Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 26 May 2015, at 02:54, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes the next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to the start. The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but the UD adds delays, due to its dovetailing duties, which we already know (step 2) that it does not change the first person experience of the entiuty supported by that execution. So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program, but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps from many programs. ? Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*. You can descrbied them by sequences phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed). But each step of the dovetailer is just a single application of the axioms of the Turing machine in question: one of the Kxy gives x, Sxyz gives xz(yz), for example. These single steps are all that there is in the dovetailer. But such steps lack a context -- they make no sense on their own. You could simply claim that the two basic steps are all that is needed -- consciousness self-assembles by taking as many of these in whatever order is needed. ? The context will be given by the combinators. To dovetail universally with the combinators, you need to generate them all: K, S, KK, KS, SK, SS, KKK, K(KK), KKS, K(KS), ... If comp is true, the combinators running your current brain states will be executed, and probably with some rich context in most of them (if not, and can prove it, comp is refuted). If the next step of program phi_i is some 10^50 or so dovetailer steps away, the only thing that could possibly link these is the program phi_i itself -- the actual execution of the steps is entirely secondary. In which case, one would say that consciousness resides in the program phi_i itself - execution on the dovetailer is not required. I do not think you would want to go down this path, so you need something to give each step a context, something to link the separate steps that are required for consciousness. Consciousness is associated to the execution, not to the programs. That would not make sense, even if the existence of the program entails the existence of its execution in arithmetic. The relative probabilities depends on the execution and the mathematical structure which exists on the set of continuations (structured by the first, third, ... points of view). The teleportation arguments of Steps 1-7 are insufficient for this, since in that argument you are teleporting complete conscious entities, not just single steps of the underlying program. ? Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating that conscious moment. Yes. So what? I was trying to give you a way out of the problems that I have raised above. If you don't see that the sequential steps of the actual dovetailer program give the required connectivity, then what does? ? I do see that the sequential steps of the *many* computations give the required statistical connectivity. You did, some time ago, claim that the dovetailer steps gave an effective time parameter for the system. An infinity of them. But even that requires a contextual link between the steps -- The UD brought them all. something that would be given by the underlying stepping -- which is not the stepping of each individual program phi_i. It depends at which level you describe the happenings. The FPI makes your subjective future statistically defined on all the UD*, by the first person non awareness of the underlying stepping of the UD itself. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 26 May 2015, at 05:02, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 5/25/2015 5:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual
program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes
the next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches
the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to
the start.
The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but
the UD adds delays, due to its dovetailing duties, which we
already know (step 2) that it does not change the first person
experience of the entiuty supported by that execution.
So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of
steps by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any
particular program, but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps
from many programs.
?
Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*.
You can descrbied them by sequences
phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed).
But each step of the dovetailer is just a single application of
the axioms of the Turing machine in question: one of the
Kxy gives x,
Sxyz gives xz(yz),
for example. These single steps are all that there is in the
dovetailer. But such steps lack a context -- they make no sense on
their own. You could simply claim that the two basic steps are all
that is needed -- consciousness self-assembles by taking as many
of these in whatever order is needed.
If the next step of program phi_i is some 10^50 or so dovetailer
steps away, the only thing that could possibly link these is the
program phi_i itself -- the actual execution of the steps is
entirely secondary. In which case, one would say that
consciousness resides in the program phi_i itself - execution on
the dovetailer is not required. I do not think you would want to
go down this path, so you need something to give each step a
context, something to link the separate steps that are required
for consciousness.
The teleportation arguments of Steps 1-7 are insufficient for
this, since in that argument you are teleporting complete
conscious entities, not just single steps of the underlying program.
Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence
of steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not
necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating
that conscious moment.
Yes. So what?
I was trying to give you a way out of the problems that I have
raised above. If you don't see that the sequential steps of the
actual dovetailer program give the required connectivity, then
what does? You did, some time ago, claim that the dovetailer steps
gave an effective time parameter for the system. But even that
requires a contextual link between the steps -- something that
would be given by the underlying stepping -- which is not the
stepping of each individual program phi_i.
I think what it boils down to is that steps in phi_{i}, where {i}
is a set indexing programs supporting a particular consciousness,
must be linked by representing consciousness of the same thing, the
same thought. But I think that requires some outside reference
whereby they can be about the same thing. So it is not enough to
just link the phi_{i} of the single consciousness, they must also
be linked to an environment. I think this part of what Pierz is
saying. He says the linkage cannot merge different physics, so
effectively the thread of computations instantiating Bruce's
consciousness imply the computation of a whole world (with physics)
for Bruce's consciousness to exist in.
My original question here concerned the connectivity in Platonia for
the computational steps of an individual consciousness. But I do
agree that we have to go beyond this because consciousness is
conscious of *something*, viz., an external world, so that has to be
part of the computation -- so that when I hit you hard on the head,
your self in Platonia loses consciousness. There is endless
connectivity between the self and the world external to the self --
and this covers all space and time, because my consciousness can be
changed by a CMB photon. Hence my thinking that the whole universe
(multiverse) may well have to be included in the same connected
simulation in Platonia.
Bruno does not seem to have thought along these lines.
I am not sure why you say this. I very often mention that possibility.
The point is only that whatever the case is, it has to be jusified
from computer science/arithmetic.
Bruno
Bruce
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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 18 May 2015, at 02:31, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 17 May 2015 at 11:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This is the tired old misunderstanding of the concept of a block universe. It's as though Minkowski never existed. OK. Explain to me exactly how the block universe ideas work out in Platonia. I thought I saw an answer by Liz, but don't find it. No, Liz only snipes from the sidelines.she does not answer substantive questions. I am not sure that the block physical universe ideas work out in Platonia, although block physical multiverse appearance might be explainable by the rather canonical all computations, which is offered once we agree that 2+2 = 4, or any theorem of RA, is true independently of him/her/it. The block multiverse could well be a different concept from the block universe of the Minkowskian understanding of special relativity. The question arose in a discussion of the possibility of an evolutionary understanding of consciousness. This does not, on the face of it, appear to sit terribly easily in comp, since comp starts from the individual conscious moment or moments, and seeks to understand physics as somehow emergent from the statistics of all such instantiations of this set of computations in the UD. This does not appear to relate easily to an account of times before and after the existence of that particular consciousness. Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes the next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to the start. So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program, but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps from many programs. Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating that conscious moment. There is also a question as to whether this sequence of computational steps generates one conscious moment -- of some shorter or longer duration (duration being in experienced time, since the computations are timeless) -- or whether a whole conscious life is generated by a continuous sequence of steps, or whether the whole history of the world that contains that consciousness (and all other conscious beings, past, present, and future) are generated by the same (extraordinarily long) continuous sequence of computational steps. If the idea is something along the lines of the latter possibility, then the block universe might well be the result. The problem then, of course, is that any particular consciousness will be generated an indefinitely great number of separate times for each time this whole universe is generated. This, of course, is the Boltzmann brain problem, and I do not think you have adequately addressed this. Of course, it is a poisonous gift, as it leads to the necessary search, for the computationalist, of a measure on the border of the sigma_1 reality. It is long to explain, but you might appreciate shortcuts, as the sigma_1 arithmetical reality emulates all rational approximations of physical equations, and so, abstracting from the (comp) measure problem temporarily, you can make sense of relative local block universe in that reality, as that part of the arithmetical reality mimics the physicists block universe or universes (perhaps only locally too). Generating all rational approximations of physical equations is not going to get you a block universe -- or any sort of universe, for that matter. The equations of physics describe the behaviour of the physical world, they are not that physical world -- map and territory again. Of course such shortcuts might not have the right measure, and so we need to use a vaster net. My point is that if our brains or bodies are Turing emulable then they are Turing emulated in a small part of the arithmetical reality. The first person points of view gives an internal perspective which is much complex, in fact of unboundable complexity, but with important invariants too. In the technic parts I exploit important relations between the sigma_1 truth, the sigma_1 provable and the (with CT) intuitively computable. I can explain, if you want, but my feeling is that you don't like the idea (that the aristotelian materialist dogma can be doubted), nor does it seems you are ready to involve in more of computer science. But if you don't study
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 8:24:51 AM UTC+10, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, May 08, 2015 at 08:47:22AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: It is only a new recent fashion on this list to take seriously that a recording can be conscious, because for a logician, that error is the (common) confusion between the finger and the moon, or between 2+2=4 and 2+2=4. It is only recently that we began seriously discussing the MGA at all (about the last 3 years). Why do you say conscious recording (playbacks) are the same as the confusion between 2+2=4 and 2+2=4? I don't even know what you mean by confusion between the finger and the moon... I don't know where that originally comes from, but most trippers know it! :) The finger that points to the moon is not the moon itself. The representation is not the thing. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au javascript: University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 18 May 2015, at 02:31, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 17 May 2015 at 11:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This is the tired old misunderstanding of the concept of a block universe. It's as though Minkowski never existed. OK. Explain to me exactly how the block universe ideas work out in Platonia. I thought I saw an answer by Liz, but don't find it. No, Liz only snipes from the sidelines.she does not answer substantive questions. I am not sure that the block physical universe ideas work out in Platonia, although block physical multiverse appearance might be explainable by the rather canonical all computations, which is offered once we agree that 2+2 = 4, or any theorem of RA, is true independently of him/her/it. The block multiverse could well be a different concept from the block universe of the Minkowskian understanding of special relativity. The question arose in a discussion of the possibility of an evolutionary understanding of consciousness. This does not, on the face of it, appear to sit terribly easily in comp, since comp starts from the individual conscious moment or moments, and seeks to understand physics as somehow emergent from the statistics of all such instantiations of this set of computations in the UD. Comp just assumes the invariance of consciousness or first person experience for some digital substitution. It is an assumption of non magic, or non actual infinities playing some role and it is the default assumption of many materialist. Then UDA is an argument showing that this leads to the necessity of deriving physics from the math of the machine's dreams and their theoretical computer science important redundancies. Then a theory of consciousness is suggested, as the first person view of consistency, as it will corroborate both the comp discourse of the machine, and some common conscious experience (if you agree it is undoubtable, unjustifiable, unexpressible in 3p discourses, etc.). This does not appear to relate easily to an account of times before and after the existence of that particular consciousness. UDA explains the problem, and AUDA, which is UDA made so simple and elementary that we can explain it to any (Löbian) universal machine, and indeed, it is the machine's answer that I give. Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes the next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to the start. The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but the UD adds delays, due to its dovetailing duties, which we already know (step 2) that it does not change the first person experience of the entiuty supported by that execution. So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program, but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps from many programs. ? Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*. You can descrbied them by sequences phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed). Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating that conscious moment. Yes. So what? There is also a question as to whether this sequence of computational steps generates one conscious moment To be sure, I do not believe in one conscious moment. I believe that a person can be conscious of moment. But the consciousness of a moment is not associated with a moment, but with an infinity of instantiation of some relative computational state in (sigma_1) arithmetic. -- of some shorter or longer duration (duration being in experienced time, since the computations are timeless) -- or whether a whole conscious life is generated by a continuous sequence of steps, or whether the whole history of the world that contains that consciousness (and all other conscious beings, past, present, and future) are generated by the same (extraordinarily long) continuous sequence of computational steps. Good, you begin to see the problem. If the idea is something along the lines of the latter possibility, then the block universe might well be the result. The problem then, of course, is that any particular consciousness will be generated an indefinitely great number of separate times for each
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes the next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to the start. The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but the UD adds delays, due to its dovetailing duties, which we already know (step 2) that it does not change the first person experience of the entiuty supported by that execution. So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program, but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps from many programs. ? Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*. You can descrbied them by sequences phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed). But each step of the dovetailer is just a single application of the axioms of the Turing machine in question: one of the Kxy gives x, Sxyz gives xz(yz), for example. These single steps are all that there is in the dovetailer. But such steps lack a context -- they make no sense on their own. You could simply claim that the two basic steps are all that is needed -- consciousness self-assembles by taking as many of these in whatever order is needed. If the next step of program phi_i is some 10^50 or so dovetailer steps away, the only thing that could possibly link these is the program phi_i itself -- the actual execution of the steps is entirely secondary. In which case, one would say that consciousness resides in the program phi_i itself - execution on the dovetailer is not required. I do not think you would want to go down this path, so you need something to give each step a context, something to link the separate steps that are required for consciousness. The teleportation arguments of Steps 1-7 are insufficient for this, since in that argument you are teleporting complete conscious entities, not just single steps of the underlying program. Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating that conscious moment. Yes. So what? I was trying to give you a way out of the problems that I have raised above. If you don't see that the sequential steps of the actual dovetailer program give the required connectivity, then what does? You did, some time ago, claim that the dovetailer steps gave an effective time parameter for the system. But even that requires a contextual link between the steps -- something that would be given by the underlying stepping -- which is not the stepping of each individual program phi_i. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote:
On 5/25/2015 5:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual
program sequentially: after each step in a program it executes the
next step of the next program and so on, until it reaches the first
step of some program, at which point it loops back to the start.
The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but the UD
adds delays, due to its dovetailing duties, which we already know
(step 2) that it does not change the first person experience of the
entiuty supported by that execution.
So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps
by the dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program,
but a rather arbitrary assortment of steps from many programs.
?
Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*. You
can descrbied them by sequences
phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed).
But each step of the dovetailer is just a single application of the
axioms of the Turing machine in question: one of the
Kxy gives x,
Sxyz gives xz(yz),
for example. These single steps are all that there is in the
dovetailer. But such steps lack a context -- they make no sense on
their own. You could simply claim that the two basic steps are all
that is needed -- consciousness self-assembles by taking as many of
these in whatever order is needed.
If the next step of program phi_i is some 10^50 or so dovetailer steps
away, the only thing that could possibly link these is the program
phi_i itself -- the actual execution of the steps is entirely
secondary. In which case, one would say that consciousness resides in
the program phi_i itself - execution on the dovetailer is not
required. I do not think you would want to go down this path, so you
need something to give each step a context, something to link the
separate steps that are required for consciousness.
The teleportation arguments of Steps 1-7 are insufficient for this,
since in that argument you are teleporting complete conscious
entities, not just single steps of the underlying program.
Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of
steps does correspond to some program, somewhere, but not
necessarily any of the ones partially executed for generating that
conscious moment.
Yes. So what?
I was trying to give you a way out of the problems that I have raised
above. If you don't see that the sequential steps of the actual
dovetailer program give the required connectivity, then what does? You
did, some time ago, claim that the dovetailer steps gave an effective
time parameter for the system. But even that requires a contextual
link between the steps -- something that would be given by the
underlying stepping -- which is not the stepping of each individual
program phi_i.
I think what it boils down to is that steps in phi_{i}, where {i} is a
set indexing programs supporting a particular consciousness, must be
linked by representing consciousness of the same thing, the same
thought. But I think that requires some outside reference whereby they
can be about the same thing. So it is not enough to just link the
phi_{i} of the single consciousness, they must also be linked to an
environment. I think this part of what Pierz is saying. He says the
linkage cannot merge different physics, so effectively the thread of
computations instantiating Bruce's consciousness imply the computation
of a whole world (with physics) for Bruce's consciousness to exist in.
My original question here concerned the connectivity in Platonia for the
computational steps of an individual consciousness. But I do agree that
we have to go beyond this because consciousness is conscious of
*something*, viz., an external world, so that has to be part of the
computation -- so that when I hit you hard on the head, your self in
Platonia loses consciousness. There is endless connectivity between the
self and the world external to the self -- and this covers all space and
time, because my consciousness can be changed by a CMB photon. Hence my
thinking that the whole universe (multiverse) may well have to be
included in the same connected simulation in Platonia.
Bruno does not seem to have thought along these lines.
Bruce
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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/25/2015 5:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 May 2015, at 08:58, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Part of my problem is that the UD does not execute any actual program sequentially:
after each step in a program it executes the next step of the next program and so on,
until it reaches the first step of some program, at which point it loops back to the
start.
The UD does execute sequentially *each* specific program, but the UD adds delays, due
to its dovetailing duties, which we already know (step 2) that it does not change the
first person experience of the entiuty supported by that execution.
So if the conscious moment is evinced by a logical sequence of steps by the
dovetailer, it does not correspond to any particular program, but a rather arbitrary
assortment of steps from many programs.
?
Each execution of the programs is well individuated in the UD*. You can descrbied them
by sequences
phi_i^k(j) k = 0, 1, 2, ...(with i and j fixed).
But each step of the dovetailer is just a single application of the axioms of the Turing
machine in question: one of the
Kxy gives x,
Sxyz gives xz(yz),
for example. These single steps are all that there is in the dovetailer. But such steps
lack a context -- they make no sense on their own. You could simply claim that the two
basic steps are all that is needed -- consciousness self-assembles by taking as many of
these in whatever order is needed.
