subject:"Re\: John Searle on consciousness"


On 7/30/2014 11:36 AM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 03:13:01PM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:

Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be
imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading
lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally
accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA.


I don't think step 7 and the MGA have been overemphasised at all -
although step 3 has been done to death it seems.

The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way
of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual
precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which
requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the
summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a
single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is
well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as
well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience
is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse
entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate
consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7.


I hope your paper will elucidate those last two inferences. If computational superveniece 
is only compatible with physical supervenience in a multiverse (eternal inflation or 
Everett?) and physical supervenience is well supported empirically then it seems that a 
*physical* multiverse is necessary for computational supervenience.


Brent



I'm in process of writing this up as a paper, which I'll hopefully
post to this list in the next week or so to be shredded by the
denizens here.

On another note, I've done a calculation of the observer moment
measure given by the universal dovetailer, which shows that the
measure is indeed independent of the chosen reference machine, as we
widely suspected, and hopefully might be comparable with
Solomonoff-Levin's universal prior. More likely, it might be compared
with the Bayesian probability after an infinite number of updates.

Not sure if it belongs in the above paper, as it is necessarily more
technical, but I'll post that to this list in one form or other soon.

But I'm happy for there to me more discussion of the AUDA too :) The
underpinnings of that theory still seem rather weakly motivated for
me, as opposed to being mandated by computationalism.




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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 7/30/2014 4:57 PM, LizR wrote:
On 31 July 2014 10:26, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au
mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:08:52AM +1200, LizR wrote:

PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the
world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes
expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that?

Why?

Because if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably has some
sort of granularity, and if it's blown up in size (or squashed down) the grain size may
become relevant. It's one of the end of the universe scenarios mentioned by Max
Tegmark in his recent book, that the expansion of the universe makes the quantum
granularity too large for matter to continue to exist (in some way).

The evidence however is against spacetime granularity:

arXiv:1109.5191v2 [astro-ph.CO] 18 Apr 2012

*Bounds on Spectral Dispersion from Fermi-detected Gamma Ray Bursts*
Robert J. Nemiroff,1 Ryan Connolly,1 Justin Holmes,1 and Alexander B. Kostinski1
1Dept. of Physics, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Dr., Houghton MI,
49931, USA

Data from four Fermi-detected gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is used to set limits on
spectral dis-
persion of electromagnetic radiation across the universe. The analysis focuses on photons
recorded

above 1 GeV for Fermi detected GRB 080916C, GRB 090510A, GRB 090902B, and GRB
090926A
because these high-energy photons yield the tightest bounds on light dispersion. It is
shown that
significant photon bunches in GRB 090510A, possibly classic GRB pulses, are remarkably
brief, an
order of magnitude shorter in duration than any previously claimed temporal feature in
this energy
range. Although conceivably a 3 fluctuation, when taken at face value, these pulses
lead to an
order of magnitude tightening of prior limits on photon dispersion. Bound of c/c 6.94 x
10-21
is thus obtained. Given generic dispersion relations where the time delay is proportional
to the
photon energy to the first or second power, the most stringent limits on the dispersion
strengths

were k1 1.61 x 10-5 sec Gpc-1 GeV-1 and k2 3.57 x 10-7 sec Gpc-1 GeV-2
respectively. Such
limits constrain dispersive effects created, for example, by the spacetime foam of quantum
gravity.

In the context of quantum gravity, our bounds set M1c2 greater than 525 times
the Planck mass,
suggesting that spacetime is smooth at energies near and slightly above the
Planck mass.

I suppose that if you blow up space-time exponentially, you will rapidly reach any
existing grain size. If inflation would have blown up Planck-cell sized chunks to
anything vaguely macroscopic, for example, we wouldn't expect any detail to exist below
the expanded size.

Macroscopic, in the sense of classical acting, not quantum, is a matter of degrees of
freedom. So I think it would depend on how things were blown up. Just changing the
Planck length would be simple rescaling and nothing observable would change. So space
quanta would have to get bigger compared to something else fundamental.

Brent

I'm not sure exactly how this works, but once you have a universe in which some sort of
structure size is defined, expanding it a lot might thereafter mean that size can't be
supported anymore by quantum physics.

(If you see what I mean...?)

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 31 July 2014 19:17, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/30/2014 4:57 PM, LizR wrote:

  On 31 July 2014 10:26, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:08:52AM +1200, LizR wrote:
 
  PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of
 the
  world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even
 universes
  expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that?
 

  Why?


  Because if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it
 presumably has some sort of granularity, and if it's blown up in size (or
 squashed down) the grain size may become relevant. It's one of the end of
 the universe scenarios mentioned by Max Tegmark in his recent book, that
 the expansion of the universe makes the quantum granularity too large for
 matter to continue to exist (in some way).


 The evidence however is against spacetime granularity:

 Yes, also granularity is fundamentally at odds with Lorentz invariance
(amongst other things). But something has to give in merging GR and QM and
the nature of space-time is a possibility, as various attempted TOEs have
assumed (string, LQG, CDT etc).

  I suppose that if you blow up space-time exponentially, you will rapidly
 reach any existing grain size. If inflation would have blown up Planck-cell
 sized chunks to anything vaguely macroscopic, for example, we wouldn't
 expect any detail to exist below the expanded size.

 Macroscopic, in the sense of classical acting, not quantum, is a matter
 of degrees of freedom.  So  I think it would depend on how things were
 blown up.  Just changing the Planck length would be simple rescaling and
 nothing observable would change.  So space quanta would have to get bigger
 compared to something else fundamental.


Obviously Max isn't just assuming a scale change.

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-31 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 8:36 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au
wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 03:13:01PM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
 
  Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would
 be
  imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading
  lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally
  accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA.
 

 I don't think step 7 and the MGA have been overemphasised at all -
 although step 3 has been done to death it seems.

 The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way
 of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual
 precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which
 requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the
 summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a
 single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is
 well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as
 well as Brent),


Well supported empirically is ok here, but I'd say that majority of
scientists take it to be more than that. It's often taken taken for granted
without awareness of the potential problems this possibly implies... which
is among the reasons the topic remains a hot little tempest in a tea pot.


 the only way of rescuing computational supervenience
 is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse.

But that multiverse
 entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate
 consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7.

 I'm in process of writing this up as a paper, which I'll hopefully
 post to this list in the next week or so to be shredded by the
 denizens here.


Looking forward to it :-)

But you don't need to already cultivate reception response... There was a
composer I can't recall atm who would subtitle his early work with
Misunderstood by critics to maintain the position of meh, not surprised
when I cast my pearls before swine.

