 11:33 PM, meekerdb  wrote:

>  I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.
>
> http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/
>
> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection
> can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is
> either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel.
>

If you assume materialism.

Telmo.


>   But under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving
> intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.  So it
> would be subject to natural selection.  It also shows how to make
> intelligence machines without consciousness (albeit less efficient ones).
>
> Brent
>
>
> On 3/7/2015 5:45 AM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
>
> Isn't this the Graziano fellow who back in Dec. 2013 write an article in
> AEON about uploading? Ah! yes he is.
>
>
> http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/virtual-afterlives-will-transform-humanity/
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: meekerdb  
> To: EveryThing 
> 
> Sent: Fri, Mar 6, 2015 8:06 pm
> Subject: 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
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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

2015-03-08 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List

Well, here's a thought. Intelligence/Consciousness as humans experience needs 
lots and lots of spindle cells, or something manufactured that imitates it. 
This is neurobiology, and thus, materialism. Could there be other things that 
do what spindle cells do? Yes. I mean, there could be gas clouds or boltzmann 
brains doing thinking way above our pay grade. But back down to earth, we need 
spindle cells. 

-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sat, Mar 7, 2015 10:25 pm
Subject: Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 5:33 PM, meekerdb  wrote:   

> I like Graziano's theory of consciousness.

He says consciousness is just another name for attention, but computers have 
been paying attention to some things and not others form almost as long as 
they've existed. For example the LHC produces nearly a billion particle 
collisions per second and each collision produces about one megabyte of data, 
so you'd need 200,000 DVDs each second the LHC is in operation to store that 
much information, and it's designed to be in operation 20 hours a day 300 days 
a year. Even a computer can't remember all that, Instead the computers looks at 
each collision and quickly decides if there is anything that *might* be worthy 
of its attention and remembers only them. 

So out of the billion collisions each second the computer only remembers and 
pays attention to what happened in about 200 collisions, all the other data is 
just thrown away. Even so that's still a HUGE amount of information to store. 
There is always the possibility you're throwing away something important but 
there is no alternative, you just can't keep it all. 

 > under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving 
intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources.

Is so then it would be easier to make a intelligent conscious computer than a 
intelligent non-conscious computer.   

  John K Clark

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Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness