Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Seems like faith to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the x you refer to? There is a subtle difference. It is possible to have faith in something stupid and still be consistent. For example, I could say that I have faith that God will answer my prayers regardless of whether he has ever answered any prayers before in the history of the world. However, I think most religious people would say that they have faith that God will answer their prayers because that it what God does and has done in the past. In so saying, they are making an empirically verifiable claim, at least in theory. They can be invited to come up with a test to support their belief, which can be as stringent as they like; for example, they might allow only historical analysis because God would not comply with any experiment designed to test him. I suspect that no such test would have any impact on their beliefs because at bottom they are just based on blind faith, but given that they do not volunteer this to begin with, it shows them up as inconsistent and hypocritical. Stathis Papaioannou OK. But I'd say that in fact almost no one believes something without any evidence, i.e. on *blind* faith. Religious faith is usually belief based on *selected* evidence; it is faith because it is contrary to the total evidence. Bruno seems to use faith somewhat differently: to mean what I would call a working hypothesis. Brent Meeker This gets us to the question that has been pondered here before, a question that is more appropriate to the general metaphysical/epistemological thoughts of this List: What does it mean to believe something? I'd say that you can't really know if you or someone else really believes something unless you/they act on it. An act could simply be investing some of our precious limited time to look at its consequences. I'd say that for that non-trivial period of time in your life, you had at least somewhat of a belief in it. It is not a trivial thing to use up some of your life doing something (at least in my worldview). I think this shows how Bruno's belief can be brought equal in essence (if not necessarily the quantity of investment) to any other belief. Evidence is relative, and I think is important in practical terms, but it is not essential to the definition of belief. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
dan9el wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Seems like faith to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the x you refer to? There is a subtle difference. It is possible to have faith in something stupid and still be consistent. For example, I could say that I have faith that God will answer my prayers regardless of whether he has ever answered any prayers before in the history of the world. However, I think most religious people would say that they have faith that God will answer their prayers because that it what God does and has done in the past. In so saying, they are making an empirically verifiable claim, at least in theory. They can be invited to come up with a test to support their belief, which can be as stringent as they like; for example, they might allow only historical analysis because God would not comply with any experiment designed to test him. I suspect that no such test would have any impact on their beliefs because at bottom they are just based on blind faith, but given that they do not volunteer this to begin with, it shows them up as inconsistent and hypocritical. Stathis Papaioannou OK. But I'd say that in fact almost no one believes something without any evidence, i.e. on *blind* faith. Religious faith is usually belief based on *selected* evidence; it is faith because it is contrary to the total evidence. Bruno seems to use faith somewhat differently: to mean what I would call a working hypothesis. Brent Meeker This gets us to the question that has been pondered here before, a question that is more appropriate to the general metaphysical/epistemological thoughts of this List: What does it mean to believe something? I'd say that you can't really know if you or someone else really believes something unless you/they act on it. An act could simply be investing some of our precious limited time to look at its consequences. I'd say that for that non-trivial period of time in your life, you had at least somewhat of a belief in it. It is not a trivial thing to use up some of your life doing something (at least in my worldview). I think this shows how Bruno's belief can be brought equal in essence (if not necessarily the quantity of investment) to any other belief. Evidence is relative, and I think is important in practical terms, but it is not essential to the definition of belief. Tom I agree that action is the measure of belief (recognizing that speech is also a form of action). I didn't say that evidence was of the essence of belief. I just observed that belief without any evidence at all is very rare. Even people who hold completely crazy beliefs, like their toaster gives them orders they must obey, can usually give reasons for their belief. It's just a matter of scope and relevance of evidence. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 11-nov.-06, à 19:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 11-nov.-06, à 01:09, 1Z a écrit : No, because there are no possible worlds where (2^32582657)-1 is not a prime number. This is for me a typical arithmetical realist statement. Most philosophers who use the possible worlds terminology do nothing PW's actually exist. Of course it is AR in the sense of appealing to mind-independent truth. And of course it remains unclear whether your AR is a claim about truth, or about existence. It depends on the sense of the term existence. But frankly such discussion is premature. It is probably a 1004 fallacy, like those who were condemning the old quantum mechanics, after its birth, because it is philosophically unclear. I think you should study the comp-theory before arguing about its interpretation. You are introducing nuances, like the difference between 2 exists is true and '2 exists' which, although not uninteresting per se, are too much involved considering the existence of a precise (refutable) new theory of mind/matter. You still want it both ways: keeping comp and primary material reality, but I have already argued in detail that this cannot work in any reasonable way. No you haven't. You argument requires an assumption of Platonism as well as computationalism. Computationalism alone is compatible with materialism. I need only A or ~A. You can call it classical computationalism. I prefer to call it comp, because the reasoning goes through even with weaken form of classical logic (that is I can use the intuitionist excluded middle principle for arithmetic instead: ~~(A v ~A)). I do believe the formalist philosophy has been shown dead wrong after Godel, but in case you have trouble with what I call platonism or even plotinism you could for all practical purpose adopt formalism temporarily. In that case I will say that an ideal lobian machine (in her chatty mode) is an arithmetical platonist if she asserts A v ~A for any arithmetical proposition A. This could help to proceed, and then we can come back on discussing on the interpretation problem of the formalism. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor writes: Brent Meeker wrote: OK. But I'd say that in fact almost no one believes something without any evidence, i.e. on *blind* faith. Religious faith is usually belief based on *selected* evidence; it is faith because it is contrary to the total evidence. Bruno seems to use faith somewhat differently: to mean what I would call a working hypothesis. Brent Meeker This gets us to the question that has been pondered here before, a question that is more appropriate to the general metaphysical/epistemological thoughts of this List: What does it mean to believe something? I'd say that you can't really know if you or someone else really believes something unless you/they act on it. An act could simply be investing some of our precious limited time to look at its consequences. I'd say that for that non-trivial period of time in your life, you had at least somewhat of a belief in it. It is not a trivial thing to use up some of your life doing something (at least in my worldview). I think this shows how Bruno's belief can be brought equal in essence (if not necessarily the quantity of investment) to any other belief. Evidence is relative, and I think is important in practical terms, but it is not essential to the definition of belief. Belief could probably be entirely described in social, behavioural and psychological terms. But problems arise when you consider *only* this aspect of belief, ignoring the question of whether there is a basis for saying some beliefs are true and others false. This does not just apply to religious beliefs but is at the basis of the theories espoused by the sort of secular academics shown up in recent years by the Sokal hoax. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 11-nov.-06, à 01:09, 1Z a écrit : No, because there are no possible worlds where (2^32582657)-1 is not a prime number. This is for me a typical arithmetical realist statement. Causality , as opposed to material implication, requires contingency. Yes. And grosso modo there will be as many notion of causality that there are possible modal logic. Causality, like matter, consciousness, etc. are higher order notions. Causality is as different from material implication that B(p - q) is different from p - q, for many possible logical systems. You still want it both ways: keeping comp and primary material reality, but I have already argued in detail that this cannot work in any reasonable way. Postulating matter cannot explain appearance of matter (cf UDA, but we are in a loop, I think). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 11-nov.-06, à 01:09, 1Z a écrit : No, because there are no possible worlds where (2^32582657)-1 is not a prime number. This is for me a typical arithmetical realist statement. Most philosophers who use the possible worlds terminology do nothing PW's actually exist. Of course it is AR in the sense of appealing to mind-independent truth. And of course it remains unclear whether your AR is a claim about truth, or about existence. You still want it both ways: keeping comp and primary material reality, but I have already argued in detail that this cannot work in any reasonable way. No you haven't. You argument requires an assumption of Platonism as well as computationalism. Computationalism alone is compatible with materialism. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Seems like faith to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the x you refer to? There is a subtle difference. It is possible to have faith in something stupid and still be consistent. For example, I could say that I have faith that God will answer my prayers regardless of whether he has ever answered any prayers before in the history of the world. However, I think most religious people would say that they have faith that God will answer their prayers because that it what God does and has done in the past. In so saying, they are making an empirically verifiable claim, at least in theory. They can be invited to come up with a test to support their belief, which can be as stringent as they like; for example, they might allow only historical analysis because God would not comply with any experiment designed to test him. I suspect that no such test would have any impact on their beliefs because at bottom they are just based on blind faith, but given that they do not volunteer this to begin with, it shows them up as inconsistent and hypocritical. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Johnathan Corgan writes: That's because for hundreds, if not thousands, of years their theologians have had to explain why their God is invisible, unnoticable, incompehensible, and undetectable. So a null experimental outcome, like the recent studies of the efficacy of healing prayer, is ho-hum. For a rather lengthy, straight-faced treatment of intercessory prayer and victims of amputation: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm Great article! I initially thought that it was written by some poor, honest Christian genuinely struggling with the logical consequences of his beliefs. But then such a person would quickly either fall back on blind faith or reject his beliefs as false, so there can't be many around. On the other hand, I once spoke to someone who claimed he saw God miraculously fill a cavity in a tooth with amalgam while the faithful were invited to observe with little flashlights, so I guess someone will say that God *does* heal amputees. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 00:30 +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm Great article! I initially thought that it was written by some poor, honest Christian genuinely struggling with the logical consequences of his beliefs. But then such a person would quickly either fall back on blind faith or reject his beliefs as false, so there can't be many around. One thing that stands out about this author is his even-handed, non-strident walk through of his argument, taking claims regarding prayer and statements in the Christian bible at face value. There is no politicizing, sarcasm, or innuendo. It's almost as if he very strongly wants these claims to be true but is forced to conclude they are not through irrefutable logic. We certainly could use more people this eloquent in their presentation! -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? It means they don't non-physically exist either. Mathematical claims about existence can be true of false, but so can fictional claims like Harry Potter exists in Middle Earth Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Fantasy worlds don't exist -- that's why they are called fantasy worlds, -- Licornes don't exist, and Licornes' don't exist in fantasy worlds. Meaning is *not* the same thing as reference (Bedeutung). That is the box the anti-Platonist has climbed out of. Some terms have referents (non-linguistic items they denote), others have only sense (Sinn). Sense and reference are two dimensions aspects of meaning, but not every term has both. Sense is internal to langauge, it a relationship between a word/concept and others. It is like a dictionary definition, whereas reference is like defining a word by pointing and saying it is one of those. But no-one has ever defined a Licorne that way, since there is no Licorne to be pointed to. Mathematical concepts are defined in terms of other mathematical concepts. Mathematical reference is impossible and unnecessary. Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). Saying that Licornes exist in a fantasy world is a cumbersome way of saying they don't literally exist. Well, numbers don't literally kick back. They don't interact causally with my reality. I am just trying to understand what you say. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Seems like faith to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the x you refer to? There is a subtle difference. It is possible to have faith in something stupid and still be consistent. For example, I could say that I have faith that God will answer my prayers regardless of whether he has ever answered any prayers before in the history of the world. However, I think most religious people would say that they have faith that God will answer their prayers because that it what God does and has done in the past. In so saying, they are making an empirically verifiable claim, at least in theory. They can be invited to come up with a test to support their belief, which can be as stringent as they like; for example, they might allow only historical analysis because God would not comply with any experiment designed to test him. I suspect that no such test would have any impact on their beliefs because at bottom they are just based on blind faith, but given that they do not volunteer this to begin with, it shows them up as inconsistent and hypocritical. Stathis Papaioannou OK. But I'd say that in fact almost no one believes something without any evidence, i.e. on *blind* faith. Religious faith is usually belief based on *selected* evidence; it is faith because it is contrary to the total evidence. Bruno seems to use faith somewhat differently: to mean what I would call a working hypothesis. Brent Meeker This gets us to the question that has been pondered here before, a question that is more appropriate to the general metaphysical/epistemological thoughts of this List: What does it mean to believe something? I'd say that you can't really know if you or someone else really believes something unless you/they act on it. An act could simply be investing some of our precious limited time to look at its consequences. I'd say that for that non-trivial period of time in your life, you had at least somewhat of a belief in it. It is not a trivial thing to use up some of your life doing something (at least in my worldview). I think this shows how Bruno's belief can be brought equal in essence (if not necessarily the quantity of investment) to any other belief. Evidence is relative, and I think is important in practical terms, but it is not essential to the definition of belief. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? It means they don't non-physically exist either. Mathematical claims about existence can be true of false, but so can fictional claims like Harry Potter exists in Middle Earth Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Fantasy worlds don't exist -- that's why they are called fantasy worlds, -- Licornes don't exist, and Licornes' don't exist in fantasy worlds. Meaning is *not* the same thing as reference (Bedeutung). That is the box the anti-Platonist has climbed out of. Some terms have referents (non-linguistic items they denote), others have only sense (Sinn). Sense and reference are two dimensions aspects of meaning, but not every term has both. Sense is internal to langauge, it a relationship between a word/concept and others. It is like a dictionary definition, whereas reference is like defining a word by pointing and saying it is one of those. But no-one has ever defined a Licorne that way, since there is no Licorne to be pointed to. Mathematical concepts are defined in terms of other mathematical concepts. Mathematical reference is impossible and unnecessary. Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). Saying that Licornes exist in a fantasy world is a cumbersome way of saying they don't literally exist. Well, numbers don't literally kick back. They don't interact causally with my reality. What about: If (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. In all possible worlds where I always keep my promises, I will not eat my hat. This is causally a result of the fact that (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number. Tom I think a clue is in the fact that you picked (2^32582657 -1) instead of 7. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? It means they don't non-physically exist either. Mathematical claims about existence can be true of false, but so can fictional claims like Harry Potter exists in Middle Earth Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Fantasy worlds don't exist -- that's why they are called fantasy worlds, -- Licornes don't exist, and Licornes' don't exist in fantasy worlds. Meaning is *not* the same thing as reference (Bedeutung). That is the box the anti-Platonist has climbed out of. Some terms have referents (non-linguistic items they denote), others have only sense (Sinn). Sense and reference are two dimensions aspects of meaning, but not every term has both. Sense is internal to langauge, it a relationship between a word/concept and others. It is like a dictionary definition, whereas reference is like defining a word by pointing and saying it is one of those. But no-one has ever defined a Licorne that way, since there is no Licorne to be pointed to. Mathematical concepts are defined in terms of other mathematical concepts. Mathematical reference is impossible and unnecessary. Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). Saying that Licornes exist in a fantasy world is a cumbersome way of saying they don't literally exist. Well, numbers don't literally kick back. They don't interact causally with my reality. What about: If (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. In all possible worlds where I always keep my promises, I will not eat my hat. This is causally a result of the fact that (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number. Tom I think a clue is in the fact that you picked (2^32582657 -1) instead of 7. Brent Meeker OK. I'll go with 7. Compare If 7 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. vs. If this table holds up my coffee cup, I will not eat my hat. Signed, Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones writes: Most people would not say yes doctor to a process that recorded their brain on a tape a left it in a filing cabinet. Yet, that is all you can get out of the timeless world of Plato's heaven (programme vs process). Why? Plato's heaven is full of mathematical process, which looks non dynamical from outside, like a block universe, but can be dynamical from inside. If you can show that subjective experience exists in Platonia, you can use that to show that some things will seem dynamical. If you can show that there a dynamic processes in Platonia, you can use that to show there are running computations and therefore minds, and therefore experiences. But can you do both without circularity? That subjective experience exists in Platonia is shown by Maudlin-type arguments, although admittedly there are several other ways around this such as rejecting computationalism. That dynamic processes can occur in the absence of traditional linear time is less problematic. You haven't come up with a test that would tell me whether I am living in a properly implemented block universe or a linear universe, and I think it is impossible in principle to come up with such a test. That does not mean we are living in a block universe, but it does mean we would not know it if we were. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? It means they don't non-physically exist either. Mathematical claims about existence can be true of false, but so can fictional claims like Harry Potter exists in Middle Earth Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Fantasy worlds don't exist -- that's why they are called fantasy worlds, -- Licornes don't exist, and Licornes' don't exist in fantasy worlds. Meaning is *not* the same thing as reference (Bedeutung). That is the box the anti-Platonist has climbed out of. Some terms have referents (non-linguistic items they denote), others have only sense (Sinn). Sense and reference are two dimensions aspects of meaning, but not every term has both. Sense is internal to langauge, it a relationship between a word/concept and others. It is like a dictionary definition, whereas reference is like defining a word by pointing and saying it is one of those. But no-one has ever defined a Licorne that way, since there is no Licorne to be pointed to. Mathematical concepts are defined in terms of other mathematical concepts. Mathematical reference is impossible and unnecessary. Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). Saying that Licornes exist in a fantasy world is a cumbersome way of saying they don't literally exist. Well, numbers don't literally kick back. They don't interact causally with my reality. What about: If (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. In all possible worlds where I always keep my promises, I will not eat my hat. This is causally a result of the fact that (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number. No, because there are no possible worlds where (2^32582657)-1 is not a prime number. Causality , as opposed to material implication, requires contingency. So reality requires contingency. This is getting circular. Tom I am just trying to understand what you say. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? It means they don't non-physically exist either. Mathematical claims about existence can be true of false, but so can fictional claims like Harry Potter exists in Middle Earth Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Fantasy worlds don't exist -- that's why they are called fantasy worlds, -- Licornes don't exist, and Licornes' don't exist in fantasy worlds. Meaning is *not* the same thing as reference (Bedeutung). That is the box the anti-Platonist has climbed out of. Some terms have referents (non-linguistic items they denote), others have only sense (Sinn). Sense and reference are two dimensions aspects of meaning, but not every term has both. Sense is internal to langauge, it a relationship between a word/concept and others. It is like a dictionary definition, whereas reference is like defining a word by pointing and saying it is one of those. But no-one has ever defined a Licorne that way, since there is no Licorne to be pointed to. Mathematical concepts are defined in terms of other mathematical concepts. Mathematical reference is impossible and unnecessary. Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). Saying that Licornes exist in a fantasy world is a cumbersome way of saying they don't literally exist. Well, numbers don't literally kick back. They don't interact causally with my reality. What about: If (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. In all possible worlds where I always keep my promises, I will not eat my hat. This is causally a result of the fact that (2^32582657)-1 is a prime number. Tom I think a clue is in the fact that you picked (2^32582657 -1) instead of 7. Brent Meeker OK. I'll go with 7. Compare If 7 is a prime number, I will not eat my hat. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/mat-imp.htm http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-relevance/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones (1Z) a écrit : Most people would not say yes doctor to a process that recorded their brain on a tape a left it in a filing cabinet. Yet, that is all you can get out of the timeless world of Plato's heaven (programme vs process). Why? Plato's heaven is full of mathematical process, which looks non dynamical from outside, like a block universe, but can be dynamical from inside. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. Your longer metaphysics post begs many of the questions addressed in this list. Personally: I have no theory, just an argument showing that if we take the yes doctor seriously enough then there is no primitive physical objects AT ALL(**), and then I show how to recover constructively the stable appearances of physical objects, and this in a precise empirically verifiable way(*). (And to be sure, I have always expected to get a refutation, but instead the theory has been confirmed until now. Of course QM, loop gravity and string theories are still in advance for the physical stuff but (a)comp is in advance for the explanation of the quanta-qualia relations, (and more generally the relation between all point of views (n-persons, hypostases) I would say). Bruno (*) This makes me an empirist, but I do not subscribe to math is physics form of empiry. It belongs more on the type physics is mathematics as seen from some internal observer-universal machine. (**) More precisely: such a notion of primitive physical objects can no more be invoked for justifying the appearances of physical laws. BTW (a minor detail) rational numbers are also dense, but are constructive objects. Cf your long post. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Peter Jones (1Z) a écrit : Most people would not say yes doctor to a process that recorded their brain on a tape a left it in a filing cabinet. Yet, that is all you can get out of the timeless world of Plato's heaven (programme vs process). Why? Plato's heaven is full of mathematical process, which looks non dynamical from outside, like a block universe, but can be dynamical from inside. If you can show that subjective experience exists in Platonia, you can use that to show that some things will seem dynamical. If you can show that there a dynamic processes in Platonia, you can use that to show there are running computations and therefore minds, and therefore experiences. But can you do both without circularity? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. Your longer metaphysics post begs many of the questions addressed in this list. Personally: I have no theory, just an argument showing that if we take the yes doctor seriously enough then there is no primitive physical objects AT ALL(**), and then I show how to recover constructively the stable appearances of physical objects, and this in a precise empirically verifiable way(*). (And to be sure, I have always expected to get a refutation, but instead the theory has been confirmed until now. Of course QM, loop gravity and string theories are still in advance for the physical stuff but (a)comp is in advance for the explanation of the quanta-qualia relations, (and more generally the relation between all point of views (n-persons, hypostases) I would say). Bruno (*) This makes me an empirist, but I do not subscribe to math is physics form of empiry. It belongs more on the type physics is mathematics as seen from some internal observer-universal machine. (**) More precisely: such a notion of primitive physical objects can no more be invoked for justifying the appearances of physical laws. Just as I have an argument that Platonically existing mathematical objects are not needed to explain mathematics or anything else. BTW (a minor detail) rational numbers are also dense, but are constructive objects. Cf your long post. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 09-nov.-06, à 13:53, 1Z a écrit : If you can show that subjective experience exists in Platonia, you can use that to show that some things will seem dynamical. If you can show that there a dynamic processes in Platonia, you can use that to show there are running computations and therefore minds, and therefore experiences. But can you do both without circularity? Yes. That circularity is worked out through a mathematical theory of self-reference. Of course that is not something I can explain in just one post. I suggest you search in the archive, or you consult my papers, or you could wait some explanation I have promised to David (but he seems busy right now). What can be explained in a few lines is that *discourses* about subjective experience and time appears naturally in the modal variant of self-reference. I study what a ideally correct machine can prove about herself. Then I borrow one of Theaetetus' definition of the knower/first person: so that to know p is defined by to ((I can justify p) p). This makes sense thanks to the fact that no machine can prove that proving p entails necessarily p (and this is a consequence of incompleteness). Then math shows that the arithmetical knower so defined has a discourse similar to the Berson/Brouwer ... theory of the creative and temporal subject, + a lot of mathematical property making it closer to some intuitionistic view of math. This gives a subjective time theory, but also an arithmetical topos, etc. In the same way we get a physics (according to the UDA) when we define I observe p, by I am measuring p with a probability/credibility of one. This means we can define observing p by I can justify p and p is consistent. By Godel *completeness* theorem this is equivalent with p is true in all accessible world and p is true in at least one accessible world). Note that here I am using implicitly a lot of theorems in the math of self-reference---I just summarize, look into my papers for more). Here we should get some geometry, and we already get a quantum like probability logic, including a purely arithmetical interpretation of it. Of course nobody can prove the existence of subjective experience in Platonia or anywhere. We know that exists because somehow we live them, but they cannot be communicated. But once we grant that similarity of some possible discourses on subjective experience can be taken as evidence of the presence of subjective experience (what I have sometimes refer to as the politeness principle), then what I say above can help to figure out how subjective experiences and subjective times can appear as internal modality of any arithmetical realm. Put in another way, if this would not be true, it would entails the existence of many zombies in platonia. But of course this is a short way to present this and I ask you to not taking too much literally what I try to explain shortly. To sum up: circularity is handled by the mathematical theory of self-reference (encapsulated by the modal logic G and G* at the propositional level). Psychological and physical things are either modelised or recovered by intensional variants of the self-reference logic G (for the provable) and G* (for the true but not necessarily provable). Note that here I was talking on subjective time. The running UD in platonia defined implicitly another notion of time, which is just the number of steps the UD needs to access states. This can be well defined up to some constant thanks to machine independence theorem in computer science. But this as nothing to do with subjective time, or with the feeling or seeming of time flows. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 09-nov.-06, à 14:07, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:37, 1Z a écrit : Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL I have not the slightest idea what you mean by that. If you don't understand anti-Platonism, that would certainly explain why you don't argue against it. I still don't understand what you mean by numbers does not exist at all. If that is antiplatonism, it would help me if you could explain what is antiplatonism, or better what could it mean that the numbers don't exist. We already agree they don't exist physically, but saying they does not exist at all ??? Even Licorne exists in some sense, without referent in the physical world, but with referent (meaning) in some fantasy worlds? Why could numbers not exist in some similar sense, except that the number fantasy kiks back (as Tom has recalled recently). I am just trying to understand what you say. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Dear Stathis, Is this not an extreme form of Occasionalism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occasionalism Why does it seem that we humans perpetually imagine the possibility that the Universe we observe requires some form of hidden behind the curtains machinery to hold it up; I am remined of the image of Atlas standing on a Tortoise hold up the Earth. Could it be that all of the machinery required is right in front of us? Consider the question of the computational resources required to compute the dynamics of the Earth's ecosphere, as Stephen Wolfram wrote: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html The behavior of a physical system may always be calculated by simulating explicitly each step in its evolution. Much of theoretical physics has, however, been concerned with devising shorter methods of calculation that reproduce the outcome without tracing each step. Such shortcuts can be made if the computations used in the calculation are more sophisticated than those that the physical system can itself perform. Any computations must, however, be carried out on a computer. But the computer is itself an example of a physical system. And it can determine the outcome of its own evolution only by explicitly following it through: No shortcut is possible. Such computational irreducibility occurs whenever a physical system can act as a computer. The behavior of the system can be found only by direct simulation or observation: No general predictive procedure is possible. ... ...their own evolution is effectively the most efficient procedure for determining their future. The Universe's Computation of its future is its Evolution. Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:11 PM Subject: RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted Brent Meeker writes: snip A theist God (as opposed to a deist God) is one who intervenes in the natural order, i.e. does miracles. Stenger will readily admit that his argument does not apply to a deist God. It's also possible that God intervenes all the time in a perfectly consistent manner to sustain natural laws, such that if he stopped doing so the whole universe would instantly disintegrate. This would make it seem as if God either does not exist or, if he does, he is a deist, whereas in fact he is a theist. The problem with this idea, and for that matter with deism, is that it is empty of explanatory value. Ironically perhaps, it is God-as-miracle-worker which comes closest to a legitimate scientific theory, albeit one without any supporting evidence in its favour. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: It's also possible that God intervenes all the time in a perfectly consistent manner to sustain natural laws, such that if he stopped doing so the whole universe would instantly disintegrate. That's possible, but then he's a deist God. He doesn't do miracles in response to prayer. It seems to me there's a contradiction between intervenes and prefectly consistent. There's no more reason to believe that the universe needs sustaining than to believe there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter. A deist God does not intervene once the universe is set in motion. But one can imagine for example a gravity god, who pushes matter around in a perfectly consistent way so as to give the impression of natural laws. If he stopped doing his thing, stars would explode and the universe would fall apart. It's only because the gravity god is very conscientious in his work that we don't notice he is constantly performing miracles. Of course, there is no more reason to believe in the gravity god than there is to believe in any other kind of god, but at the same time it is not possible to be rigidly atheistic about the gravity god just as it is not possible to be rigidly atheistic about Zeus or Thor. This would make it seem as if God either does not exist or, if he does, he is a deist, whereas in fact he is a theist. The problem with this idea, and for that matter with deism, is that it is empty of explanatory value. Ironically perhaps, it is God-as-miracle-worker which comes closest to a legitimate scientific theory, albeit one without any supporting evidence in its favour. If it's lawlike it ain't a miracle. Deism was a common position that come out of the Enlightenment. It comported perfectly with a Newtonian, clockwork universe. It avoided the problem of evil. Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson were deists. But it fits well with scientific models because it does nothing. Good old-fashioned miracles are not lawlike, which is what makes them subject to empirical verification. If God is a Protestant, then an examination of a list of lottery ticket winners or people with serious illnesses should show that Protestants are statistically more likely to have their prayers answered than Catholics, Muslims or atheists (who wish for things, even if they don't actually pray). If not, then either God is not a Protestant or there is no point in praying for anything even if you and he are both Protestants. And yet I doubt that there are any Protestants, Catholics or Muslims who be at all perturbed by the findings of such a study, or countless other possible studies or experiments. This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 07-nov.-06, à 20:10, Tom Caylor a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. No, you are mistaken. You can only conclude that, based on my methods of measurement, a non-Euclidean model of the universe is simpler and more convenient than an Euclidean one. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. The WIMP observations are consistent with a Euclidean model...provided you change a lot of other physics. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. Right. As my mathematician friend Norm Levitt put it,The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies. This quote is basically what I've been trying to get at. The possible ontologies are the multiple self-consistent paradigms that I was referring to. When we keep finding that using abstract math to hypothesize actually works in guiding us correctly to what to look for, then we have to start believing that there's got to be some kind of truth to math that is greater than trivial self-consistent logical inference. I think this is what Bruno is getting at with the border between G (provable truth) and G* (provable and unprovable truth). Math helps us find not just G, but we can also explore the border of G and G*. Yes. Note that a lobian machine M1 can *deduce* the G and the G* corresponding to a simpler lobian machine M2, but can only infer or hope or fear ... about its own G*. Remark: I recall for others that G is the modal logic which axiomatizes completely the self-referential provable discourse of sufficiently powerful classical proving machine, and G* formalize completely (at some level) the true discourse (the provable one and the inferable one). It corresponds to the third person point of view (the second hypostase of Plotinus). G is the discursive, G* is the divine one (true). The main axiom of G is B(Bp - p) - Bp and its arithmetical interpretation is lob theorem. Exercise: deduce from Godel's theorem it (I have already answer it but ask if you don't find the answer). B represents here Godel's provability predicate: Godel's theorem = ~Bf - ~B(~Bf) (If the false is not provable, then that fact itself is not provable). Agreement would be great. But the proof of scientific pudding is predicting something suprising that is subsequently confirmed. Brent Meeker Tom: I would like to hear Bruno's thoughts on comp with respect to prediction of global aspects such as geometry, as I brought up in the above paragraph from a previous post. A sort of physical geometry should arise from the Bp Dp ( p) povs. Mathematical geometry can occur
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 09:39 -0800, Brent Meeker wrote: Good old-fashioned miracles are not lawlike, which is what makes them subject to empirical verification. If God is a Protestant, then an examination of a list of lottery ticket winners or people with serious illnesses should show that Protestants are statistically more likely to have their prayers answered than Catholics, Muslims or atheists (who wish for things, even if they don't actually pray). If not, then either God is not a Protestant or there is no point in praying for anything even if you and he are both Protestants. And yet I doubt that there are any Protestants, Catholics or Muslims who be at all perturbed by the findings of such a study, or countless other possible studies or experiments. That's because for hundreds, if not thousands, of years their theologians have had to explain why their God is invisible, unnoticable, incompehensible, and undetectable. So a null experimental outcome, like the recent studies of the efficacy of healing prayer, is ho-hum. For a rather lengthy, straight-faced treatment of intercessory prayer and victims of amputation: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: It's also possible that God intervenes all the time in a perfectly consistent manner to sustain natural laws, such that if he stopped doing so the whole universe would instantly disintegrate. That's possible, but then he's a deist God. He doesn't do miracles in response to prayer. It seems to me there's a contradiction between intervenes and prefectly consistent. There's no more reason to believe that the universe needs sustaining than to believe there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter. A deist God does not intervene once the universe is set in motion. But one can imagine for example a gravity god, who pushes matter around in a perfectly consistent way so as to give the impression of natural laws. If he stopped doing his thing, stars would explode and the universe would fall apart. It's only because the gravity god is very conscientious in his work that we don't notice he is constantly performing miracles. Or we could just denominate him the law of gravity. But notice that the god theory of gravity is in trouble with black holes and gravity waves. Of course, there is no more reason to believe in the gravity god than there is to believe in any other kind of god, but at the same time it is not possible to be rigidly atheistic about the gravity god just as it is not possible to be rigidly atheistic about Zeus or Thor. I think we're just parsing words. I'm saying atheist=(not a theist). I don't know what you mean by rigidly atheistic. I'm equally confident, and equally uncertain, in my belief that there is no God of the theist type and there is no Santa Claus. This would make it seem as if God either does not exist or, if he does, he is a deist, whereas in fact he is a theist. The problem with this idea, and for that matter with deism, is that it is empty of explanatory value. Ironically perhaps, it is God-as-miracle-worker which comes closest to a legitimate scientific theory, albeit one without any supporting evidence in its favour. If it's lawlike it ain't a miracle. Deism was a common position that come out of the Enlightenment. It comported perfectly with a Newtonian, clockwork universe. It avoided the problem of evil. Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson were deists. But it fits well with scientific models because it does nothing. Good old-fashioned miracles are not lawlike, which is what makes them subject to empirical verification. If God is a Protestant, then an examination of a list of lottery ticket winners or people with serious illnesses should show that Protestants are statistically more likely to have their prayers answered than Catholics, Muslims or atheists (who wish for things, even if they don't actually pray). If not, then either God is not a Protestant or there is no point in praying for anything even if you and he are both Protestants. And yet I doubt that there are any Protestants, Catholics or Muslims who be at all perturbed by the findings of such a study, or countless other possible studies or experiments. That's because for hundreds, if not thousands, of years their theologians have had to explain why their God is invisible, unnoticable, incompehensible, and undetectable. So a null experimental outcome, like the recent studies of the efficacy of healing prayer, is ho-hum. But suppose it had gone the other way. Suppose prayer was shown to be statistically efficaous and further that only Protestant prayer was efficaous. It would be trumpeted to the roof tops by the Protestants and spread consturnation among the competing religions. This cannot be explained away by faith in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously believing x and not-x. Seems like faith to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the x you refer to? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. No, you are mistaken. You can only conclude that, based on my methods of measurement, a non-Euclidean model of the universe is simpler and more convenient than an Euclidean one. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. The WIMP observations are consistent with a Euclidean model...provided you change a lot of other physics. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. Right. As my mathematician friend Norm Levitt put it,The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies. This quote is basically what I've been trying to get at. The possible ontologies are the multiple self-consistent paradigms that I was referring to. When we keep finding that using abstract math to hypothesize actually works in guiding us correctly to what to look for, then we have to start believing that there's got to be some kind of truth to math that is greater than trivial self-consistent logical inference. I think this is what Bruno is getting at with the border between G (provable truth) and G* (provable and unprovable truth). Math helps us find not just G, but we can also explore the border of G and G*. On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. Agreement would be great. But the proof of scientific pudding is predicting something suprising that is subsequently confirmed. Brent Meeker I would like to hear Bruno's thoughts on comp with respect to prediction of global aspects such as geometry, as I brought up in the above paragraph from a previous post. Also, a thought comes to mind that Bruno once said something about reality (physics, sensations?) arising from our ignorance of the absolute border between G and G*. This brings me back to the analogy of the Mandelbrot set. We can never know the actual absolute border of the Mandelbrot set. If we were asked to point out even one (non-trivial) point on the complex plain that is exactly on the border, we wouldn't be able to do it. However, if we take a finite number of iterations of the recursive equation, we get a definite border, which is an approximation. We get an actual instantiation/shape we can interact with, something that kicks
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker wrote: An excellent essay. I agree with almost everything you wrote; and you put it very well. Would you mind if I cross posted it to Vic Stenger's AVOID-L mailing list. You can check out the list here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ Although Victor Stenger doesn't use the word anti-natural, the following equation is what he is assuming in his atheistic arguments: supernatural = anti-natural. Therefore he thinks that a proof of theism would amount to finding a violation of natural law. Since he finds no such violation (which I would argue is a circular argument based on the definition of natural) he claim this proves atheism beyond a reasonable doubt (what is the measure of certainty/uncertainty?). In terms of Bruno's provability, this is akin to saying that a proof of the existence of a non-trivial G*/G can be obtained by finding an inconsistency in G. This does not make sense. This is like saying the only god that can exist is an inconsistent god. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: An excellent essay. I agree with almost everything you wrote; and you put it very well. Would you mind if I cross posted it to Vic Stenger's AVOID-L mailing list. You can check out the list here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ Although Victor Stenger doesn't use the word anti-natural, the following equation is what he is assuming in his atheistic arguments: supernatural = anti-natural. Therefore he thinks that a proof of theism would amount to finding a violation of natural law. Since he finds no such violation (which I would argue is a circular argument based on the definition of natural) he claim this proves atheism beyond a reasonable doubt (what is the measure of certainty/uncertainty?). In terms of Bruno's provability, this is akin to saying that a proof of the existence of a non-trivial G*/G can be obtained by finding an inconsistency in G. This does not make sense. This is like saying the only god that can exist is an inconsistent god. A theist God (as opposed to a deist God) is one who intervenes in the natural order, i.e. does miracles. Stenger will readily admit that his argument does not apply to a deist God. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: An excellent essay. I agree with almost everything you wrote; and you put it very well. Would you mind if I cross posted it to Vic Stenger's AVOID-L mailing list. You can check out the list here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ Although Victor Stenger doesn't use the word anti-natural, the following equation is what he is assuming in his atheistic arguments: supernatural = anti-natural. Therefore he thinks that a proof of theism would amount to finding a violation of natural law. Since he finds no such violation (which I would argue is a circular argument based on the definition of natural) he claim this proves atheism beyond a reasonable doubt (what is the measure of certainty/uncertainty?). In terms of Bruno's provability, this is akin to saying that a proof of the existence of a non-trivial G*/G can be obtained by finding an inconsistency in G. This does not make sense. This is like saying the only god that can exist is an inconsistent god. A theist God (as opposed to a deist God) is one who intervenes in the natural order, i.e. does miracles. Stenger will readily admit that his argument does not apply to a deist God. It's also possible that God intervenes all the time in a perfectly consistent manner to sustain natural laws, such that if he stopped doing so the whole universe would instantly disintegrate. This would make it seem as if God either does not exist or, if he does, he is a deist, whereas in fact he is a theist. The problem with this idea, and for that matter with deism, is that it is empty of explanatory value. Ironically perhaps, it is God-as-miracle-worker which comes closest to a legitimate scientific theory, albeit one without any supporting evidence in its favour. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: An excellent essay. I agree with almost everything you wrote; and you put it very well. Would you mind if I cross posted it to Vic Stenger's AVOID-L mailing list. You can check out the list here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ Although Victor Stenger doesn't use the word anti-natural, the following equation is what he is assuming in his atheistic arguments: supernatural = anti-natural. Therefore he thinks that a proof of theism would amount to finding a violation of natural law. Since he finds no such violation (which I would argue is a circular argument based on the definition of natural) he claim this proves atheism beyond a reasonable doubt (what is the measure of certainty/uncertainty?). In terms of Bruno's provability, this is akin to saying that a proof of the existence of a non-trivial G*/G can be obtained by finding an inconsistency in G. This does not make sense. This is like saying the only god that can exist is an inconsistent god. A theist God (as opposed to a deist God) is one who intervenes in the natural order, i.e. does miracles. Stenger will readily admit that his argument does not apply to a deist God. It's also possible that God intervenes all the time in a perfectly consistent manner to sustain natural laws, such that if he stopped doing so the whole universe would instantly disintegrate. That's possible, but then he's a deist God. He doesn't do miracles in response to prayer. It seems to me there's a contradiction between intervenes and prefectly consistent. There's no more reason to believe that the universe needs sustaining than to believe there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter. This would make it seem as if God either does not exist or, if he does, he is a deist, whereas in fact he is a theist. The problem with this idea, and for that matter with deism, is that it is empty of explanatory value. Ironically perhaps, it is God-as-miracle-worker which comes closest to a legitimate scientific theory, albeit one without any supporting evidence in its favour. If it's lawlike it ain't a miracle. Deism was a common position that come out of the Enlightenment. It comported perfectly with a Newtonian, clockwork universe. It avoided the problem of evil. Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson were deists. But it fits well with scientific models because it does nothing. Brent Meeker Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . . It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. --- Benjamin Franklin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't understand really what you mean by AUDA is not RITSIAR. AUDA is just the lobian interview, or if you prefer the complete mathematical formalization of the UDA reasoning. In some sense you can interpret it as the eventual elimination of the yes doctor hypothesis in the UDA argument (but here I do simplify a little bit). Yes, sorry, perhaps I should have said 'if number is not RITSIAR, is anything?' The intention behind the question is to find out how and where you would apply RITSIAR in your schema - if at all - because Peter has been willing to do this but you haven't. I just want to know why. David Le 29-oct.-06, à 17:43, David Nyman a écrit : Peter, when you said that the physical might be 'relations all the way down', and I asked you what would you find if you went 'all the way down', you replied 'primary matter'. IOW, you posit primary matter as a 'bare substrate' to which are attached whatever properties theory or experiment may suggest. Consequently, isn't it the case that you are defining this 'bare substrate' (which by posit has no properties of its own) as whatever-it-is that is RITSIAR (i.e. you might say that it's what exists)? Bruno, aren't you making essentially the same claim for AUDA, in attempting to derive all properties from it? P. Jones posit a primary matter having no properties, and he does not explain how things with properties can emerge from that. I posit numbers (not AUDA which is just an acronym for the Arithmetical translation of the Universal Dovetailer Argument). And numbers have well know properties of their own (they can be even, odd, prime, godel-number, etc.). And from those number properties I explain the possible n-person discourses. And from UDA one of them is the physical discourse, so it is easy to test comp through empiry. In your schema, if AUDA isn't RITSIAR (even if you'd rather define 1-ritsiar or 3-ritsiar separately), then is anything? I don't understand really what you mean by AUDA is not RITSIAR. AUDA is just the lobian interview, or if you prefer the complete mathematical formalization of the UDA reasoning. In some sense you can interpret it as the eventual elimination of the yes doctor hypothesis in the UDA argument (but here I do simplify a little bit). Are these two views commensurable at all? Or are you saying that we can only maintain a Wittgensteinian silence on such questions? Wittgenstein said to much, or not enough. He felt in the trap he was describing. The difference between G and G* can be used to make this transparently clear, and can even be used to argue that eventually Wittgenstein realize the point in his last writings (on certainty). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:01, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 30-oct.-06, à 14:15, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (in part): A computationalist would add that a computer analogue of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more controversial. Is it really? With the notable couragous exception of Penrose I don't know people who object to comp. Hardly anyone thinks it is a good explanation of phenomenality/qualia. Computationalists tend to be people who care a lot more about thinking than feeeling. This is because the feeling problem is vastly more complex. Indeed I have shown that to explain feeling it begins to be harder to sustain both comp and materialism. So we have to backtrack 1500 years ... Of course someone like Searle could gives the feeling that he dislike comp, but its own reasoning, if you read it carefully, proves that he accept comp, albeit only for low substitution level unlike most functionalist. Another staunch opponent is Edelmann. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=178 'The notion that the brain is a kind of computer is an error of such magnitude, Mr. Edelman believes, that cognitive science is on the brink of a crisis. I claim, he writes, that the entire structure on which the cognitivist enterprise is based is incoherent and not borne out by the facts.' I agree with Papaioannou answers. Now you could also replace error by hypothesis in you text, and then I totally agree. the crisis can be describe by the fact that we want remain materialist and computationalist. But this leads to difficulties ... Perhaps Edelman (which I appreciate greatly) would like to throw out comp, but, just because comp is my working professional hypothesis, in the frame of my work, accepting the consequence of the theory, I throw out materialism. And between us that is not a lot. Nobody use it. Matter is like the wave collapse: nobody understand it, and nobody use it, except for avoiding conceptual headache the week-end ... Now as you know comp is my working hypothesis so this is for me just a bit out of my topic. Remember that for postulating not-comp you have to introduce high infinities in the third person description of the brain/body. No you don't. You can posit that phenomenality inheres directly in matter, This is exactly what I call putting a problem under the rug ... or that matter otherwise pins downs an absolute level of simulation. This is far more interesting, by comparison. Actually, assuming comp, this is the basic idea which makes it possible to redefined matter (from the pov of machine M) by a sum on all the indiscernible (by machine M) sub-level substitutions. In particular you have to abandon QM, or any theory ever proposed in physics and cognitive science. No theory of physics entails that simulations will have all the features -- other than functional/structural ones -- of the systems simulated. Yes. That is the traditional problem of post-525 physics. (525: the Roman Church closed Athen platonic school: after that mind, person soul and similar stuff has been reserved to the nominated Christian theology. During centuries you could be burned for contradicting them. Third person discourse about first person discourse is just taboo, and still appears to be so today, but more among atheist believer than christian logician and theologian. In another post IZ wrote: (Of course everyone is a contingentists to some extent, since no-one can show that the non-existence of matter of contingency is itself necessary). H At least Godel theorem explains why contingency is necessary in the number domain from the machine/number pov. Wait perhaps for more in the explanation I have promised to David. Peter, I think that David is right. We are in a loop. On the FOR list we would have been moderated out a long time ago :). Tell us your theory please. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL ? Not even in the sense that the proposition Ex(Prime-number(x)) is true independently of me, as it seems to me you have agree with in more than one preceding post. Anyway, to believe that numbers don't exist AT ALL, what could that mean? And that is your theory? I don't explain *rationalistically* -- that is I do not show how properties are entailed by inevitable logic from the posit of matter -- because I am not in the business of rationalism. ? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? Yes, that's my point! I'm trying to argue that the brain has actually come up with a solution to this in order to account for what we experience. For that matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this, technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice that binds them all together? No, this is irrelevant. The calculation example is disanalogous, because what is relevant to this is simply the 3-person process that results in the right answer: this *entirely constitutes* the calculation. We don't seek to make claims about any putative 'temporally-extended pov' that the computer might possess while performing it. What is at issue in these thought experiments, by contrast, is *precisely* the pov - of apparently real temporal dimension and dynamic character - that we wish to claim would be experienced from the perspective of a given 'time-slice', however arbitrarily fine-grained. I don't see why the calculation example should be different. We could either go with saying that the calculation mysteriously supervenes on the physical activity of the computer, or we could go with saying that the physical activity of the brain entirely constitutes the mental activity. I know people who find computers at least as mysterious as brains. It takes many time slices of computer activity to make up a period that would be recognised by an external observer as part of a particular calculation, and in a similar fashion it takes many slices of brain activity to make up a period that would be recognised by an external or the internal observer as a coherent thought or part of a thought. 1) It is supported and constrained *entirely* by whatever structure and information is to be found within an individual time-slice (i.e. the 'time capsule'). 2) Structure and information external to the individual time-slice is in fact required to generate it (i.e. the individual slice is not a 'time capsule'). Per alternative 1), any slice containing the requisite structure and information content can potentially support a coherent 'temporally extended' conscious experience. Per alternative 2) AFAICS this can't be the case. I'm not sure that you're seeing my point here. I'm not denying that the pov is maintained in the chopped-up version, I'm supporting this view. But given the information constraint, I'm saying that any mechanisms that produce conscious experiences of apparent temporal duration *must* consequently (and counter-intuitively) depend on *instantaneously* present structure and information. These non-sequential issues are not relevant for 'calculation', hence the disanalogy. This leads to an empirical claim about brain mechanism, driven by the analysis. If we don't concede this, then AFAICS we're left with the alternative of giving up the information constraint. That is, the apparent temporal extension available in experience *from the pov of an individual infinitessimal time-slice* must somehow depend on information to be found only in other time-slices. But this then renders any notion of slicing irrelevant and the thought experiment collapses. I'd say that it takes as many time slices as it takes to generate a coherent conscious experience. You could have a strict 1:1 mapping from physical activity to mental activity. An infinitesimal slice of physical activity is no easier to stomach than an infinitesimal slice of mental activity, given that we already accept that the physical generates the mental, which seems to be a minimal empirical observation whatever subsequent claims are made about the true nature of physical reality and the possibility than the mental may additionally be generated by non-physical processes. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 28-oct.-06, à 23:24, 1Z a écrit : Stathis: and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Why? Maybe it supervenes on whatever propels one physical state to evolve into another. That answer would work if that whatever was NOT turing emulable. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 29-oct.-06, à 12:11, 1Z a écrit : If numbers aren't real at all they cannot generate reality (ITSIAR). You beg the question. Numbers are not physically real does not entails that numbers don't exist at all, unless you define real by physical real. I didn't say numbers are not PHYSICALLY real, I said real at all. Are you seriously suggesting that numbers are not real *at all*? That would clarify a lot of misunderstandings indeed. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 29-oct.-06, à 12:11, 1Z a écrit : If numbers aren't real at all they cannot generate reality (ITSIAR). You beg the question. Numbers are not physically real does not entails that numbers don't exist at all, unless you define real by physical real. I didn't say numbers are not PHYSICALLY real, I said real at all. Yes, yes yes! 'If mathematical objects do no exist at all there is no dualism'. 'I don't see why the mathematical realism needs to be true. The difference between mathematical existence and physical existence could consist in physical things exisitng, and mathematical objects not exisiting'. 'Epistemic objectivity of maths means every competent mathematician gets the same answer to a given problem. It doesn't say anything about the existence of anything (except possibly mathematicians)'. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 29-oct.-06, à 17:43, David Nyman a écrit : Peter, when you said that the physical might be 'relations all the way down', and I asked you what would you find if you went 'all the way down', you replied 'primary matter'. IOW, you posit primary matter as a 'bare substrate' to which are attached whatever properties theory or experiment may suggest. Consequently, isn't it the case that you are defining this 'bare substrate' (which by posit has no properties of its own) as whatever-it-is that is RITSIAR (i.e. you might say that it's what exists)? Bruno, aren't you making essentially the same claim for AUDA, in attempting to derive all properties from it? P. Jones posit a primary matter having no properties, and he does not explain how things with properties can emerge from that. I posit numbers (not AUDA which is just an acronym for the Arithmetical translation of the Universal Dovetailer Argument). And numbers have well know properties of their own (they can be even, odd, prime, godel-number, etc.). And from those number properties I explain the possible n-person discourses. And from UDA one of them is the physical discourse, so it is easy to test comp through empiry. In your schema, if AUDA isn't RITSIAR (even if you'd rather define 1-ritsiar or 3-ritsiar separately), then is anything? I don't understand really what you mean by AUDA is not RITSIAR. AUDA is just the lobian interview, or if you prefer the complete mathematical formalization of the UDA reasoning. In some sense you can interpret it as the eventual elimination of the yes doctor hypothesis in the UDA argument (but here I do simplify a little bit). Are these two views commensurable at all? Or are you saying that we can only maintain a Wittgensteinian silence on such questions? Wittgenstein said to much, or not enough. He felt in the trap he was describing. The difference between G and G* can be used to make this transparently clear, and can even be used to argue that eventually Wittgenstein realize the point in his last writings (on certainty). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 30-oct.-06, à 14:15, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (in part): A computationalist would add that a computer analogue of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more controversial. Is it really? With the notable couragous exception of Penrose I don't know people who object to comp. Of course someone like Searle could gives the feeling that he dislike comp, but its own reasoning, if you read it carefully, proves that he accept comp, albeit only for low substitution level unlike most functionalist. Now as you know comp is my working hypothesis so this is for me just a bit out of my topic. Remember that for postulating not-comp you have to introduce high infinities in the third person description of the brain/body. In particular you have to abandon QM, or any theory ever proposed in physics and cognitive science. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 30-oct.-06, à 00:40, David Nyman wrote (to Peter Jones (1Z)): Name your turtle. Can't we just get on with investigating what either theory explains or predicts, and stop arguing over words - isn't this why no agreement is ever reached on this? Peter, I think that David is right. We are in a loop. On the FOR list we would have been moderated out a long time ago :). Tell us your theory please. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 30-oct.-06, à 14:15, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (in part): A computationalist would add that a computer analogue of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more controversial. Is it really? With the notable couragous exception of Penrose I don't know people who object to comp. Hardly anyone thinks it is a good explanation of phenomenality/qualia. Computationalists tend to be people who care a lot more about thinking than feeeling. Of course someone like Searle could gives the feeling that he dislike comp, but its own reasoning, if you read it carefully, proves that he accept comp, albeit only for low substitution level unlike most functionalist. Another staunch opponent is Edelmann. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=178 'The notion that the brain is a kind of computer is an error of such magnitude, Mr. Edelman believes, that cognitive science is on the brink of a crisis. I claim, he writes, that the entire structure on which the cognitivist enterprise is based is incoherent and not borne out by the facts.' Now as you know comp is my working hypothesis so this is for me just a bit out of my topic. Remember that for postulating not-comp you have to introduce high infinities in the third person description of the brain/body. No you don't. You can posit that phenomenality inheres directly in matter, or that matter otherwise pins downs an absolute level of simulation. In particular you have to abandon QM, or any theory ever proposed in physics and cognitive science. No theory of physics entails that simulations will have all the features -- other than functional/structural ones -- of the systems simulated. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 29-oct.-06, à 17:43, David Nyman a écrit : Peter, when you said that the physical might be 'relations all the way down', and I asked you what would you find if you went 'all the way down', you replied 'primary matter'. IOW, you posit primary matter as a 'bare substrate' to which are attached whatever properties theory or experiment may suggest. Consequently, isn't it the case that you are defining this 'bare substrate' (which by posit has no properties of its own) as whatever-it-is that is RITSIAR (i.e. you might say that it's what exists)? Bruno, aren't you making essentially the same claim for AUDA, in attempting to derive all properties from it? P. Jones posit a primary matter having no properties, and he does not explain how things with properties can emerge from that. I don't explain *rationalistically* -- that is I do not show how properties are entailed by inevitable logic from the posit of matter -- because I am not in the business of rationalism. That matter has the properties it has is an contingent fact which is known empirically. (Of course everyone is a contingentists to some extent, since no-one can show that the non-existence of matter of contingency is itself necessary). --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-oct.-06, à 14:15, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (in part): A computationalist would add that a computer analogue of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more controversial. Is it really? With the notable couragous exception of Penrose I don't know people who object to comp. Of course someone like Searle could gives the feeling that he dislike comp, but its own reasoning, if you read it carefully, proves that he accept comp, albeit only for low substitution level unlike most functionalist. Now as you know comp is my working hypothesis so this is for me just a bit out of my topic. Remember that for postulating not-comp you have to introduce high infinities in the third person description of the brain/body. In particular you have to abandon QM, or any theory ever proposed in physics and cognitive science. Most people I know accept that consciousness is due entirely to physical processes in the brain. I think that this should commit them to this minimal functionalism: that a perfect copy of a person, as in quantum teleportation, should have the same kinds of conscious experiences as the original and should feel himself to be continuous with the original. However, many do not accept this conclusion, and even more puzzling, some accept but still claim that the copy won't really be me and that therefore teleportation = suicide. On the other hand, there is nothing contradictory in believing that consciousness is due to physical processes but only the kind of hardware we carry in our heads will provide the correct sort of physical processes. A computer may or may not be able to copy the behaviour of a person, but it won't have the same experiences as the person, or it won't have any experiences at all. It is even possible to come up with a non-computationalist theory of computer consciousness: two computers apparently carrying out the same computation may differ in their conscious experience if their case is a different shape or the insulation on their wiring a different colour. It isn't very plausible, but it isn't logically contradictory. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones writes: Another staunch opponent is Edelmann. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=178 'The notion that the brain is a kind of computer is an error of such magnitude, Mr. Edelman believes, that cognitive science is on the brink of a crisis. I claim, he writes, that the entire structure on which the cognitivist enterprise is based is incoherent and not borne out by the facts.' Edelmann's dispute does not seem to be with computationalism per se, but with the particular models which many cognitive scientists use in an attempt to emulate brain function. For example, he argues that neural networks as used in computer science are not really much like biological neural networks and therefore will not be able to yield brain-like results. But this does not mean that no computer model model would be able to emulate the behaviour of biological neural networks, even if such a model would be very difficult to implement. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, But that's exactly the point I find dubious. Continuity in mathematics always involves taking infinite limits in sets that are already ordered (Dedekind cuts for example). And per all our best theories, the universe is instantiates continuous processes in a continuous spacetime. Though there have been many attempts, no one has shown with mathematical rigor how a continuous spacetime can emerge as an approximation of a discrete one. Physicists mostly think it is true, but mathematicians think they're hand waving. The difficulties of numerically solving partial differential equations in computers don't give much comfort. We use the instantaneous states as in the solution of differential equations, but those generally include the values of derivatives and hence implicitly a time variation. I'm not sure of your point here. If time is discrete then you can't slice up an interval smaller than the time quantum, and if it is continuous then you can. Or are you just saying that it would be very difficult technically to record and then reproduce a sufficiently accurate copy of a brain at a particular instant in time in order to ensure that the activity of the copy does not deviate too much from what the activity of the original would have been given similar inputs? and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. It's the should that worries me. If consciousness is just some digital information process that can exist in Platonia, then the underlying continuity of brain processes is irrelevant. But the relevance of brain processes is the point in question. When it is assumed that the conscious thought is not affected by slicing up the physical process, I'm concerned that we are implicitly assuming what was to be proved. We've debated whether a computer, a recording, the computations in Platonia etc. can be conscious, but I think we can almost all agree on at least this minimal functionalism: that if you could copy a person by placing all the atoms in position accurately enough, then you would end up with a person who looked, behaved, thought just like the original, had all the original's memories, and identified as being the original. After all, this sort of thing is happening in our bodies all the time as bits break off cells and are replaced by identical (or near-identical) parts manufactured by the automated cellular repair mechanisms. If you accept this idea that the brain is just a complex machine, I don't see how it is even *logically* possible that a copy of a person made mid-thought would not experience continuity of consciousness, provided of course that the technical problems could be overcome and the copy was sufficiently accurate. It would be like expecting that a perfect copy of an electronic calculator in the middle of multiplying two numbers would somehow forget what it was doing, or a perfect copy of a mechanical clock would show a different time or run at a different rate. Stathis
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones writes: I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, Should not, assuming physicalism? Should not, assuming computationalism? Assuming a minimal form of functionalism: that at the very least, a perfect physical copy of a person will behave, think and have the same kinds of mental states as the original. A computationalist would add that a computer analogue of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more controversial. and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Why? Maybe it supervenes on whatever propels one physical state to evolve into another. A perfect copy will include that as well. A perfect copy of a mechanical clock will include the same position of the hands and gears, the same geometry, metallurgy and tension in the spring, the same amount of oxidation on each metal part, and every other detail the same. Do you think it is possible that such a copy would not show or keep the same time even though it is physically exactly identical? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou Sure, it was (a). (c) violates the laws of physics. (b) might or might not be theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. OK, you would probably be right if you were kidnapped and subjected to this experiment tomorrow. But it's a thought experiment, and my point is that from your conscious experience alone you would be unable to distinguish between the three cases. Peter Jones' posts seem to imply that you would notice a difference. You have to say that, given a particular theory of consciousness, would you notice a difference. If physical counterfactuals/causality is important, you could in cases a) and b), since they all involve an abnormal causal transition from one OM to then next. Given computationalism, it is less straightforward. The question is independent of your theory of consciousness. Say consciousness is based on process C. I trust you will assume that process C is entirely physical, but suppose it involves God animating your brain with his breath. Then in case (a) God stops breathing for a second, in case (b) God destroys you and makes a perfect copy which he reanimates a second later, and case (c) is unchanged. The important point is, when you are destroyed then rebuilt, the new version of you is perfectly identical to the original and functions exactly the same as the original would have. It seems to me *logically* impossible that you could distinguish between the three cases. Assuming that everything necessary for consciousness at time can be contained in a 0-duration snapshot at time t. However, If consciousness supervenes on a process, however that assumption is not true. The process survives the destruction/copying cycle. Any other physical process would, given sufficient care, so if consciousness doesn't you have a problem with physical theories of consciousness. If a person was destroyed at point A and an exact copy created at point B, what do you think would actually happen? Do you think the person at B would in some way behave and think differently from the original, or do you think he would behave and think the same but still not *be* the original? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-oct.-06, à 13:04, Quentin Anciaux a écrit : Hi Stathis, Le Vendredi 27 Octobre 2006 12:16, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou The problem with these kind of thoughts experiments is that we don't know how consciousness works, we don't know if we can make a perfect copy, we can't know (currently) if such a copy would be conscious as we don't know how conscious experience arise. That is why we are proposing theories. It seems to me that the computationalist hypothesis entails the answer no to Stathis question. Are you OK with this? (Of course, other hypotheses (like some weakening of comp for example) could also lead to the answer no. Taking the premises of the problem you gave, it is impossible to give a (right) answer (if there is one...). You presupose too much on what is consciousness and how it works (not that it is a bad thing, but I think these examples won't convince someone who have not the same view on you about what is consciousness and how it works). I think that the point of Stathis was illustrating comp or some weakening of it. Is there someone in the list who find simultaneously both comp *and* a yes answer to Stathis' question plausible? Bruno Is there a difference in the answer to Stathis' question for this thought experiment, and the answer to Stathis' question for the equalivent thought experiment except for the following? (a) your consciousness was suspended for 0 seconds (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 0 seconds later (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 0 metres in the direction of motion. At first (a) and (c) seem identical, but I take teleported here to mean (for the sake of simplicity!) the same thing as was done to you in (b). What is happening in (a)? Let's say that the same rigamarole as in the original thought experiment (to keep as much as possible equal between the two experiments!) is done, except that 1 is replaced by 0. I mean, why would a delay make any difference to the argument? That's equivalent to one of the steps in Bruno's UDA. Actually, let's change the 0 to epsilon and let epsilon approach zero, so instead of a 0 second argument, we have an epsilon second argument. Well then, what have we here in the epsilon second experiment? It seems to simply argue that we don't know what the heck is happening in our universe from one instant to the next. I can think of a lot of TOEs that say that. But on the other hand, we do have some very good models in physics that say we actually can predict with minimal uncertainty what will happen over time. So the conclusion of my thought is that perhaps such thought experiments, as well as Bruno's UDA, are just inserting white rabbits constructively into the universe. No wonder the conclusion is that we don't know what's happening (a la Bruno's indeterminacies). Tom To make my point clearer, make a change to the epsilon second argument wherein, during the technological rigmarole involved in (a) consciousness suspension (b) duplication with annihilation (b) teleportation, in between pushing buttons the Doctor dances a jig. Also, I realize that, as epsilon approaches zero, the speed at which the rigmarole is done (and how fast the Doctor dances) has to approach infinity. But this is just a matter of degree of prowess. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Errmm.. if by recover we are able to replay them as conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need only contain time-stamps indicating the order and timing of the contents of the experience. The total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously. The stored experience is not conscious in itself any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion. In both cases, that comes in with the recovery. That's not an accurate analogy. For a start, a film in the can is not equivalent to a film on the screen sliced up into frames because there is no projector and no screen in the can. Would it help if there were? Then there is the fact that if you did project one frame in one cinema, the next frame in another cinema, and so on, the analogy would still not hold because it leaves out the observer. To make the analogy work, you would have to show one frame to an observer in one cinema, suspend his consciousness while you move him and the film to another cinema, show him another frame, supend his consciousness again while you move to a third cinema for the third frame, and so on. The observer would then see the whole film, and if the cinemas were identical, would not even know he had been moved, other than due to mere technical problems. I am not (here) arguing that time-slicing is necessarily noticeable, I am arguing that the dynamism of a recovered memory doesn't imply that the stored memory trace itself is dynamic. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? For that matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this, technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice that binds them all together? A piece of paper with 12796688 on it has the right answer. But it didn't computer it. I don't have to believe that the end-state of the computation is the result of a genuine computational process, if it isn't underpinned by a genuine physical process. What about a computation distributed over a computer network? What about just the latter part of the computation? Do you think the computation's experience (such as it is) would be any different compared to the latter part of the computation on a single computer? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? Yes, that's my point! I'm trying to argue that the brain has actually come up with a solution to this in order to account for what we experience. If it is in the nature of physics to spread over regions of non-zero duration, the brain doesn't *have* to solve any problems relating to zero-dimensional slices. For that matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this, technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice that binds them all together? No, this is irrelevant. The calculation example is disanalogous, because what is relevant to this is simply the 3-person process that results in the right answer: this *entirely constitutes* the calculation. We don't seek to make claims about any putative 'temporally-extended pov' that the computer might possess while performing it. What is at issue in these thought experiments, by contrast, is *precisely* the pov - of apparently real temporal dimension and dynamic character - that we wish to claim would be experienced from the perspective of a given 'time-slice', however arbitrarily fine-grained. Why do we wish to claim that? With respect to this pov, we seem to have two alternatives: 1) It is supported and constrained *entirely* by whatever structure and information is to be found within an individual time-slice (i.e. the 'time capsule'). 2) Structure and information external to the individual time-slice is in fact required to generate it (i.e. the individual slice is not a 'time capsule'). Per alternative 1), any slice containing the requisite structure and information content can potentially support a coherent 'temporally extended' conscious experience. Per alternative 2) AFAICS this can't be the case. I'm not sure that you're seeing my point here. I'm not denying that the pov is maintained in the chopped-up version, I'm supporting this view. But given the information constraint, I'm saying that any mechanisms that produce conscious experiences of apparent temporal duration *must* consequently (and counter-intuitively) depend on *instantaneously* present structure and information. These non-sequential issues are not relevant for 'calculation', hence the disanalogy. This leads to an empirical claim about brain mechanism, driven by the analysis. If we don't concede this, then AFAICS we're left with the alternative of giving up the information constraint. That is, the apparent temporal extension available in experience *from the pov of an individual infinitessimal time-slice* must somehow depend on information to be found only in other time-slices. But this then renders any notion of slicing irrelevant and the thought experiment collapses. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: David Nyman writes: I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the organism. Does this make sense? I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? For that matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this, technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice that binds them all together? I think that's possible. The fact that the computation is realized in a physical system which, to the best of our knowledge is continuous, may mean that there is something more than the the computational process conceived as discrete and finite (in the infomation sense). But surely this isn't true for a digital computer. The fact that one computer is painted a different colour or the wires have a different resistance compared to another computer cannot make a difference to how the computation feels, if a computation can feel. On the other hand our theories of physics tell us that physical processes, including those that realize the computation, can also be approximated by discrete processes - except that time and space variables are kept as implicitly continuous. By this I mean that when simulating such a process on a digital computer (I'm old enough to remember when we did it on analog computers), we set the steps smaller and smaller and we're only satisfied when making the step smaller doesn't change the answer. I think this is going to be the case for any closed physical system. But for an open system, you+universe, I'm not so sure. There must be some level of tolerance for physical change in the brain or you wouldn't feel yourself to be the same person from moment to moment. But
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 27-oct.-06, à 13:04, Quentin Anciaux a écrit : Hi Stathis, Le Vendredi 27 Octobre 2006 12:16, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou The problem with these kind of thoughts experiments is that we don't know how consciousness works, we don't know if we can make a perfect copy, we can't know (currently) if such a copy would be conscious as we don't know how conscious experience arise. That is why we are proposing theories. It seems to me that the computationalist hypothesis entails the answer no to Stathis question. Are you OK with this? (Of course, other hypotheses (like some weakening of comp for example) could also lead to the answer no. Taking the premises of the problem you gave, it is impossible to give a (right) answer (if there is one...). You presupose too much on what is consciousness and how it works (not that it is a bad thing, but I think these examples won't convince someone who have not the same view on you about what is consciousness and how it works). I think that the point of Stathis was illustrating comp or some weakening of it. Is there someone in the list who find simultaneously both comp *and* a yes answer to Stathis' question plausible? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 27-oct.-06, à 15:58, 1Z a écrit : If numbers aren't real at all they cannot generate reality (ITSIAR). You beg the question. Numbers are not physically real does not entails that numbers don't exist at all, unless you define real by physical real. The question you should ask is: are number sufficiently real to explain why some of them believes in a physical reality. My answer, which I agree need some amount of work to get through, is yes. Existing in the standard mathematical meaning of existence is enough to explain why a stable and lawful illusion of physical reality exists, again in that mathematical sense. Recall that the UDA explains why, assuming comp, a turing machine cannot distinguish the physical, virtual and arithmetical aspect of any reality. Perhaps one day we will find a way to make those distinction. My work proposes a transparently clear way to observe that distinction if it exists, but then that would be a refutation of (standard) comp. Alternatively, such a hypothesis may be shown to be redundant or incoherent. Not really. It is SWE which should be made redundant. Peter, as we've agreed, materialism is also metaphysics, and as a route to 'ultimate reality' via a physics of observables, is vulnerable to 'reification'. Might it not be premature to finalise precisely what it is that physical theory decribes that might actually be RITSIAR? I have answered these questions before: but 1. Contingent existence. 2. The ability to causally interact 3. A primary substance which endures through change ( explaining dynamic, non-BU time) 4. Optionally, the ability to explain phenomenal consiousness in a basically non-mathematical way.(Property dualism) The AUDA hypostases explains this, including 4. Wait a bit perhaps, or read my papers. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 27-oct.-06, à 16:06, 1Z a écrit : Principally I mean in the physical universe, or in Plato's heaven. Bruno always sounds like a Platonist, but he keeps denying he is one. Quite the contrary. I vindicate that I am even a plotinist, or a neoplatonist if you prefer. I just don't share your naive view of platonia, so I avoid that term with you. In any case such a terminological debate is entirely useless. Tom Caylor has provided enough good answer on that point: to ask where the UD lives is a category error. Numbers, prgram and mathematical structure does not lives in any place except metaphorically. Actually physicist borrowed the notion of space to mathematician to get some sharable notion of where and when, but of course those spaces cannot be ascribed to a place themselves, or, again only in some metaphorical sense, like saying that such space lives in the category of sets, or in a model of ZF, etc. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: Peter, when you said that the physical might be 'relations all the way down', and I asked you what would you find if you went 'all the way down', you replied 'primary matter'. IOW, you posit primary matter as a 'bare substrate' to which are attached whatever properties theory or experiment may suggest. Consequently, isn't it the case that you are defining this 'bare substrate' (which by posit has no properties of its own) as whatever-it-is that is RITSIAR (i.e. you might say that it's what exists)? RITSIAR is supposed to be a free variable. Thus RITSIAR = material existence is a substantive, non-tautologous claim, as is RITSIAR = Platonic existence (Compare with I in I am in Sussex and I am in Sierra Leone So, that's a 'yes' for primary matter = RITSIAR 1. And another 'yes' for AUDA = RITSIAR 2. You want to call RITSIAR 2 Platonic reality (and can call witnesses to attest to this usage). Bruno doesn't seem to want to call it Platonic (he seems to rely on different witnesses) but he's clear it's not RITSIAR 1. RITSIAR 1 is 'where the matter is'. RITSIAR 2 is 'where the numbers are'. Such ontic claims merely serve to ground the hierarchy of predicative recursion: 'I am in Sussex' is predicated on 'I' and 'Sussex' pre-existing at some prior level, etc, etc, etc. Name your turtle. Can't we just get on with investigating what either theory explains or predicts, and stop arguing over words - isn't this why no agreement is ever reached on this? David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: Where are these machines? Where the numbers are. Which is...? Presumably the answer is not on blackboards or in the minds of mathematicians. Apparently its not a magical realm either. Peter, when you said that the physical might be 'relations all the way down', and I asked you what would you find if you went 'all the way down', you replied 'primary matter'. IOW, you posit primary matter as a 'bare substrate' to which are attached whatever properties theory or experiment may suggest. Consequently, isn't it the case that you are defining this 'bare substrate' (which by posit has no properties of its own) as whatever-it-is that is RITSIAR (i.e. you might say that it's what exists)? RITSIAR is supposed to be a free variable. Thus RITSIAR = material existence is a substantive, non-tautologous claim, as is RITSIAR = Platonic existence (Compare with I in I am in Sussex and I am in Sierra Leone --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman writes: I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the organism. Does this make sense? I think I see what you mean, but it's as much a problem for the intact and normally functioning brain as it is for teleportation experiments, isn't it? For that matter, it's as much a problem for a computer that gets teleported around in the course of its calculations. If the teleportation time slices are of femtosecond duration, then there is nothing within a particular slice to mark it as part of the calculation 5464*2342. Yet a computer strobing in and out of existence like this, technical problems aside, will still come up with the right answer. Indeed, if the computer only materialised in the final femtosecond it would have the right answer and if a log were kept, evidence of how it arrived at the answer. Do you believe that there must be some super-computation information in each femtosecond slice that binds them all together? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: I think it is simpler to go back to your own clones-in-the-next-room example rather than introducing the complication of neurophysiology (or indeed physics). You are informed that your current stream of consciousness is either being generated by (a) a temporal sequence of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, and replaced by the next one in the series a microsecond later or (b) a spatial series of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, such that the whole experiment goes for a second but uses multiple adjacent rooms You have to guess whether you are in experiment (a) or (b). If appropriate care is taken to provide you with no external clues do you think you would be able to guess the right answer with greater than 1/2 probability? It's quite possible that neither scenario can support a subjective flow of time. Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou Sure, it was (a). (c) violates the laws of physics. (b) might or might not be theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. OK, you would probably be right if you were kidnapped and subjected to this experiment tomorrow. But it's a thought experiment, and my point is that from your conscious experience alone you would be unable to distinguish between the three cases. Peter Jones' posts seem to imply that you would notice a difference. You have to say that, given a particular theory of consciousness, would you notice a difference. If physical counterfactuals/causality is important, you could in cases a) and b), since they all involve an abnormal causal transition from one OM to then next. Given computationalism, it is less straightforward. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the organism. Does this make sense? David David, Consider these three examples: (a) You utter sentence S, the cat sat on the mat. The word on starts at time t1 and finishes at time t2. (b) At time t1 while uttering S you are intantaneously teleported to a distant location. (c) You have no actual past but materialise de novo at time t1 as if in (b), uttering ... on the mat. We are interested in your phenomenal consciousness between t1 and t2 in each case (ignoring the change of scenery due to the teleportation). It is no doubt quite complex, involving not only saying the word on but also a sense of self, a sense of the whole sentence and your place in it, an idea that this is part of an experiment, and so on. There may even be a lag between action and awareness, so that you are actually conscious of saying sat in the interval t1t2 rather than when you actually said it, and there will probably be at least some sense of continuity between sat and on during t1t2. The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. Stathis Papaioannou From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:14:03 -0700
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there is an external time parameter, it might be possible to return to the same state of mind (or the universe) at different points in time, just as it is possible to for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different points in space). But there's a subtler point here also, I think, that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed What does informationally closed mean? as OMt1t2 (the 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point), but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'. And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5 seconds extent. Errmm.. if by recover we are able to replay them as conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need only contain time-stamps indicating the order and timing of the contents of the experience. The total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously. The stored experience is not conscious in itself any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion. In both cases, that comes in with the recovery. Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information, That all depends on what you mean by individual occasion. In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional) doesn't contain enough information to recover standard dynamics, and instead a kind of specious present known as instantaneous velocity is used -- i.e. the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice. (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without some features of standard dynamics). and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity. I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*. Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with presentism, the idea that everything must be recovered from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe, but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense. (I think this is relevant to Maudlin. I don't think the physical activity of a system can be separated from its latent casual dispositions). Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present' dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic environmental presentations would simply be