You could clarify yours with as shredded by the denizens of Everything
list, which is a higher achievement than say Obama's Nobel peace prize,
which you could also throw in the title.



 On another note, I've done a calculation of the observer moment
 measure given by the universal dovetailer, which shows that the
 measure is indeed independent of the chosen reference machine, as we
 widely suspected, and hopefully might be comparable with
 Solomonoff-Levin's universal prior. More likely, it might be compared
 with the Bayesian probability after an infinite number of updates.


Wow, good effort in any case and look forward to that as well!



 Not sure if it belongs in the above paper, as it is necessarily more
 technical, but I'll post that to this list in one form or other soon.

 But I'm happy for there to me more discussion of the AUDA too :) The
 underpinnings of that theory still seem rather weakly motivated for
 me, as opposed to being mandated by computationalism.


Once you take as given the reversal of step 7, it's hard for me to see
why/how we can ignore interviewing the relevant machines. Especially in
view of the striking correspondences that this seems to point towards up to
this early point.

I agree on more discussion though to better make up my mind. PGC

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Re: John Searle on consciousness



On 30 Jul 2014, at 06:22, Kim Jones wrote:



On 30 Jul 2014, at 7:51 am, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to  
mean, and that changes from day to day.


Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to  
me, give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his  
first language. But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in  
its entirety.


Even Bruno himself, by his own admission has yet to grok comp in its  
entirety.



If by comp, you mean the hypothesis, I think everybody grok comp  
pretty well. It is the hypothesis that our bodies activity is the  
result of finitary local computable interactions at some level. It is  
basically Descartes' mechanism, recasted in the digital realm, and it  
is equivalent with the possibility of surviving with a digital  
functional brain, or body substitution.


If by comp, you mean the hypothesis and its consequences, then nobody  
grok comp in its entirety, nor does anybody grok even just the 3p  
arithmetical truth in its entirety. On the contrary, comp explains why  
it entals the existence of many infinite things, and non-comp things  
play a role in the internal views of machines/numbers.






Actually, I don't think the statement to grok comp in its entirety  
makes a lot of sense since with something like this, which has at  
its heart Gödelian notions of incompleteness and infinities of  
computations the possibility of tying the whole thing up in one  
clever and pretty package seems dubious at best. Comp involves  
enormous transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary knowledge. This is  
the incredibly hard part for people like Clark who hate to encounter  
knowledge fields in which they are out of their depth. John would  
prefer that things be rather more neat and that it all conform to  
the laws of physics as set out in some undergrad text. Wouldn't we  
all. Then we could all get back to whatever it was we were doing  
before we were rudely interrupted by the somewhat unsettling thought  
that matter is immaterial.



Comp is a bit like the theory of evolution (which is based on comp,  
actually).


It involves very few basic simple first principles, and shows how  
things emerge from them.


On John Clark I am not sure. He is clever and open minded. I think he  
is just in a psychological self-deny, for reason of jalousy or because  
it has implicate itself to much with the task of showing that I am an  
idiot, which I think is his main motivation.


At least he tries this publicly, which is rather exceptional.

John's strategy consists in making only one half of the thought  
experiment. He forgets to compare the prediction he made and wrote in  
his diary in Helsinki, with *all* contents of the diaries, enriched  
by the result of the self-localization, which resulted from the  
experiments. As you notice, young kids can understand that w  m get  
wrong everywhere, and w v m get true everywhere.


In the UDA, that clear third person description of a key part of the  
first person experience (getting one bit of information) is all what  
is needed to proceed up to the conclusion.


In AUDA, we adopt an even simpler conceptual strategy, we ask the  
machine. By Gödel's arithmetization of meta-arithmetic, we get the  
nuance enforced from incompleteness, and machine perception of it, we  
refine the first person, by meta defining it through the Theaetetus  
definition of knowledge (accepted by the modern, according to Gerson).






Bruno is a polymath, a creative thinker and the explorer of a  
terrain few are equipped to traverse. He seeks the convergence point  
of disparate fields of knowledge and applies a special filter over  
them which allows him to see information and data that no one else  
sees. This is the very definition of creative perception, something  
that is not in the mental toolkit of your average science-mind.  
Bruno has invented tools of perception that produce results that  
raise eyebrows, yes. I have received the impression that there is  
enormous simmering jealousy amongst some (not necessarily on this  
list) concerning this ability he has.



Thanks Kim. Well, I feel myself being only an ultra-conservative  
Platonist. I have no creativity, amoeba does, the universal machine  
does, numbers does. Every one does. The Lôbian numbers are the  
universal numbers who understand that.






Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different people,


Indeed. I begun a taxonomy of possible different type of practice, but  
it is ... astronomical.






but then this whole story is about the very notion of what a person  
is, and whether there in fact exists anything else at all in reality.


This would be oversimplifying. If elementary arithmetic can be  
candidate for a TOE, that is due in part that today, this captures  
already the sigma_1 complete part of the arithmetical reality, and  
with comp, that's structures our

Re: John Searle on consciousness



On 30 Jul 2014, at 14:36, David Nyman wrote:


On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well  
consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation  
makes *matter* incomprehensible.


Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole  
point is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the  
first! If the assumption that materialism can use comp to explain  
consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe,  
then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or  
otherwise.


What I meant is that a materialist can apply the Teaetetus definition  
on the material machine, and get the correct (G, G*, S4Grz) theory.
Of course, we know better, and we say that if *that* works for the  
mind, then it has to work for matter, on the sigma_1 (UD) restriction,  
with the p and p nuances.


The materialiste can be in that sense fair with comp for accepting the  
brain transplant, and accept strong AI, but still just ignore that if  
this capture consciousness, then matter should follow from the logic  
of sigma_1 based self-reference.


We agree, the position would be incoherent with respect to the mind- 
body problem, but would still be correct as far as those material  
machines are concerned.





The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the  
logical steps of the argument, particularly in assumptions about the  
scope of reasonable explanation. Brent and others point to  
parallel accounts of neural activity and conscious self-reporting  
and ask what more could be required in the way of explanation?.  
AUDA may indeed give a clue to the direction in which explanation  
could be extended, beyond ostensive parallelism of this kind,  
particularly with respect to the central logical puzzles of mutual  
reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would require us to  
relinquish any prior commitment to primitive materialist assumptions.


My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to  
articulate my own (still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic  
limitations of reductionist explanation under strictly materialist  
assumptions (i.e. without either tacit or explicit reliance on  
supernumerary posits). ISTM that one of the problems in reaching any  
kind of stable agreement (or even disagreement) on these issues is  
equivocation over the terms of reference. Consequently I've tried to  
make my own view of the reductionist assumption clear: i.e. that  
explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in principle be  
reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite class of  
primitive physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends  
to lead to disputation over the sense of without loss, but I'll  
come to that in due course.


Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism  
entails that it is misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon,  
above the level of the chosen explanatory basement, as having  
independent existence.


But this is a big ambiguous to me. As you know I make clear, at some  
point, that at the ontological level, we need only a tiny part of the  
arithmetical reality, which corresponds to the effective part of it.


Here 0 is clearly primitive. Would you say that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are  
no more primitive, as they are derivative construct made possible by  
the use of the successor axioms.


I use primitive in the sense of what is assumed, then what exist is  
the truth or falsity between all possible arithmetical relations.


A priori, there too much. That's why there is that measure problem.  
Under our substitution level, that we share (thanks to Everett!) we  
are confronted with a battle between all universal numbers, somehow.






Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes of the  
argument) such phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically  
dispensable. It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little  
longer! I've offered analogies in terms of such things as societies  
and football teams (you can easily supplement these with your own)  
in terms of which this consequence of reductionism is rather obvious.


But for some reason it stops being obvious in the matter of matter  
itself. On reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we  
directly experience such higher-level phenomena in an unreduced  
form. Hence none of us (and that includes Professor Dennett) can  
avoid the fact of encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a  
reality in unreduced high-level terms, even though our best  
explanations actually rule out the other-than-metaphorically- 
independent significance of any such levels. If you doubt the degree  
of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the general tenor  
of disputes over free will.


OK.




This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist  
analogy

Re: John Searle on consciousness

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 6:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people
 needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains.


  Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world
 and changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so
 why do you call this thing a spirit? What exactly makes it more
 unmaterial than an electron or a photon or even a baseball?


  Not necessarily. We could assume consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just
 along for the ride.


I have more than once said that if Darwin was right (and he was) then the
above MUST be true, consciousness MUST be a evolutionary spandrel, but it
was still caused by something just as a architectural spandrel was caused
by something; in one case the need for intelligent behavior to get genes
into the next generation and in the other case the inherent shape of a
arch. And neither is more supernatural than a electron or a baseball.

 A p-zombie would act the same way


Yes, but if consciousness is a epiphenomenon just along for the ride then a
intelligent zombie can not exist.


  It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere


Not necessarily, the chain of explanations might go on forever and for that
reason there may not be a theory of everything, but it is true that the
chain comes to a end or it doesn't,  and in either case the God hypothesis
is of no help whatsoever.

 I'm not sure where you got God from, though.


So in a discussion about ultimate reality and the nature of consciousness
you talk about a supernatural extra but don't understand why I inferred
from that you were talking about God. I don't believe you are being
entirely candid with me.


  So if we stop with consciousness, and consciousness is data being
 processed, then we need to take seriously any consequences of this,


Yes.

 which takes us back to comp, the UDA


I'm not interested in the Universal Dance Association and unlike
computationalism there is no consistent meaning to comp.  As Kim Jones
said  Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different
people.

 John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness



On 30 Jul 2014, at 15:13, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:





On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Quentin Anciaux  
allco...@gmail.com wrote:




2014-07-29 16:30 GMT+02:00 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 whatever a computer does is just the movement of electrons  
around circuits


 And whatever a human brain does is just the movement of  
molecules and ions around neurons. That word  just  sure covers a  
lot!


 Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I just love being quoted out  
of context.


I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using  
the word just in the same way I was.


 If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves  
that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case.


 It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain  
consciousness


Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but  
I know for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing  
the material in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most  
certainly does) and changes in consciousness changes the material in  
my brain (and it most certainly does) then in what sense does  
materialism fail to explain consciousness?


 according to comp

I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to  
mean, and that changes from day to day.



Sure Liar Clark... as said a million times now, comp is a shorthand  
for *computationalism* and it has always meant that... and always  
will... the only retarded changing the meaning day to day is you.


I applaud your firmness on this as his tireless repetition has the  
same effect as spam/advertising sensationalism... regardless of the  
vacuity, you just start singing the jingle in your head. The leaders  
of the chart on this list are:


1) Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never  
heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.


2) There is nothing in step 3  to understand.

3) (Some final personal attack to distract from discussion closing  
the post, like:) Bruno Marchal is not a logician.


The repetition is low resolution brainwash.

I appreciate a lot John Clark's contributions on astrophysics and  
that he engages UDA up to step 3 however, but I think everybody can  
see why his arguments always culminate in personal attack.


Good. I am not hallucinating!





Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do,  
would be imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites,  
exercises, reading lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that  
more universally accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and  
MGA.


Yes, I know everybody comes at it from differing background, but  
AUDA with more generalized, clear sequence of pedagogical felicity  
conditions would be cool. I know it's out there in bits and pieces  
in different threads; but to bundle and focus it would be nice.


For AUDA people needs to have an idea of how Gödel translated  
metamathemtical question about a theory T in the arithmetical language  
that T understand, that is, proves or justfies.


But the ultimate modal logic (G) can be explained also with the helps  
of the Knight Knaves Island of Smullyan.


AUDA exploits all the nuances brought by incompleteness. By  
incompleteness, although []p, []p  p, []  p, []p  p  p, all  
see the same (sigma_1 complete part) of reality, but they obeys  
different logics, which remains stable for the consistent, and  
arithmetically sound theories, which are needed for having the  
correct comp physics.






It would be a fine step forward, if the list and Bruno could advance  
on sharing these kinds of questions, just do it style, instead of  
servicing the meta spam and droning on about UDA, Step 7 and MGA.


Oh! I would not call that meta spam. I mean compare with John Clark on  
step 3.




Maybe resurrecting an old thread that I haven't seen could stop  
having to start from scratch. Just my virtual 2 cents. Apologies for  
length, but not much time :-) PGC


I see that my proposition to profit of summer to make a bit of  
combinators did not meet much success.


COMP is before all for computer science, but people seems shy to put  
the foot in the science itself. For AUDA, it is mandatory, I'm afraid.