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree with you that each aspect of the experience '.falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely what I've been arguing. I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there is an external time parameter, it might be possible to return to the same state of mind (or the universe) at different points in time, just as it is possible to for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different points in space). Yes, I think this could have been better put. I meant that each aspect of the experience could be treated as if self-contained, with an independent 'pov'. etc. What does informationally closed mean? 'Isolated' might be a better term. As DD puts it 'other times are special cases of other worlds'. Errmm.. if by recover we are able to replay them as conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need only contain time-stamps indicating the order and timing of the contents of the experience. The total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously. Precisely, my dear Watson. The stored experience is not conscious in itself any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion. In both cases, that comes in with the recovery. And I'm saying that the recovery *is* a structure that implements a specific set of relations between the 'time-stamped' data and the perceptual apparatus - what I've termed the perceiver-percept dyad. The dyad's function is to render the time-stamped data in the form of environmentally-embedded dynamic processes centred on a 1-person pov. If you press me for the detail of 'render' I'm afraid I can only respond 'in some way', as you do with respect to RITSIAR. My point is that the dyad is rendered as a simultaneously compresent structure. As to *why* the structure is experienced as an 'A'-series, I can but refer you to my previous suggestions, which you may or may not find persuasive. That all depends on what you mean by individual occasion. In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional) doesn't contain enough information to recover standard dynamics, and instead a kind of specious present known as instantaneous velocity is used -- i.e. the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice. (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without some features of standard dynamics). We don't have to define the occasion in this way. Rather, we look at what information is available for 'dyadic rendering'. My point to Stathis was that unless the information representing all stages of a specific dynamic experience is simultaneously compresent in a single occasion, however delimited, there could be no such experience present in that occasion. and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence. Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity. No, but the temptation is to try to assemble the information from different OMs or occasions by surreptitiously invoking 'continuity' - peeking, IOW. Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with presentism, the idea that everything must be recovered from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe, but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense. Am I? I'm saying that the information driving the experience of (seemingly) continuous processes must be recovered from simultaneously compresent sources. The reason is that if one assumes the opposite - that such information is just recovered from individual events 'smeared over time' - then you keep losing bits of the (psychological) 'specious present' because, as the information sequence moves forward, the earlier bits *just aren't available any longer*. So I'm saying that in the B-series events are indeed sequentially 'laid out', but that this of itself is insufficient to account for our own species of episodic dynamic experience. The A-series (i.e. time-as-experienced) seems to proceed via sequences not of single events, but simultaneously rendered 'dynamic capsules' generated by (god-knows-what) brain mechanisms that have specifically evolved towards this end. David David Nyman wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, But that's exactly the point I find dubious. Continuity in mathematics always involves taking infinite limits in sets that are already ordered (Dedekind cuts for example). And per all our best theories, the universe is instantiates continuous processes in a continuous spacetime. Though there have been many attempts, no one has shown with mathematical rigor how a continuous spacetime can emerge as an approximation of a discrete one. Physicists mostly think it is true, but mathematicians think they're hand waving. The difficulties of numerically solving partial differential equations in computers don't give much comfort. We use the instantaneous states as in the solution of differential equations, but those generally include the values of derivatives and hence implicitly a time variation. and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. I suppose you could say that there is no feeling of continuity from one microsecond to the next in a normally functioning brain either, because it takes many microseconds to make a thought. My point is that whatever it takes to make a thought and however vague the distinction between one thought and the next is, arbitrarily slicing up the physical activity underlying consciousness should not make a difference to the sense of continuity, Should not, assuming physicalism? Should not, assuming computationalism? and no explicit ordering is necessary. The counting sequence one, two, three may involve millions of slices of brain activity or computer emulation activity spread throughout space and time, and it may take many of these slices to form a moment of consciousness just as it takes many milliseconds of normal brain activity to form a moment of consciousness, but the feeling of continuity should be preserved. Why? Maybe it supervenes on whatever propels one physical state to evolve into another. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Hi Stathis, Le Vendredi 27 Octobre 2006 12:16, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou The problem with these kind of thoughts experiments is that we don't know how consciousness works, we don't know if we can make a perfect copy, we can't know (currently) if such a copy would be conscious as we don't know how conscious experience arise. Taking the premises of the problem you gave, it is impossible to give a (right) answer (if there is one...). You presupose too much on what is consciousness and how it works (not that it is a bad thing, but I think these examples won't convince someone who have not the same view on you about what is consciousness and how it works). Quentin Anciaux --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: My brain must at some subconscious level have the structure of the whole sentence spanning a 2 second interval t1-t2 or else the sentence could not be generated. It's still unclear to me from the above whether we're in agreement or not. I'm concerned that you may be assuming what is to be explained, owing to an illegitimate sleight of intuition. That is, it's so normal for us to think in terms of the overall 'sequence of moments' that it's easy to forget that the posit for OMs is that they are *informationally closed* with respect to other OMs (this is the point I've been debating with Peter, with which I thought you agreed). If OMs are thus closed, then it must follow that whatever information is required to generate the experience of 'a given moment' (under-defined, but see below) *must* be contained in its entirety within *some* (but of course not every) OM. Were that not the case, *no* individual OM would contain all the elements of a coherent conscious experience, and by the same token *any* coherent conscious experience would necessarily have to span *multiple* OMs. But any such assumption - i.e. meta-assembly of data over multiple OMs - is precisely what we wish to rule out of our account. A 'successor' OM - and any conscious state dependent on it - must simply 'forget' anything about 'prior' OMs that is not re-encoded within it - beyond such encoding, everything else is simply radically absent. A metaphor here might be a cine-film. An OM is then a frame. If all you have is a single frame, then your 'experience' must be strictly limited to whatever is contained in that frame, unless you can somehow surreptitiously sneak a glance at - or recall at will - other frames. we rely on the machinery of the brain keeping track of everything to generate successive moments of consciousness which pull everything back into coherence. Is what you say above consistent with the constraints on OMs in my account? I think perhaps we may intend the same thing here. This consideration, at least, strongly suggests (IMO entails) something entirely non-trivial about what the brain is actually doing (your 'engineering problem'), beyond representing simple 'snapshots' from external input. To overcome the 'OM constraint', it needs to assemble, from these 'instants', 'rolling constructs', each of which encodes an updated version of the 'specious present', *simultaneously* representing multiple snapshots and their relations. It may be entirely owing to such 'time capsules' (as Barbour, taking this issue seriously, implies) that we are able to assemble and implement a dynamic experience of 'time'. In fact, we can be pretty sure that there is a brain mechanism doing something like this, because as Colin recently reminded us, there are syndromes that interfere with it, changing the 'dynamic granularity' (refresh rate). So our dynamic experience - the 'A-series' - may depend critically on such 'time-synthesising' mechanisms within brain structure and function, rather than mapping in a simple sequential way to external 'B-series' events. And this of course would then make sense of why such biological time-mechanisms would have evolved. That is, because successive improvement in the ability to represent, and consequently discriminate and respond to, an environment perceived as dynamic events and processes at variable levels of granularity, confers obvious survival advantage. David David Nyman writes: As for memory being encoded in or accessible to an OM, that is an unnecessary complication. As you said previously, the OM's are related solely by their information content. If the seconds of your life were sliced up, shuffled and thrown to the wind, (t1) 3:10:02 PM of 10/10/06 would still subjectively follow (t2) 3:10:01 PM of 10/10/06 even though there is no connection or flow of information between them. If you look at how t1 and t2 are generated, then yes, there is a connection - they both come out of your head - but once generated, they form a natural sequence which cannot be disrupted. But my point about the 'coherence' of consciousness is that it seems (especially from what occurs, or fails to occur, when it deteriorates) that complex representation and processing of *temporally extended* information sequences (e.g. grasp of the entirety of the content and meaning of a sentence or proposition) is necessary for one to experience and act as a fully-functioning conscious individual. Consequently, it seems to me that such processes must converge on OMs in which all the necessary information is fully encoded and expressed (which is essentially what Barbour seems to be claiming for his 'time capsules' - e.g. his 'flight of the kingfisher' example). Without this, the alternative seems to be that the individual random, wind-blown seconds of your metaphor would need to be totalised in some additional
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 26-oct.-06, à 17:52, 1Z a écrit : No, I am just asking. I have even come up with formulations like real in the sense that I am real which avoid begging any questions about what kind of reality I have. Ah OK. I guess that is the RITSIAR. I let you know that: 1) I agree matter exists like my third person body exists (that is not primitively with comp) 2) My first person I exist like the unameable truth (assuming *informally* I am a consistent lobian machine). So it is important to distinguish 1-Ritsiar and 3-ritsiar. Perhaps just wait a bit when I will explain the math of the 1 and 3 pov (hypostases). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 26-oct.-06, à 18:02, 1Z a écrit : Measure is a lot more difficult in MMW. It has to be deprived by apriori necessity. Do you have a solution? A good candidate for apriori necessity (and possibility) is provability (and conssitency) by a lobian machine. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 26-oct.-06, à 21:11, 1Z a écrit : If your definition of truth is limited to logical inference given a certain set of axioms and inference rules, then what are we trying to do on the Everything List? That's *mathematical* truth. It is not. This is just provability. Since Godel we know that they are not the same. This is *the* key point for giving sense to the lobian interview. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 26-oct.-06, à 22:55, 1Z a écrit : In an MMW, measure cannot be chosen to match experience, empirically, it has to be deduced apriori. Yes. You are rioght. And this is what I have done. Please be patient I will give all the explanation. Or search in the archive those I have already given. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Quentin Anciaux writes: Hi Stathis, Le Vendredi 27 Octobre 2006 12:16, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou The problem with these kind of thoughts experiments is that we don't know how consciousness works, we don't know if we can make a perfect copy, we can't know (currently) if such a copy would be conscious as we don't know how conscious experience arise. Taking the premises of the problem you gave, it is impossible to give a (right) answer (if there is one...). You presupose too much on what is consciousness and how it works (not that it is a bad thing, but I think these examples won't convince someone who have not the same view on you about what is consciousness and how it works). I don't think the example I gave depends on detailed understanding of how consciousness works. The point I was trying to make is that it is not possible to guess the correct answer as your conscious experience would be exactly the same in each case. We could probably actually *do* the experiment with options (a) and (c) (the teleportation is not essential). We can't do (b) at present, but it seems obvious to me that whatever the complex details of the neurophysiology of consciousness, (b) would be indistinguishable from (a) unless you invoke something like a soul, for which there is no evidence. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Hi Colin, I am not sure I understand your point. Would you say that Derek Denton work is conflicting with comp? Actually comp can explain why we cannot attribute some brain *function* to some brain *part* activity. Such relation are described by G* (true but unprovable or unverifiable). Only an argument showing that some part of the brain use physical infinities would be a stress for comp. Not really the time to say more now(*). Bruno (*) I have not even the time to just read the other mail before sunday ... But then I see Quentin, Tom and others manage rather well most of Peter's current critical remarks. Le 27-oct.-06, à 02:45, Colin Hales a écrit : Hi Bruno, Derek Denton in Denton D. 2005. The Primordial Emotions: The dawning of consciousness: Oxford University Press. 267 p. is able to point to activated regions of basal brain in a human subject undergoing extreme thirst. It isn’t easy to control for obfuscating parameters but he did it. Dry mouth, wet mouth, blood salt levels, micturition thwarting...etc...He can point (in fMRI) to a single small cohort of cellular material unambiguously responsible for thirst qualia (a primordial emotion). One cohort does it. Another nearby in the same activated chain doesn't. Totally outside the cerebral cortex. If COMP is correct it should be telling us why that is and what to look for. Exactly what computational process corresponds to the difference between the two cohorts in first person presentation? What is it about COMP as an abstraction that renders that difference invariant? (being a real cellular version vs being a COMP version of the same thing) This is a glaring, large scale (well beyond quantum levels) phenomenon, right in your face at the cellular level and above. Perhaps you can shed some light on COMP in this regard, because I can’t see it. Regards, Colin Hales (EC still brewing!) -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 8:23 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted Le 23-oct.-06, à 00:12, 1Z a écrit : Huh? Computationalism is no more able to account for qualia than physicalism. Computationalism (the standard one) through my work (don't hesitate to criticize it) gives a precise account of qualia. It is even a refutable theory of both quanta and qualia, given that quanta are shown to be sharable qualia (first person plural). If the comp quanta behavior are shown to contradict empirical quanta, then that would refute the comp theory of of both qualia and quanta, and actually this would refute comp, even acomp (comp without yes doctor). Contrarywise, everyone a bit serious in philosophy of mind agrees that physicalist theories have not yet succeed in just approaching or formulating the the qualia problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 17:52, 1Z a écrit : No, I am just asking. I have even come up with formulations like real in the sense that I am real which avoid begging any questions about what kind of reality I have. Ah OK. I guess that is the RITSIAR. I let you know that: 1) I agree matter exists like my third person body exists (that is not primitively with comp) 2) My first person I exist like the unameable truth (assuming *informally* I am a consistent lobian machine). The question is how any of these machines exist. So it is important to distinguish 1-Ritsiar and 3-ritsiar. Perhaps just wait a bit when I will explain the math of the 1 and 3 pov (hypostases). No. I (still) want to know where the UD is running. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Sorry for the comment delay. Le 23-oct.-06, à 16:49, David Nyman a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: As usual, the truth of a mathematical existence-claim does not prove Platonism. By Platonism, or better arithmetical realism I just mean the belief by many mathematician in the non constructive proof of OR statements. Lest we go yet another round in the 'reification' debate, is it not possible to reconcile what is being claimed here? Bruno, I'm assuming that when you eschew 'Platonic existence' for AR, you are thereby saying that your project is to formalise certain arguments about the logical structure of possibility - and through this, to put actuality to the test in certain empirical aspects. Yes. Although people are so often wrong on what formalization consists in, that I prefer to say that I just interview a machine. Questions of how this may finally be reconciled with 'RITSIAR' (I hope you recall what this means) are in abeyance. I don't recall what RITSIAR means. Nor BU. Real in the sense that I am real Block Universe Nevertheless, some aspect of this approach may ultimately be ascribed a status as 'foundational existent' analogous to that of 'primary matter' in materialism. I don't think so. This would lead to a reification of numbers, which I think is just a little bit less meaningless than reifying matter. But still fundamentally wrong. If numbers aren't real at all they cannot generate reality (ITSIAR). Alternatively, such a hypothesis may be shown to be redundant or incoherent. Not really. It is SWE which should be made redundant. Peter, as we've agreed, materialism is also metaphysics, and as a route to 'ultimate reality' via a physics of observables, is vulnerable to 'reification'. Might it not be premature to finalise precisely what it is that physical theory decribes that might actually be RITSIAR? I have answered these questions before: but 1. Contingent existence. 2. The ability to causally interact 3. A primary substance which endures through change ( explaining dynamic, non-BU time) 4. Optionally, the ability to explain phenomenal consiousness in a basically non-mathematical way.(Property dualism) You may be tempted to respond, Johnsonianly, that it is precisely the world that kicks back that is RITSIAR, but theoretical physics and COMP are both in the business of modelling what is not so directly accessible. OK. This notwithstanding that we may believe one or other theory to be further developed, more widely accepted, or better supported empirically. Or is there some irreducible sense in which 'primary matter' could be deemed to exist in a way that nothing else can? Note that consciousness can be deemed to exist in a way that nothing else can. In particular consciousness of numbers. But Primary Matter, Ether, Phlogiston, Vital Principle, I doubt it. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 17:52, 1Z a écrit : No, I am just asking. I have even come up with formulations like real in the sense that I am real which avoid begging any questions about what kind of reality I have. Ah OK. I guess that is the RITSIAR. I let you know that: 1) I agree matter exists like my third person body exists (that is not primitively with comp) 2) My first person I exist like the unameable truth (assuming *informally* I am a consistent lobian machine). The question is how any of these machines exist. So it is important to distinguish 1-Ritsiar and 3-ritsiar. Perhaps just wait a bit when I will explain the math of the 1 and 3 pov (hypostases). No. I (still) want to know where the UD is running. What do you mean by where? It sounds like asking where the universe is. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 17:52, 1Z a écrit : No, I am just asking. I have even come up with formulations like real in the sense that I am real which avoid begging any questions about what kind of reality I have. Ah OK. I guess that is the RITSIAR. I let you know that: 1) I agree matter exists like my third person body exists (that is not primitively with comp) 2) My first person I exist like the unameable truth (assuming *informally* I am a consistent lobian machine). The question is how any of these machines exist. So it is important to distinguish 1-Ritsiar and 3-ritsiar. Perhaps just wait a bit when I will explain the math of the 1 and 3 pov (hypostases). No. I (still) want to know where the UD is running. What do you mean by where? Principally I mean in the physical universe, or in Plato's heaven. Bruno always sounds like a Platonist, but he keeps denying he is one. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. Tom Another example would be an electric circuit: Given the structure of an electric circuit, and axioms and rules about electricity, we can predict what the output of the circuit will be. If we go through a different sequence of contortions/calculations with that same structure, axioms and rules, and get a different output value, then the axioms, rules *together with the structure* are inconsistent. The structure can't be inconsistent - it's not a statement or proposition. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 21:11, 1Z a écrit : If your definition of truth is limited to logical inference given a certain set of axioms and inference rules, then what are we trying to do on the Everything List? That's *mathematical* truth. It is not. This is just provability. Since Godel we know that they are not the same. We are not *forced* to the conclusion that there *is* a kind of truth which is completely separate from provability. Platonism is *possible* in the face of Godel, but so is intuitionism. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). it is possible to have several universes which are consistent with each other , but mutually inconsistent. That is in fact the situation with contemporary mathematics. A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. I hardly follows from that, that all maths is physically true. The point of making observations is to exclude un-physical maths (ie falsify theories). On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 18:02, 1Z a écrit : Measure is a lot more difficult in MMW. It has to be deprived by apriori necessity. Do you have a solution? A good candidate for apriori necessity (and possibility) is provability (and conssitency) by a lobian machine. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ Are Lobian machines apriori necessary themselves ?. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: I think it is simpler to go back to your own clones-in-the-next-room example rather than introducing the complication of neurophysiology (or indeed physics). You are informed that your current stream of consciousness is either being generated by (a) a temporal sequence of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, and replaced by the next one in the series a microsecond later or (b) a spatial series of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, such that the whole experiment goes for a second but uses multiple adjacent rooms You have to guess whether you are in experiment (a) or (b). If appropriate care is taken to provide you with no external clues do you think you would be able to guess the right answer with greater than 1/2 probability? It's quite possible that neither scenario can support a subjective flow of time. Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou Sure, it was (a). (c) violates the laws of physics. (b) might or might not be theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 21:11, 1Z a écrit : If your definition of truth is limited to logical inference given a certain set of axioms and inference rules, then what are we trying to do on the Everything List? That's *mathematical* truth. It is not. This is just provability. Since Godel we know that they are not the same. We are not *forced* to the conclusion that there *is* a kind of truth which is completely separate from provability. Platonism is *possible* in the face of Godel, but so is intuitionism. True. But there always is a truth that is not provable (given the system). And you can find out more about it by changing the system and comparing results. By the way, you never answered my question, what are we trying to do on the Everything List besides logical inference given a system? My take is that at least part of what we are doing is banging systems against each other via discussion. If this is not productive, then we should abandon the Everything List and buy telescopes. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, I should say that agreement at the quantum level is needed too, but also agreement at the global level. Tom e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, I should say that agreement at the quantum level is needed too, but also agreement at the global level. Tom e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. Tom I should also say that I will be too busy to post the next several days. Too busy pushing the proverbial mop, getting paid for logical inference. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-oct.-06, à 21:11, 1Z a écrit : If your definition of truth is limited to logical inference given a certain set of axioms and inference rules, then what are we trying to do on the Everything List? That's *mathematical* truth. It is not. This is just provability. Since Godel we know that they are not the same. We are not *forced* to the conclusion that there *is* a kind of truth which is completely separate from provability. Platonism is *possible* in the face of Godel, but so is intuitionism. True. But there always is a truth that is not provable (given the system). You can't be sure that it is a truth unless you can prove it. Albeit in another system. And you can find out more about it by changing the system and comparing results. By the way, you never answered my question, what are we trying to do on the Everything List besides logical inference given a system? One thing is to compare the reasonableness of various axioms. My take is that at least part of what we are doing is banging systems against each other via discussion. If this is not productive, then we should abandon the Everything List and buy telescopes. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: That is not clear to me. Perhaps it turns on the meaning of content in an OM. Generally if my OM's are taken to be on the order of a second or longer, I think the order could be reconstructed from the content. But I also think there would be exceptions. For example if I'm startled by a loud noise this switches my consciousness on a time scale much shorter than 1sec to What was that!? and then, deciding it was not important, I switch back to what I was thinking of before. These thoughts are connected by *memory* but not by conscious content of OMs. Maybe there is a feeling of continuity in consciousness which doesn't survive chopping it up into OMs, i.e. each conscious thought has duration and overlaps preceding and suceding thoughts. But I think that either some such overlap or access to memory must be invoked to ensure that OMs can be ordered. We can distinguish between memory that actually is part of my present conscious experience, such as when I am in the process of recalling what I did yesterday, and memory that lies in waiting and available for access should the need arise, such as just before I decided to recall what I did yesterday. I would class the latter kind of memory along with the rest of the machinery required to generate the appropriate observer moments to give the experience of a coherent stream of consciousness. If all this machinery were dispensed with, and the OM's were generated magically just as if the underlying stored memories etc. were still operational, no difference in the stream of consciousness could occur. Pushing the idea to its limit, not only is it unnecessary for anything external to the OM's to bind them together, it is unnecessary for other OM's, past or future, to even exist. I would still feel I have a past and expect I will survive into the future if my entire lifespan is just one second long and all my memories false. My hope that I will survive amounts to a hope that somewhere, sometime, there will be an OM with appropriate memories and a sense that he was and remains me. If such an OM does exist, it will consider itself my successor regardless of whether I ever actually existed. Stathis Papaioannou That is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you. Suppose that being conscious is something a brain does. Then a Observer-second would be one second of that brain activity. When this OS was magically initiated it would already include potentials traveling down axons, etc, the residue of the previous OS and the precursors of later milliseconds in this OS. But those underlying physical processes are not what we generally think of as conscious. They are not things we would report if asked what we are thinking. Nevertheless they may be necessary for the continuity of consciousness, where consciousness here means the inner narrative - the story I tell myself in my head. In these thought experiments about OMs there seem to be two contrary implicit assumptions: (1) that just the content of the inner narrative constitutes consciousness, as in the analogy of cutting up a book and then reconstructing it's order from the content of the segments, (2) the feeling of continuity remains in a segment 1sec or 0.1sec or 0.01sec even if that is too short a segment to allow reconstruction of the order from the content. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Tom Caylor wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: Bruno has tried to introduce us before to the concept of universes or worlds made from logic, bottom up (a la constructing elephants). These universes can be consistent or inconsistent. But approaching it from the empirical side (top down rather bottom up), here is an example of a consistent structure: I think you assume that you as a person are a structure, or that you can assume that temporarily for the purpose of argument. You as a person can be consistent in what you say, can you not? Given certain assumptions (axioms) and inference rules you can be consistent or inconsistent in what you say. Depending on your definition of consistent and inconsistent, there need not be any axioms or inference rules at all. If I say I'm married and I'm not married. then I've said something inconsistent - regardless of axioms or rules. But *I'm* not inconsistent - just what I've said is. I'm not saying the what you say is all there is to who you are. Actually this illustrates what I was saying before about the need for a reference frame to talk about consistency, e.g. what you say, given your currently held axioms and rules. If you have axioms and rules and you can infer X and not-X then the axioms+rules are inconsistent - but so what? Nothing of import about the universe follows. Yes, but if you see that one set of axioms/rules is inconsistent with another set of axioms/rules, then you can deduce something about the possible configurations of the universe, but only if you assume that the universe is consistent (which you apparently are calling a category error). A case in point is Euclid's fifth postulate in fact. By observing that Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with non-Euclidean geometry (the word observe here is not a pun or even a metaphor!), you can conclude that the local geometry of the universe should follow one or the other of these geometries. No, you are mistaken. You can only conclude that, based on my methods of measurement, a non-Euclidean model of the universe is simpler and more convenient than an Euclidean one. This is exactly the reasoning they are using in analyzing the WIMP observations. The WIMP observations are consistent with a Euclidean model...provided you change a lot of other physics. Time and again in history, math has been the guide for what to look for in the universe. Not just provability (as Bruno pointed out) inside one set of axioms/rules (paradigm), but the most powerful tool is generating multiple consistent paradigms, and playing them against one another, and against the observed structure of the universe. Right. As my mathematician friend Norm Levitt put it,The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies. On the other hand, I think that the real proof of the pudding of Bruno's approach would be, not does his approach agree with empirical evidence at the quantum/atomic level, but does it agree at the global level, e.g. by make correct predictions about the spacial curvature, compactness, finitude/infinitude, connectedness, etc. of the observed universe. Of course the quantum vs. global agreement would be the real proof of any TOE. Agreement would be great. But the proof of scientific pudding is predicting something suprising that is subsequently confirmed. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David, Consider these three examples: (a) You utter sentence S, the cat sat on the mat. The word on starts at time t1 and finishes at time t2. (b) At time t1 while uttering S you are intantaneously teleported to a distant location. (c) You have no actual past but materialise de novo at time t1 as if in (b), uttering ... on the mat. We are interested in your phenomenal consciousness between t1 and t2 in each case (ignoring the change of scenery due to the teleportation). It is no doubt quite complex, involving not only saying the word on but also a sense of self, a sense of the whole sentence and your place in it, an idea that this is part of an experiment, and so on. There may even be a lag between action and awareness, so that you are actually conscious of saying sat in the interval t1t2 rather than when you actually said it, and there will probably be at least some sense of continuity between sat and on during t1t2. The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*, and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone. Stathis Papaioannou From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:14:03 -0700 Stathis Papaioannou wrote: My brain must at some subconscious level have the structure of the whole sentence spanning a 2 second interval t1-t2 or else the sentence could not be generated. It's still unclear to me from the above whether we're in agreement or not. I'm concerned that you may be assuming what is to be explained, owing to an illegitimate sleight of intuition. That is, it's so normal for us to think in terms of the overall 'sequence of moments' that it's easy to forget that the posit for OMs is that they are *informationally closed* with respect to other OMs (this is the point I've been debating with Peter, with which I thought you agreed). If OMs are thus closed, then it must follow that whatever information is required to generate the experience of 'a given moment' (under-defined, but see below) *must* be contained in its entirety within *some* (but of course not every) OM. Were that not the case, *no* individual OM would contain all the elements of a coherent conscious experience, and by the same token *any* coherent conscious experience would necessarily have to span *multiple* OMs. But any such assumption - i.e. meta-assembly of data over multiple OMs - is precisely what we wish to rule out of our account. A 'successor' OM - and any conscious state dependent on it - must simply 'forget' anything about 'prior' OMs that is not re-encoded within it - beyond such encoding, everything else is simply radically absent. A metaphor here might be a cine-film. An OM is then a frame. If all you have is a single frame, then your 'experience' must be strictly limited to whatever is contained in that frame, unless you can somehow surreptitiously sneak a glance at - or recall at will - other frames. we rely on the machinery of the brain keeping track of everything to generate successive moments of consciousness which pull everything back into coherence. Is what you say above consistent with the constraints on OMs in my account? I think perhaps we may intend the same thing here. This consideration, at least, strongly suggests (IMO entails) something entirely non-trivial about what the brain is actually doing (your 'engineering problem'), beyond representing simple 'snapshots' from external input. To overcome the 'OM constraint', it needs to assemble, from these 'instants', 'rolling constructs', each of which encodes an updated version of the 'specious present', *simultaneously* representing multiple snapshots and their relations. It may be entirely owing to such 'time capsules' (as Barbour, taking this issue seriously, implies) that we are able to assemble and implement a dynamic experience of 'time'. In fact, we can be pretty sure that there is a brain mechanism doing something like this, because as Colin recently reminded us, there are syndromes that interfere with it, changing the 'dynamic granularity' (refresh rate). So our dynamic experience - the 'A-series' - may depend critically on such 'time-synthesising' mechanisms within brain structure and function, rather than mapping in a simple sequential way to external 'B-series' events. And this of course would then make sense of why such biological
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: I think it is simpler to go back to your own clones-in-the-next-room example rather than introducing the complication of neurophysiology (or indeed physics). You are informed that your current stream of consciousness is either being generated by (a) a temporal sequence of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, and replaced by the next one in the series a microsecond later or (b) a spatial series of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, such that the whole experiment goes for a second but uses multiple adjacent rooms You have to guess whether you are in experiment (a) or (b). If appropriate care is taken to provide you with no external clues do you think you would be able to guess the right answer with greater than 1/2 probability? It's quite possible that neither scenario can support a subjective flow of time. Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion, and then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the following three events has taken place: (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence seizure; (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your place 1 second later; (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching was instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion. Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place? Stathis Papaioannou Sure, it was (a). (c) violates the laws of physics. (b) might or might not be theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. OK, you would probably be right if you were kidnapped and subjected to this experiment tomorrow. But it's a thought experiment, and my point is that from your conscious experience alone you would be unable to distinguish between the three cases. Peter Jones' posts seem to imply that you would notice a difference. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Peter Jones writes (quoting David Nyman): The key aspect is that the structure of each OM is inherently what might be termed a perceiver-percept dyad - that is, it must contain whatever process or structure is involved both in *representing* the available information and *responding* perceptually to it. This makes each dyad *informationally* closed with respect to other such dyads, without reference to their 'temporal' or 'spatial' separation. I don't see why. Are you saying they are still closed even if their information content is similar? Why should that be? How can I fail to have similar information content to myself five minutes form now? Why doesn't it apply spatially? Why doensnt each neuron have its own consciousness? Consequently, in a BU, you shouldn't expect to have an experience of: A consciousness spread across time. if by this, you mean some sort of simultaneous awareness of multiple 'I's. This would require an extra-hypothetical 'super-I' process or There is *a* process which links spatially separated neurons into a single consciousness. I don't claim to know what it is. But if time is just like space, as the BU theory has it, why doesn't it apply across time. We *do* have simultaneous consciousness -- just not the same consciousness. Which is precisely my point. Just as you *do* have simultaneous consciousness of all OMs in which you are present - just not the same consciousness. But the difference of your and my consiousness is explained by the difference in content. My consciousness five minutes from now cannot fail to be 99% the same as my consciousness now, information-wise. There is no logical distinction between the two cases, unless you are positing the existence of a soul. The distinction between the OMs in which the 'I' is you, and those in which the 'I' is me, is entirely informationally determined and delimited. There is no other means of differentiation. Which is precisely my point. My consciousness five minutes from now cannot fail to be 99% the same as my consciousness now, information-wise. I think it is simpler to go back to your own clones-in-the-next-room example rather than introducing the complication of neurophysiology (or indeed physics). You are informed that your current stream of consciousness is either being generated by (a) a temporal sequence of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, and replaced by the next one in the series a microsecond later or (b) a spatial series of clones, each of which lives for a second, then is instantly killed, such that the whole experiment goes for a second but uses multiple adjacent rooms You have to guess whether you are in experiment (a) or (b). If appropriate care is taken to provide you with no external clues do you think you would be able to guess the right answer with greater than 1/2 probability? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
1Z wrote: I don't see why. Are you saying they are still closed even if their information content is similar? Why should that be? How can I fail to have similar information content to myself five minutes form now? Why doesn't it apply spatially? Why doensnt each neuron have its own consciousness? What I mean by 'closed' is that not merely the objects of perception, but the means of acquisition of perceptual content (i.e. the dyad), are alike constrained by the information content - or structure - of the OM itself. There isn't a further 'sympathetic' - or whatever - access to information due to 'similarity' - by what process could this occur? As to each neuron having its own 'consciousness', this is neither here nor there - whatever could the *content* of such consciousness be? The very point is that there must be a complex interaction, seamlessly relating perceiver-process with percept-process (e.g. constructing memory, representation, etc.), in order for the 'I' to emerge and coherently assert itself. We know this from the way such processes fragment and break down under the impact of Alzheimers and short-term memory disfunction. Self-referential consciousness can only be sustained through a highly organised *process*, not merely an inherent undifferentiated quality. So of course 'you' have similar information content 'five minutes from now'. This is how you (and we) make the identification that this particular 'I' is 'you' - the persistency of information through which 'you' can be tracked. It's also the only distinction between 'you' and 'me'. So for this reason there would be exactly the same argument for (or against) 'sympathetic overlap' between OMs containing you, and those containing me. And, interesting though this might be, personally I fail to experience any such communion, short of this particular channel of information that (literally) connects our respective OMs. David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: Why are POV's divided temporally?. If the BU theory predicts that they are not, it must be rejected. I don't think this is what needs to be at issue to resolve this point. Well, I think it is. Perhaps you could say why it is not. The key aspect is that the structure of each OM is inherently what might be termed a perceiver-percept dyad - that is, it must contain whatever process or structure is involved both in *representing* the available information and *responding* perceptually to it. This makes each dyad *informationally* closed with respect to other such dyads, without reference to their 'temporal' or 'spatial' separation. I don't see why. Are you saying they are still closed even if their information content is similar? Why should that be? How can I fail to have similar information content to myself five minutes form now? Why doesn't it apply spatially? Why doensnt each neuron have its own consciousness? Consequently, in a BU, you shouldn't expect to have an experience of: A consciousness spread across time. if by this, you mean some sort of simultaneous awareness of multiple 'I's. This would require an extra-hypothetical 'super-I' process or There is *a* process which links spatially separated neurons into a single consciousness. I don't claim to know what it is. But if time is just like space, as the BU theory has it, why doesn't it apply across time. We *do* have simultaneous consciousness -- just not the same consciousness. Which is precisely my point. Just as you *do* have simultaneous consciousness of all OMs in which you are present - just not the same consciousness. But the difference of your and my consiousness is explained by the difference in content. My consciousness five minutes from now cannot fail to be 99% the same as my consciousness now, information-wise. There is no logical distinction between the two cases, unless you are positing the existence of a soul. The distinction between the OMs in which the 'I' is you, and those in which the 'I' is me, is entirely informationally determined and delimited. There is no other means of differentiation. Which is precisely my point. My consciousness five minutes from now cannot fail to be 99% the same as my consciousness now, information-wise. David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: The problem is not that there would be gaps, the problem is that they would all be conscious simultaneously. Peter, I know from the above and previous comments you have made that this notion of multiple compresent consciousness seems to you to contradict your own experience, but I just can't see why. The crucial point about our 1-person experience is that it's inherently informationally self-limiting - i.e. we can only define ourselves in terms of whatever information we have access to from a given pov. Why are POV's divided temporally?. If the BU theory predicts that they are not, it must be