Bruno






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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably has
 some sort of granularity,


Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist that
space is quantized just like everything else, that is to say space can not
be continuous but must be grainy and the lumps in space must be as large or
larger than the Planck Length of 1.62*10^-35 of a meter because size is
meaningless in quantum theories if things are smaller than that. But now to
everybody's surprise there is experimental evidence that seems to say that
if space is quantized at all then the lumps must be smaller than 10^-48 of
a meter; that's at least ten thousand billion times smaller than the Planck
Length, the smallest size previously thought to exist and it makes one
wonder if the smallest possible size is actually zero. For more see:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html

  John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-31 Thread Richard Ruquist

John:  Quantum theories of Physics insist that space is quantized just like
everything else.

Richard: Please provide proof that this is so. I do not believe you.


On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 2:27 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:




 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

  if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably has
 some sort of granularity,


 Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist
 that space is quantized just like everything else, that is to say space can
 not be continuous but must be grainy and the lumps in space must be as
 large or larger than the Planck Length of 1.62*10^-35 of a meter because
 size is meaningless in quantum theories if things are smaller than that.
 But now to everybody's surprise there is experimental evidence that seems
 to say that if space is quantized at all then the lumps must be smaller
 than 10^-48 of a meter; that's at least ten thousand billion times smaller
 than the Planck Length, the smallest size previously thought to exist and
 it makes one wonder if the smallest possible size is actually zero. For
 more see:

 http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html

   John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness



On 30 Jul 2014, at 19:27, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 4:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


  you confuse comp and its consequence.

And you confuse your made-up word comp with the English word  
computationalism.



Quentin ir right, you are just lying here. You might disagree with the  
consequence, but by accepting step 0, 1, 2, as you have implictly, or  
once explicitly, acknowledge, you understand what comp is.




 a rather systematic confusion of first person and third person.

Oh yes, the world is full of people who are confused by the  
extremely subtle difference between the words I and him.



You are, as you are unable to listen to the copies when using using  
the I and the him.


What do you say to HWWMWMMMW-John Clark, who tell you Come on John, I  
did predict all stories, but I can't neglect that when I actually did  
the experience, each time I get a precise result, W, or M, and without  
any clue of what will happen at the next duplication, I think I grasp  
what the guy was talking about.


Bruno







  John K Clark



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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: John Searle on consciousness



On 31 Jul 2014, at 00:08, LizR wrote:


On 31 July 2014 00:36, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well  
consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation  
makes *matter* incomprehensible.


Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole  
point is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the  
first! If the assumption that materialism can use comp to explain  
consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe,  
then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or  
otherwise.


Ah, yes, although I tend to get confused about this I think (when I  
think) that the bottom lines are ...


Comp assumes that consciousness can be explained at some level as a  
digital computation.



In some context, I would pass this, but at some point, we have to be  
very cautious. Comp does not explain per se anything. Comp is just the  
statement that if we are emulated at a low level enough, we would not  
see the difference, and in particular, would saty conscious. Then we  
shows that this leads to making matter completely miraculous and not  
intelligible, except in term of a measure on computations problem.


Then it happens that by incompleteness we learn a bit of the subtle  
relation between machine and truth, we get a partial solytion of the  
hard problem of consciousness, and some clues why matter does not  
disappear, from inside, even if not really existing in the outer big  
pictiure.






This would at least seem to accord with quantum mechanics, which  
hints that things go awry when we try to construct the world from  
continua and uncountable infinities, as relativity suggests. Based  
on that assumption, it then purports to show that materialism is  
incapable of providing the relevant substrate to support those  
computations, and that the only available source for these is in  
arithmetic, assumed to exist independently of us, at least in a  
simple form (since QM indicates there are no continua etc in the  
real world, I guess arithmetical realism isn't obliged to include  
real numbers).


QM qubits uses some continua, like in a I 0  +  b I 1 , with a and b  
complex numbers, and comp confront the machine with a continua, if  
only through the UD implementation of WM type of self-duplication. The  
FPI confronts the soul with many infinities too. If I am a machine,  
neither my soul, nor god, are machines.





Is that right so far?


If you grasp that comp leads to interesting probable and questions,  
you grasp the main thing.


To grasp that the machine already grasp a part of this, and provide  
answers, needs a bit more involvement in computer science.


A bit of combinators? Smullyan wrote a very nice recreative book on  
them: How to mock a mocking bird?


Bruno



PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature  
of the world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and  
even universes expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any  
comments on that?



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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: John Searle on consciousness


On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:




On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com 
mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably has 
some sort
of granularity,


Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist that space is 
quantized just like everything else,


I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a 
continous spacetime.


that is to say space can not be continuous but must be grainy and the lumps in space 
must be as large or larger than the Planck Length of 1.62*10^-35 of a meter because size 
is meaningless in quantum theories if things are smaller than that.


It is the smallest size that could in principle be measured *assuming a classical theory 
of gravity*. To measure something smaller would take a photon of such short wavelength it 
would form a black hole - but all this is assuming that the formation of such small black 
holes still obeys the classical equations of GR.  And it's significance is not clear, 
since QM already assumes a continuum with no such limit.


But now to everybody's surprise there is experimental evidence that seems to say that if 
space is quantized at all then the lumps must be smaller than 10^-48 of a meter; that's 
at least ten thousand billion times smaller than the Planck Length, the smallest size 
previously thought to exist and it makes one wonder if the smallest possible size is 
actually zero.


The paper I cited, arXiv:1109.5191v2 [astro-ph.CO] 18 Apr 2012, says
In the context of quantum gravity, our bounds set M1c2 greater than 525 times the Planck 
mass,
suggesting that spacetime is smooth at energies near and slightly above the Planck mass. 
Which corresponds to the granularity being smaller than the Planck length by a factor of 
1/525.


The 10^-13 factor comes from a paper testing for birefringence, i.e. chiral asymmetry, 
which is different from spatial granularity.

http://journals.aps.org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/prd/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevD.83.121301

Brent


For more see:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html

  John K Clark
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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 1 August 2014 06:14, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 6:37 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious,
 people needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains.


  Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world
 and changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so
 why do you call this thing a spirit? What exactly makes it more
 unmaterial than an electron or a photon or even a baseball?


  Not necessarily. We could assume consciousness is an epiphenomenon,
 just along for the ride.


 I have more than once said that if Darwin was right (and he was) then the
 above MUST be true, consciousness MUST be a evolutionary spandrel, but it
 was still caused by something just as a architectural spandrel was caused
 by something; in one case the need for intelligent behavior to get genes
 into the next generation and in the other case the inherent shape of a
 arch. And neither is more supernatural than a electron or a baseball.

  A p-zombie would act the same way


 Yes, but if consciousness is a epiphenomenon just along for the ride then
 a intelligent zombie can not exist.


I don't see how that can be so. Maybe the epiphenomenon is only manifested
in people whose name contains the letter 'J'. We could never tell the
difference.



  It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere


 Not necessarily, the chain of explanations might go on forever and for
 that reason there may not be a theory of everything, but it is true that
 the chain comes to a end or it doesn't,  and in either case the God
 hypothesis is of no help whatsoever.


That's true. I should have said that it can't be circular.


  I'm not sure where you got God from, though.


 So in a discussion about ultimate reality and the nature of consciousness
 you talk about a supernatural extra but don't understand why I inferred
 from that you were talking about God. I don't believe you are being
 entirely candid with me.


The supernatural extra was some sort of spirit attached to the brain.



  So if we stop with consciousness, and consciousness is data being
 processed, then we need to take seriously any consequences of this,


 Yes.

  which takes us back to comp, the UDA


 I'm not interested in the Universal Dance Association and unlike
 computationalism there is no consistent meaning to comp.  As Kim Jones
 said  Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different
 people.


OK, but forgive me if I haven't reached that conclusion (yet) and still
pursue the subject.

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 1 August 2014 09:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably
 has some sort of granularity,


 Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist
 that space is quantized just like everything else,


 I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a
 continous spacetime.


I would think that at the very least they assume a continuous Hilbert space.

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 7/31/2014 3:52 PM, LizR wrote:

On 1 August 2014 09:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com
mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably
has some
sort of granularity,

Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist that
space
is quantized just like everything else,

I don't think that's true. In fact all quantum field theories assume a
continous
spacetime.

I would think that at the very least they assume a continuous Hilbert space.

That too. But the spacetime is a kind of background to the Hilbert space. The vectors in
Hilbert space are square-integrable functions of positions or momenta in a continuous
spacetime. Of course it's impossible empirically to prove the spacetime is continuous;
computationalist can just say they need more digits and hypothesize as many digits as they
need. Similarly the complex field for Hilbert space could be just the rational complex
field; but that would imply a smallest non-zero probability which in turn would undermine
unitarity, Everett, and time-reversibiity.

Brent

Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 1 August 2014 11:25, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/31/2014 3:52 PM, LizR wrote:

  On 1 August 2014 09:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably
 has some sort of granularity,


 Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist
 that space is quantized just like everything else,


  I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a
 continous spacetime.


  I would think that at the very least they assume a continuous Hilbert
 space.

  That too.  But the spacetime is a kind of background to the Hilbert
 space.  The vectors in Hilbert space are square-integrable functions of
 positions or momenta in a continuous spacetime.  Of course it's impossible
 empirically to prove the spacetime is continuous; computationalist can just
 say they need more digits and hypothesize as many digits as they need.


Yes, it's awlays possible to claim a granularity smaller than our best
measurements. How does this connect with QM and it being impossible to
measure anything smaller than the Planck length? (Or does it?)


   Similarly the complex field for Hilbert space could be just the rational
 complex field; but that would imply a smallest non-zero probability which
 in turn would undermine unitarity, Everett, and time-reversibiity.


I can see that unitarity would be undermined, and hence Everett (I think),
but how come time-reversibility?

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Re: John Searle on consciousness


On 7/31/2014 5:03 PM, LizR wrote:

On 1 August 2014 11:25, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/31/2014 3:52 PM, LizR wrote:

On 1 August 2014 09:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com
mailto:lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it 
presumably has
some sort of granularity,


Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist 
that
space is quantized just like everything else,


I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a
continous spacetime.


I would think that at the very least they assume a continuous Hilbert space.

That too.  But the spacetime is a kind of background to the Hilbert space.  
The
vectors in Hilbert space are square-integrable functions of positions or 
momenta in
a continuous spacetime.  Of course it's impossible empirically to prove the
spacetime is continuous; computationalist can just say they need more 
digits and
hypothesize as many digits as they need.


Yes, it's awlays possible to claim a granularity smaller than our best measurements. How 
does this connect with QM and it being impossible to measure anything smaller than the 
Planck length? (Or does it?)


  Similarly the complex field for Hilbert space could be just the rational 
complex
field; but that would imply a smallest non-zero probability which in turn 
would
undermine unitarity, Everett, and time-reversibiity.


I can see that unitarity would be undermined, and hence Everett (I think), but how come 
time-reversibility?


It would mean that interference terms between different worlds could not become 
arbitrarily small.  There would be a least quantum of probability and when something 
became more improbable than that, its probability would drop to zero.  Then the time 
evolution couldn't be reversed.


Brent

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-31 Thread Richard Ruquist

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:45 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/31/2014 5:03 PM, LizR wrote:

  On 1 August 2014 11:25, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 7/31/2014 3:52 PM, LizR wrote:

  On 1 August 2014 09:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/31/2014 11:27 AM, John Clark wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably
 has some sort of granularity,


 Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist
 that space is quantized just like everything else,


  I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a
 continous spacetime.


  I would think that at the very least they assume a continuous Hilbert
 space.

  That too.  But the spacetime is a kind of background to the Hilbert
 space.  The vectors in Hilbert space are square-integrable functions of
 positions or momenta in a continuous spacetime.  Of course it's impossible
 empirically to prove the spacetime is continuous; computationalist can just
 say they need more digits and hypothesize as many digits as they need.


  Yes, it's awlays possible to claim a granularity smaller than our best
 measurements. How does this connect with QM and it being impossible to
 measure anything smaller than the Planck length? (Or does it?)


   Similarly the complex field for Hilbert space could be just the
 rational complex field; but that would imply a smallest non-zero
 probability which in turn would undermine unitarity, Everett, and
 time-reversibiity.


  I can see that unitarity would be undermined, and hence Everett (I
 think), but how come time-reversibility?

  It would mean that interference terms between different worlds could
 not become arbitrarily small.  There would be a least quantum of
 probability and when something became more improbable than that, its
 probability would drop to zero.  Then the time evolution couldn't be
 reversed.

 Brent

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 2:47 PM, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

 John:  Quantum theories of Physics insist that space is quantized just
 like everything else.


That is 100% true, Quantum theories of Physics do indeed insist that
spacetime is quantized, however exparament always outranks theory and as of
today there is not the smallest scrap of experimenter evidence in support
of the idea.


   Please provide proof that this is so. I do not believe you.


Proofs belong to the world of mathematics not physics, but as I've already
mentioned there is some evidence that our quantum theories may need work
when we're dealing with very very very small distances.


 http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html


   John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  Our quantum theories may need work. Quantum theories of Physics insist
 that space is quantized just like everything else,

  I don't think that's true.  In fact all quantum field theories assume a
 continous spacetime.