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 25-oct.-06, à 13:57, 1Z a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: It's even more than seeing where axioms and rules of inference lead. Given some axioms and rules of inference the only truths you can reach are those of the form It is true that axioms = theorems. For formalists, all mathematical truths are of this form. And that is why the doctrine of formalism in mathematics (or just number theory) is dead since Godel has proved his incompleteness theorem. We definitely know today that number theoretical truth escapes all formal theories. Physicists can still dream today about a formal and complete theory of everything-physical, but number scientist knows that the number realm is not completely formally unifiable. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (b) can't be right. However many copies of you there are, you only experience being one at a time. Stathis, I concur with this view, and for the reasons you give. However, much as I hate to complicate this issue further, I wonder if you have a view on the following. I mentioned to Peter the issue of the destructive effect of loss of short-term memory on the coherence of 'normal' conscious processes - e.g. forgetting the beginning of a sentence before getting to the end of it - an affliction to which I'm not entirely a stranger myself! From this, it seems to me that the notion of a 'state of consciousness' as being discrete with an OM, or 'time-capsule', might be overly simplistic, unless we conceive of the necessary extent of memory as being entirely encoded in, and accessible to, an individual OM - i.e. an OM can represent a 'fully-conscious individual'. For that matter, what temporal duration is an OM supposed to encompass - a 'Planck-length' instant; the entire 'specious present? This whole issue seems to be under-defined, but the danger is that the very notion of 'the present' might need to be treated as an emergent from a coordinated ensemble, rather than being inherent in individual OMs. But then what would coordinate them? Any thoughts? David Peter Jones writes: I don't see how a physical multiverse would be distinguishable from a virtual reality or a mathematical reality (assuming the latter is possible, for the sake of this part of the argument). The successive moments of your conscious experience do not need to be explicitly linked together to flow and they do not need to be explicitly separated, either in separate universes or in separate rooms, to be separate. I've never seen an HP universe. Yet they *must* exist in a mathematical reality, because there are no random gaps in Platonia. Since all mathematical structures are exemplified, the structure corresponging to (me up till 1 second ago) + (purple dragons) must exist. If there is nothing mathematical to keep out of HP universe, the fact that I have never seen one is evidence against a mathematical multiverse. That you don't experience HP universes is as much an argument against a physical multiverse as it is an argument against a mathematical multiverse. Not as much. It depends on how constrained they are. Physical multiverses can be almost as constrained as single universes, or almost as unconstrained as multiverses. If a physical MV exists, then in some branch you will encounter purple dragons in the next second. With a very low measure. The fact that you don't means that either there is no physical multiverse or there is a physical multiverse but the purple dragon experience is of low measure. Similarly in a mathematical multiverse the HP experiences may be of low measure. Physical multiversalists can choose measure to match observation (that is basically how the SWE is arrived at). Mathematical multiversalists cannot choose an arbitrary measure, because nothing is arbitrary or contingnet in Platonia. Measure has to emerge naturally and necessarily for them. OK, if you put constraints on a physical multiverse so that it's smaller than every possible universe. If you died today and just by accident a possible next moment of consciousness was generated by a computer a trillion years in the future, then ipso facto you would find yourself a trillion years in the future. That's the whole problem. I could just as easily find myself in an HP universe. But I never do. Not just as easily. If you are destructively scanned and a moment from now 2 copies of you are created in Moscow and 1 copy created in Washington, you have a 2/3 chance of finding yourself in Moscow and a 1/3 chance of finding yourself in Washington. What's that got to do with Platonia? Platonia contains every configuration of matter. (Snd no time). Configurations where I'm in Moscow, configurations where I'm in Washington, configurations where I'm on the moon, configurations where I'm in Narnia. There is no unaccountable fact to the effect that there is 1 copy of me in Moscow, 2 in Washington, and 0 on the moon. There are no random gaps in Platonia. (That's the mathematical* mutiverse of course. A physical mutliverse is an entirely different matter). Suppose God took Platonia, in all its richness, and made it physical. What would expect to experience in the next moment? (a) nothing (b) everything (c) something (a) can't be right. Although in the vast majority of universes in the next moment your head explodes or the laws of physics change such that your brain stops working (sorry), as long as there is at least one copy of you still conscious, you can expect to
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Le 23-oct.-06, à 00:12, 1Z a écrit : Huh? Computationalism is no more able to account for qualia than physicalism. Computationalism (the standard one) through my work (don't hesitate to criticize it) gives a precise account of qualia. It is even a refutable theory of both quanta and qualia, given that quanta are shown to be sharable qualia (first person plural). If the comp quanta behavior are shown to contradict empirical quanta, then that would refute the comp theory of of both qualia and quanta, and actually this would refute comp, even acomp (comp without yes doctor). Contrarywise, everyone a bit serious in philosophy of mind agrees that physicalist theories have not yet succeed in just approaching or formulating the the qualia problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 25-oct.-06, à 13:57, 1Z a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: It's even more than seeing where axioms and rules of inference lead. Given some axioms and rules of inference the only truths you can reach are those of the form It is true that axioms = theorems. For formalists, all mathematical truths are of this form. And that is why the doctrine of formalism in mathematics (or just number theory) is dead since Godel has proved his incompleteness theorem. We definitely know today that number theoretical truth escapes all formal theories. Physicists can still dream today about a formal and complete theory of everything-physical, but number scientist knows that the number realm is not completely formally unifiable. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ Again, the kind of formalism that says everything can be brought under a single formal scheme (the Hilbertian programme) is different from the kind that says mathematical truths are dependent on axioms, and different truths will be arrived at under different axioms. Of course the key point here is different truths. Tom is not entitled to assume that all roads lead to Rome. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
David Nyman writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (b) can't be right. However many copies of you there are, you only experience being one at a time. Stathis, I concur with this view, and for the reasons you give. However, much as I hate to complicate this issue further, I wonder if you have a view on the following. I mentioned to Peter the issue of the destructive effect of loss of short-term memory on the coherence of 'normal' conscious processes - e.g. forgetting the beginning of a sentence before getting to the end of it - an affliction to which I'm not entirely a stranger myself! From this, it seems to me that the notion of a 'state of consciousness' as being discrete with an OM, or 'time-capsule', might be overly simplistic, unless we conceive of the necessary extent of memory as being entirely encoded in, and accessible to, an individual OM - i.e. an OM can represent a 'fully-conscious individual'. For that matter, what temporal duration is an OM supposed to encompass - a 'Planck-length' instant; the entire 'specious present? This whole issue seems to be under-defined, but the danger is that the very notion of 'the present' might need to be treated as an emergent from a coordinated ensemble, rather than being inherent in individual OMs. But then what would coordinate them? Any thoughts? It's certainly possible to have a very fragmented stream of consciousness. While fortunately rare these days, the most extreme forms of disorganised schizophrenia are from the patient's point of view something like having random, disconnected thoughts and perceptions without even a sense that they belong to a single enduring individual to bind them together. I think of an OM as the shortest possible period of conscious experience, which would make its apparent duration many milliseconds. Much of the discussion in which the term OM is used could as easily (and less ambiguously) use observer-second or observer-minute without loss of the general point. Of course, hours of real time physical activity might have to occur for each subjective moment of consciousness, and those hours may be divided up into infinitesimals in a block universe, or whatever the underlying physics dictates. The OM concept has analogies with block universe models, but it is philosophically useful regardless of what the actual nature of time is. As for memory being encoded in or accessible to an OM, that is an unnecessary complication. As you said previously, the OM's are related solely by their information content. If the seconds of your life were sliced up, shuffled and thrown to the wind, (t1) 3:10:02 PM of 10/10/06 would still subjectively follow (t2) 3:10:01 PM of 10/10/06 even though there is no connection or flow of information between them. If you look at how t1 and t2 are generated, then yes, there is a connection - they both come out of your head - but once generated, they form a natural sequence which cannot be disrupted. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: I don't see how a physical multiverse would be distinguishable from a virtual reality or a mathematical reality (assuming the latter is possible, for the sake of this part of the argument). The successive moments of your conscious experience do not need to be explicitly linked together to flow and they do not need to be explicitly separated, either in separate universes or in separate rooms, to be separate. I've never seen an HP universe. Yet they *must* exist in a mathematical reality, because there are no random gaps in Platonia. Since all mathematical structures are exemplified, the structure corresponging to (me up till 1 second ago) + (purple dragons) must exist. If there is nothing mathematical to keep out of HP universe, the fact that I have never seen one is evidence against a mathematical multiverse. That you don't experience HP universes is as much an argument against a physical multiverse as it is an argument against a mathematical multiverse. Not as much. It depends on how constrained they are. Physical multiverses can be almost as constrained as single universes, or almost as unconstrained as multiverses. If a physical MV exists, then in some branch you will encounter purple dragons in the next second. With a very low measure. The fact that you don't means that either there is no physical multiverse or there is a physical multiverse but the purple dragon experience is of low measure. Similarly in a mathematical multiverse the HP experiences may be of low measure. Physical multiversalists can choose measure to match observation (that is basically how the SWE is arrived at). Mathematical multiversalists cannot choose an arbitrary measure, because nothing is arbitrary or contingnet in Platonia. Measure has to emerge naturally and necessarily for them. OK, if you put constraints on a physical multiverse so that it's smaller than every possible universe. If you died today and just by accident a possible next moment of consciousness was generated by a computer a trillion years in the future, then ipso facto you would find yourself a trillion years in the future. That's the whole problem. I could just as easily find myself in an HP universe. But I never do. Not just as easily. If you are destructively scanned and a moment from now 2 copies of you are created in Moscow and 1 copy created in Washington, you have a 2/3 chance of finding yourself in Moscow and a 1/3 chance of finding yourself in Washington. What's that got to do with Platonia? Platonia contains every configuration of matter. (Snd no time). Configurations where I'm in Moscow, configurations where I'm in Washington, configurations where I'm on the moon, configurations where I'm in Narnia. There is no unaccountable fact to the effect that there is 1 copy of me in Moscow, 2 in Washington, and 0 on the moon. There are no random gaps in Platonia. (That's the mathematical* mutiverse of course. A physical mutliverse is an entirely different matter). Suppose God took Platonia, in all its richness, and made it physical. What would expect to experience in the next moment? (a) nothing (b) everything (c) something (a) can't be right. Although in the vast majority of universes in the next moment your head explodes or the laws of physics change such that your brain stops working (sorry), as long as there is at least one copy of you still conscious, you can expect to remain conscious. (b) can't be right. However many copies of you there are, you only experience being one at a time. Even if one of the copies is mind-melded with others, that still counts as an individual with more complex experiences. Moreover, it is doubtful whether an experience of everything simultaneously - every possible thought, including all the incoherent ones - is different to no experience at all, much as a page covered in ink contains no more information than a blank page. Therefore, (c) must be right. You can expect to experience something. What is it that you might experience, if all possibilities are actualised? What will you experience if no measure is defined, or all the possibilities have equal measure? But c breaks down into: c1) I experience something coherent that obeys the laws of physics and c2) I experience wild and crazy harry Potter stuff. The memory-traces corresponding to c2 are a possible configuration of matter, and so must exist in Platonia. But I only experience c1. It is a real problem to explain why the HP universes are less likely to be experienced than the orderly ones (see chapter 4.2 of Russell Standish' book for a summary of some of the debates on this issue), but it
Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: As for memory being encoded in or accessible to an OM, that is an unnecessary complication. As you said previously, the OM's are related solely by their information content. If the seconds of your life were sliced up, shuffled and thrown to the wind, (t1) 3:10:02 PM of 10/10/06 would still subjectively follow (t2) 3:10:01 PM of 10/10/06 even though there is no connection or flow of information between them. If you look at how t1 and t2 are generated, then yes, there is a connection - they both come out of your head - but once generated, they form a natural sequence which cannot be disrupted. But my point about the 'coherence' of consciousness is that it seems (especially from what occurs, or fails to occur, when it deteriorates) that complex representation and processing of *temporally extended* information sequences (e.g. grasp of the entirety of the content and meaning of a sentence or proposition) is necessary for one to experience and act as a fully-functioning conscious individual. Consequently, it seems to me that such processes must converge on OMs in which all the necessary information is fully encoded and expressed (which is essentially what Barbour seems to be claiming for his 'time capsules' - e.g. his 'flight of the kingfisher' example). Without this, the alternative seems to be that the individual random, wind-blown seconds of your metaphor would need to be totalised in some additional non-information-based manner in order to coordinate an ensemble of informationally incomplete, discrete elements into coherent experiences. AFAICS they only 'form a natural sequence' from the quasi-objective perspective of our philosophical stance. And such coordination is in any case what we were assuring Peter was both unnecessary and impossible. The 'snapshot with memory' view of things is surely only viable if each snapshot can be shown to be fully efficacious in reconstituting what we do in fact experience - and this, short of magic, surely requires the discrete presence within each snapshot of all the necessary process and information. It seems to me that this might be a productive slant on what work the brain might actually be doing in constructing the sort of spatio-temporally dimensioned experiences we encounter. IOW, it isn't just 'recording and replaying', but creating and continually updating a coherent informational construct, centred on an embedded 'I', that reads-out 'self-referentially' as a 4D world. Any given OM would represent the state-of-update of this construct, with consequent full access to its resources at that particular state-of-update. David David Nyman writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (b) can't be right. However many copies of you there are, you only experience being one at a time. Stathis, I concur with this view, and for the reasons you give. However, much as I hate to complicate this issue further, I wonder if you have a view on the following. I mentioned to Peter the issue of the destructive effect of loss of short-term memory on the coherence of 'normal' conscious processes - e.g. forgetting the beginning of a sentence before getting to the end of it - an affliction to which I'm not entirely a stranger myself! From this, it seems to me that the notion of a 'state of consciousness' as being discrete with an OM, or 'time-capsule', might be overly simplistic, unless we conceive of the necessary extent of memory as being entirely encoded in, and accessible to, an individual OM - i.e. an OM can represent a 'fully-conscious individual'. For that matter, what temporal duration is an OM supposed to encompass - a 'Planck-length' instant; the entire 'specious present? This whole issue seems to be under-defined, but the danger is that the very notion of 'the present' might need to be treated as an emergent from a coordinated ensemble, rather than being inherent in individual OMs. But then what would coordinate them? Any thoughts? It's certainly possible to have a very fragmented stream of consciousness. While fortunately rare these days, the most extreme forms of disorganised schizophrenia are from the patient's point of view something like having random, disconnected thoughts and perceptions without even a sense that they belong to a single enduring individual to bind them together. I think of an OM as the shortest possible period of conscious experience, which would make its apparent duration many milliseconds. Much of the discussion in which the term OM is used could as easily (and less ambiguously) use observer-second or observer-minute without loss of the general point. Of course, hours of real time physical activity might have to occur for each subjective moment of consciousness, and those hours may be divided up into infinitesimals in a block universe, or whatever the underlying physics dictates. The OM concept has analogies with block