That is true but the phenomenon that  quantum field theories are so good at
predicting exist at a scale that seems inconceivably small to us but is
astronomically larger than the Planck length. The Planck length is to a
uranium nucleus as a basketball is to the Milky Way; none of our theories
even pretend to make predictions when things get anywhere near that small.

The idea behind the Planck length is that as the wavelength of light gets
smaller its energy gets larger, but according to Einstein energy is just
another form of mass ( E = MC^2) so at some point it is so small and so
energetic (massive) that it becomes a black hole. The Planck time is the
time it takes light to travel the Planck time, and right now it doesn't
make sense to talk about smaller things; that might or might not change
when somebody finds a better theory of gravity than General Relativity.

If you assume continuous spacetime you can get excellent approximations
unless things get really REALLY small, and then our theories break down.
Because nobody can explain what is happening when things get smaller than
the Planck Length or time gets shorted than the Planck Time, some have
assumed that's because nothing is happening at those scales because space
and time are quantized; but there is zero experimental evidence to think
that is true and some evidence to think it may not be. Nobody really
knows.

 It is the smallest size that could in principle be measured *assuming a
 classical theory of gravity*. To measure something smaller would take a
 photon of such short wavelength it would form a black hole - but all this
 is assuming that the formation of such small black holes still obeys the
 classical equations of GR.


At the center of a Black Hole Spacetime is INFINITELY curved, and General
Relativity breaks down at that point; it can deal with astronomically
large  curvature but not infinite curvature.

 The paper I cited, arXiv:1109.5191v2 [astro-ph.CO] 18 Apr 2012, says
 [...] Which corresponds to the granularity being smaller than the Planck
 length by a factor of 1/525.


If that finding holds up then our existing quantum theories most certainly
need work because all of them say things that small can't exist.

  John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Jul 2014, at 01:22, LizR wrote:


On 29 July 2014 02:35, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 5:55 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think he falls into the same camp as Fred Hoyle - someone who  
manages to get something completely wrong


Fred Hoyle's Steady State Theory started out as a perfectly  
respectable scientific idea, it turned out to be false but that's  
OK, it happens to the best of us.


However he also stuck to it even when the evidence to the contrary  
was completely overwhelming. But I don't think the cosmologists and  
astrophysicists interviewed by Nigel Calder were ONLY talking about  
the Steady State. The prove Fred wrong meme involved a number of  
ideas - and Violent Universe was published in the early 70s, or  
around then, so it was most likely to do with other cosmological  
ideas, since I'm pretty sure that was before Sir Fred decided AIDS  
came from space and evolution was like a typhoon in a junkyard, and  
so on. (And it was when he was still writing decent SF.)


 whatever a computer does is just the movement of electrons  
around circuits


And whatever a human brain does is just the movement of molecules  
and ions around neurons. That word  just  sure covers a lot!


Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I just love being quoted out of  
context.


If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves  
that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case.


It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain  
consciousness, according to comp. Personally I have yet to be  
convinced (hence those damn quote marks.)



I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well  
consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation  
makes *matter* incomprehensible. The problem is that with comp,  
materialism is no more able to explain matter. Even assuming matter  
(making it primitive) do no more work. Matter can only be explained by  
a measure on all computations, and this, when translated in math,  
seems to lead to the quantum, making the quantum a conceptual  
confirmation of comp. The quantum appears as a the digital seen by the  
machine internal to arithmetic.


Bruno






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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 29 Jul 2014, at 16:30, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 whatever a computer does is just the movement of electrons  
around circuits


 And whatever a human brain does is just the movement of  
molecules and ions around neurons. That word  just  sure covers a  
lot!


 Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I just love being quoted out  
of context.


I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using  
the word just in the same way I was.


 If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves  
that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case.


 It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain  
consciousness


Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but  
I know for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing  
the material in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most  
certainly does) and changes in consciousness changes the material in  
my brain (and it most certainly does) then in what sense does  
materialism fail to explain consciousness?


 according to comp

I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to  
mean, and that changes from day to day.


Comp has the same meaning since day one on this list. I told you  
already that you confuse comp and its consequence. It is up to you to  
explain why you think we can avoid those consequences. Up to now, your  
refutation is based on a rather systematic confusion of first person  
and third person. You have not replied to my last detailed explanation  
of this.


Bruno





  John K Clark



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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2014-07-29 16:30 GMT+02:00 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com:

 On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   whatever a computer does is just the movement of electrons around
 circuits


  And whatever a human brain does is just the movement of molecules
 and ions around neurons. That word  just  sure covers a lot!


  Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I just love being quoted out of
 context.


 I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using the
 word just in the same way I was.

  If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that
 humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case.


  It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain
 consciousness


 Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but I know
 for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing the material
 in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most certainly does) and
 changes in consciousness changes the material in my brain (and it most
 certainly does) then in what sense does materialism fail to explain
 consciousness?

  according to comp


 I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, and
 that changes from day to day.


Sure Liar Clark... as said a million times now, comp is a shorthand for
*computationalism* and it has always meant that... and always will... the
only retarded changing the meaning day to day is you.

Quentin


   John K Clark


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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread David Nyman

On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by
 using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter*
 incomprehensible.


Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point
is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the
assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact
leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use
comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise.

The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the logical
steps of the argument, particularly in assumptions about the scope of
reasonable explanation. Brent and others point to parallel accounts of
neural activity and conscious self-reporting and ask what more could be
required in the way of explanation?. AUDA may indeed give a clue to the
direction in which explanation could be extended, beyond ostensive
parallelism of this kind, particularly with respect to the central logical
puzzles of mutual reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would
require us to relinquish any prior commitment to primitive materialist
assumptions.

My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to articulate
my own (still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of
reductionist explanation under strictly materialist assumptions (i.e.
without either tacit or explicit reliance on supernumerary posits). ISTM
that one of the problems in reaching any kind of stable agreement (or even
disagreement) on these issues is equivocation over the terms of reference.
Consequently I've tried to make my own view of the reductionist assumption
clear: i.e. that explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in
principle be reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite
class of primitive physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends
to lead to disputation over the sense of without loss, but I'll come to
that in due course.

Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism entails
that it is misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon, above the
level of the chosen explanatory basement, as having independent
existence. Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes
of the argument) such phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically
dispensable. It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little longer! I've
offered analogies in terms of such things as societies and football teams
(you can easily supplement these with your own) in terms of which this
consequence of reductionism is rather obvious.

But for some reason it stops being obvious in the matter of matter
itself. On reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we directly
experience such higher-level phenomena in an unreduced form. Hence none of
us (and that includes Professor Dennett) can avoid the fact of
encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a reality in unreduced
high-level terms, even though our best explanations actually rule out the
other-than-metaphorically-independent significance of any such levels. If
you doubt the degree of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the
general tenor of disputes over free will.

This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist analogy
breaks down. Nobody would seriously claim, beyond a manner of speaking,
that football teams amount to anything other than the aggregate action of
the persons that constitute them. But on the other hand almost everyone
(pace Daniel Dennett) would claim direct access to a reality that is
something (even if we can't agree exactly what) that is, at least,
categorically distinct from any description of the aggregate action of the
material processes of the brain. The same distinction, however, can't be
claimed for computation, on the assumption of material reduction. Just as
in the case of the football team no instance of computation can escape
reduction to material tokens that have been contrived, under suitable
interpretation, to embody the necessary physical action.

There isn't even the saving grace that we directly perceive computation in
unreduced form. What we actually perceive are macroscopic physical devices
that, by assumption, produce all their effects entirely in terms of basic
material processes that are fully subject to reductive explanation. Every
explanation we give in terms of computation can in principle be replaced
without loss by a description of a physical process. This is the underlying
reason that Alice's net behaviour can persist unaltered even after
disruption of any putatively computational organisation of her brain.
Under physicalist assumptions, Alice is first, last and always a physical
device. Indeed, were that not the case, it would be difficult to see how
any physical computer could ever be manufactured! On this analysis then,
it can hardly be coherent to claim that any

Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Platonist Guitar Cowboy

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
wrote:




 2014-07-29 16:30 GMT+02:00 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com:

 On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

   whatever a computer does is just the movement of electrons around
 circuits


  And whatever a human brain does is just the movement of molecules
 and ions around neurons. That word  just  sure covers a lot!


  Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I just love being quoted out of
 context.


 I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using the
 word just in the same way I was.

   If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that
 humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case.


  It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain
 consciousness


 Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but I
 know for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing the
 material in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most certainly does)
 and changes in consciousness changes the material in my brain (and it most
 certainly does) then in what sense does materialism fail to explain
 consciousness?

  according to comp


 I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to mean,
 and that changes from day to day.


 Sure Liar Clark... as said a million times now, comp is a shorthand for
 *computationalism* and it has always meant that... and always will... the
 only retarded changing the meaning day to day is you.


I applaud your firmness on this as his tireless repetition has the same
effect as spam/advertising sensationalism... regardless of the vacuity, you
just start singing the jingle in your head. The leaders of the chart on
this list are:

1) Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard
that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12.

2) There is nothing in step 3  to understand.

3) (Some final personal attack to distract from discussion closing the
post, like:) Bruno Marchal is not a logician.

The repetition is low resolution brainwash.

I appreciate a lot John Clark's contributions on astrophysics and that he
engages UDA up to step 3 however, but I think everybody can see why his
arguments always culminate in personal attack.

Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be
imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading
lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally
accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA.

Yes, I know everybody comes at it from differing background, but AUDA with
more generalized, clear sequence of pedagogical felicity conditions would
be cool. I know it's out there in bits and pieces in different threads; but
to bundle and focus it would be nice.

It would be a fine step forward, if the list and Bruno could advance on
sharing these kinds of questions, just do it style, instead of servicing
the meta spam and droning on about UDA, Step 7 and MGA. Maybe resurrecting
an old thread that I haven't seen could stop having to start from scratch.
Just my virtual 2 cents. Apologies for length, but not much time :-) PGC

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people
 needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains.


Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world and
changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so why do
you call this thing a spirit? What exactly makes it more unmaterial than
an electron or a photon or even a baseball?

 Then materialism would explain the experiences that this spirit had, but
 not the existence of consciousness itself, which by hypothesis requires
 this supernatural extra.


The sequence of what explains that? questions either comes to a end or it
does not. If it does come to a end then we might as well stop with
consciousness because the God hypothesis adds nothing new and is just a
useless complication, therefore we conclude that consciousness is
fundamental and thus after saying that consciousness is the way data feels
like when it is being processed there is simply nothing more that can be
said on the subject.

On the other hand if the sequence of what explains that? questions never
comes to a end then the next element in the sequence is obviously what
explains God?. Either way the God hypothesis adds nothing.

 I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to mean,
 and that changes from day to day.


  Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me,
 give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language.


If Bruno is not fluent in English then he has no business inventing a new
English word. Bruno claims that comp is just short for computationalism
but I don't think even Bruno really believes that, if he did he could avoid
all this by simply adding a few extra letters but he knows he can't do that
because he is constantly saying things like according to comp X is true
when computationalism is saying nothing of the sort. Therefore Bruno has no
choice but to invent a new word in a unfamiliar language that means
whatever he wants it to mean.


  But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety.


That is to your credit because there is no there there to grok

  John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote:

 Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different people


Yes and that's exactly the trouble!  In contrast computationalism means the
same thing for everybody, a useful property for a word to have if it is to
be used for communication.  Computationalism means that thinking is a form
of computing. But as you said nobody knows what comp means, therefore all
we know for certain is that comp is NOT short for computationalism.

  John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 4:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  you confuse comp and its consequence.


And you confuse your made-up word comp with the English word
computationalism.

 a rather systematic confusion of first person and third person.


Oh yes, the world is full of people who are confused by the extremely
subtle difference between the words I and him.

  John K Clark

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 03:13:01PM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
 
 Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be
 imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading
 lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally
 accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA.
 

I don't think step 7 and the MGA have been overemphasised at all -
although step 3 has been done to death it seems.

The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way
of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual
precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which
requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the
summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a
single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is
well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as
well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience
is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse
entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate
consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7.

I'm in process of writing this up as a paper, which I'll hopefully
post to this list in the next week or so to be shredded by the
denizens here.

On another note, I've done a calculation of the observer moment
measure given by the universal dovetailer, which shows that the
measure is indeed independent of the chosen reference machine, as we
widely suspected, and hopefully might be comparable with
Solomonoff-Levin's universal prior. More likely, it might be compared
with the Bayesian probability after an infinite number of updates.

Not sure if it belongs in the above paper, as it is necessarily more
technical, but I'll post that to this list in one form or other soon.

But I'm happy for there to me more discussion of the AUDA too :) The
underpinnings of that theory still seem rather weakly motivated for
me, as opposed to being mandated by computationalism.


-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

 Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret 
 (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)


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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread meekerdb


On 7/30/2014 5:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by 
using
comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* incomprehensible.


Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point is that if the 
second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the assumption that materialism can 
use comp to explain consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, 
then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise.


The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the logical steps of the 
argument, particularly in assumptions about the scope of reasonable explanation. Brent 
and others point to parallel accounts of neural activity and conscious self-reporting 
and ask what more could be required in the way of explanation?. AUDA may indeed give a 
clue to the direction in which explanation could be extended, beyond ostensive 
parallelism of this kind, particularly with respect to the central logical puzzles of 
mutual reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would require us to relinquish any 
prior commitment to primitive materialist assumptions.


There are no such commitments - just requests that other theories meet the same standards 
of empirical prediction.




My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to articulate my own 
(still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of reductionist 
explanation under strictly materialist assumptions (i.e. without either tacit or 
explicit reliance on supernumerary posits). ISTM that one of the problems in reaching 
any kind of stable agreement (or even disagreement) on these issues is equivocation over 
the terms of reference. Consequently I've tried to make my own view of the reductionist 
assumption clear: i.e. that explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in 
principle be reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite class of 
primitive physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends to lead to 
disputation over the sense of without loss, but I'll come to that in due course.


But you assume a cartoon version of reduction to primitive physical entitities.  You 
seem to envision the atoms of Democritus.  If you read some modern physics you'll find 
that (as Bruno sometimes points out) primitive physical matter is never defined or even 
mentioned. Many physicists hope to base their theories on information.  Some on 'strings' 
in very abstract, 11 dimensionsal spacetime.  Some propose to make spacetime a derivative 
phenomena.  So you need to think about what exactly you are attacking as reductionism.  
ISTM that it's any theory that doesn't take consciousness as primitive.




Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism entails that it is 
misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon, above the level of the chosen 
explanatory basement, as having independent existence.


But only in a narrow sense of independent.

Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes of the argument) such 
phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically dispensable.


?? A good explanation must always be in terms of something understood.  We understand our 
perceptions and we infer a material world.  I think you must have some restricted concept 
of explanatory in mind and I think it is implicitly explanation in terms of physical 
causation.


It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little longer! I've offered analogies in 
terms of such things as societies and football teams (you can easily supplement these 
with your own) in terms of which this consequence of reductionism is rather obvious.


But for some reason it stops being obvious in the matter of matter itself. On 
reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we directly experience such 
higher-level phenomena in an unreduced form. Hence none of us (and that includes 
Professor Dennett) can avoid the fact of encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a 
reality in unreduced high-level terms, even though our best explanations actually 
rule out the other-than-metaphorically-independent significance of any such levels.


Now you mix in significance - having value or standing in place of something?

If you doubt the degree of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the general 
tenor of disputes over free will.


This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist analogy breaks down. 
Nobody would seriously claim, beyond a manner of speaking, that football teams amount to 
anything other than the aggregate action of the persons that constitute them. But on the 
other hand almost everyone (pace Daniel Dennett) would claim direct access to a reality 
that is something (even if we can't agree exactly what) that is, at least, categorically 
distinct

Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 31 July 2014 00:36, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:

 On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness,
 by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter*
 incomprehensible.


 Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point
 is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the
 assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact
 leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use
 comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise.


Ah, yes, although I tend to get confused about this I think (when I think)
that the bottom lines are ...

Comp assumes that consciousness can be explained at some level as a digital
computation. This would at least seem to accord with quantum mechanics,
which hints that things go awry when we try to construct the world from
continua and uncountable infinities, as relativity suggests. Based on that
assumption, it then purports to show that materialism is incapable of
providing the relevant substrate to support those computations, and that
the only available source for these is in arithmetic, assumed to exist
independently of us, at least in a simple form (since QM indicates there
are no continua etc in the real world, I guess arithmetical realism isn't
obliged to include real numbers).

Is that right so far?

PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the
world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes
expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that?

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 31 July 2014 04:43, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

  Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people
 needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains.


 Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world and
 changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so why do
 you call this thing a spirit? What exactly makes it more unmaterial than
 an electron or a photon or even a baseball?


Not necessarily. We could assume consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just
along for the ride. A p-zombie would act the same way, by hypothesis. Note
that this is all just for the sake of argument, to see where it leads (if
anywhere).


  Then materialism would explain the experiences that this spirit had, but
 not the existence of consciousness itself, which by hypothesis requires
 this supernatural extra.


 The sequence of what explains that? questions either comes to a end or
 it does not. If it does come to a end then we might as well stop with
 consciousness because the God hypothesis adds nothing new and is just a
 useless complication, therefore we conclude that consciousness is
 fundamental and thus after saying that consciousness is the way data feels
 like when it is being processed there is simply nothing more that can be
 said on the subject.


It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere, which is
why I gave up arguing with Brent, since he claimed (via a circular
explanatory diagram) that he doesn't think this is so. I'm not sure where
you got God from, though. So if we stop with consciousness, and
consciousness is data being processed, then we need to take seriously any
consequences of this, which takes us back to comp, the UDA and so on
(unless we can prove otherwise).


 On the other hand if the sequence of what explains that? questions never
 comes to a end then the next element in the sequence is obviously what
 explains God?. Either way the God hypothesis adds nothing.

   I can't comment on that, comp means whatever Bruno wants it to mean,
 and that changes from day to day.


  Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me,
 give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language.


 If Bruno is not fluent in English then he has no business inventing a new
 English word. Bruno claims that comp is just short for computationalism
 but I don't think even Bruno really believes that, if he did he could avoid
 all this by simply adding a few extra letters but he knows he can't do that
 because he is constantly saying things like according to comp X is true
 when computationalism is saying nothing of the sort. Therefore Bruno has
 no choice but to invent a new word in a unfamiliar language that means
 whatever he wants it to mean.


Well, he gives the arguments for why X is true according to comp. That is,
it's a consequence of computationalism, not one of its assumptions.



  But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety.


 That is to your credit because there is no there there to grok


Eventually I hope to grok that for myself, if it is in fact the case.

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

On 31 July 2014 06:36, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way
 of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual
 precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which
 requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the
 summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a
 single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is
 well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as
 well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience
 is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse
 entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate
 consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7.


I always run aground on those counterfactuals - that is I can't see the
point of them. I hope your coming paper will help me out! I look forward to
it. :-)

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Re: John Searle on consciousness

2014-07-30 Thread Russell Standish

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:08:52AM +1200, LizR wrote:
 
 PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the
 world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes
 expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that?
 

Why?

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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: John Searle on consciousness