If the next step of program phi_i is some 10^50 or so dovetailer steps away, the only
thing that could possibly link these is the program phi_i itself -- the actual execution
of the steps is entirely secondary. In which case, one would say that consciousness
resides in the program phi_i itself - execution on the dovetailer is not required. I do
not think you would want to go down this path, so you need something to give each step a
context, something to link the separate steps that are required for consciousness.
The teleportation arguments of Steps 1-7 are insufficient for this, since in that
argument you are teleporting complete conscious entities, not just single steps of the
underlying program.
Of course, given that all programs are executed, this sequence of steps does
correspond to some program, somewhere, but not necessarily any of the ones partially
executed for generating that conscious moment.
Yes. So what?
I was trying to give you a way out of the problems that I have raised above. If you
don't see that the sequential steps of the actual dovetailer program give the required
connectivity, then what does? You did, some time ago, claim that the dovetailer steps
gave an effective time parameter for the system. But even that requires a contextual
link between the steps -- something that would be given by the underlying stepping --
which is not the stepping of each individual program phi_i.
I think what it boils down to is that steps in phi_{i}, where {i} is a set indexing
programs supporting a particular consciousness, must be linked by representing
consciousness of the same thing, the same thought. But I think that requires some outside
reference whereby they can be about the same thing. So it is not enough to just link the
phi_{i} of the single consciousness, they must also be linked to an environment. I think
this part of what Pierz is saying. He says the linkage cannot merge different physics, so
effectively the thread of computations instantiating Bruce's consciousness imply the
computation of a whole world (with physics) for Bruce's consciousness to exist in.
My apologies if I'm mistaking your or Pierz's ideas.
Brent
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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 18 May 2015, at 02:31, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 17 May 2015 at 11:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This is the tired old misunderstanding of the concept of a block universe. It's as though Minkowski never existed. OK. Explain to me exactly how the block universe ideas work out in Platonia. I thought I saw an answer by Liz, but don't find it. I am not sure that the block physical universe ideas work out in Platonia, although block physical multiverse appearance might be explainable by the rather canonical all computations, which is offered once we agree that 2+2 = 4, or any theorem of RA, is true independently of him/her/it. Of course, it is a poisonous gift, as it leads to the necessary search, for the computationalist, of a measure on the border of the sigma_1 reality. It is long to explain, but you might appreciate shortcuts, as the sigma_1 arithmetical reality emulates all rational approximations of physical equations, and so, abstracting from the (comp) measure problem temporarily, you can make sense of relative local block universe in that reality, as that part of the arithmetical reality mimics the physicists block universe or universes (perhaps only locally too). Of course such shortcuts might not have the right measure, and so we need to use a vaster net. My point is that if our brains or bodies are Turing emulable then they are Turing emulated in a small part of the arithmetical reality. The first person points of view gives an internal perspective which is much complex, in fact of unboundable complexity, but with important invariants too. In the technic parts I exploit important relations between the sigma_1 truth, the sigma_1 provable and the (with CT) intuitively computable. I can explain, if you want, but my feeling is that you don't like the idea (that the aristotelian materialist dogma can be doubted), nor does it seems you are ready to involve in more of computer science. But if you don't study the work, you should try to not criticize it from personal taste only. I can't pretend liking all consequences of comp, but that is another topic. Science is NOT wishful thinking, a priori. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 17 May 2015, at 18:34, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 May 2015, at 15:47, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I think we can say that universal numbers are conscious, but they are self-conscious only when they become Löbian. So, in a sense, I agree with you, consciousness is already there, in arithmetic, seen in some global way. Then it can differentiate on the different computation which will relatively incarnate/implement those universal numbers. I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. If the classical-comp-physics is different from the empirical physics, we wll have clues that the classical comp is false. Ok. Do you have any intuition on the level of effort necessary to extract classical physics from comp? I guess that you mean the approximate classical physics. In fact classical comp entails the falsity of classical physics. Comp entails quickly the non booleanity of all points of view, and the main features of the quantum. So we just derive the quantum from comp, and then will derive the classical limit from the quantum, and it will be more difficult, and perhaps impossible, which would make the apparent classicalness of physics geographical. i doubt this, as I think that space and time arise from the necessary part of the necessary quantum feature, but I am less sure for the Hamiltonian. You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the homunculus in the machine. I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness is I think you know what consciousness is (you just cannot define it). True. or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has nothing to say about it either. Hmm... Would you be willing to accept, if only for the sake of a discussion, the following consciousness of P axioms (P for a person): 1) P know that P is conscious, 2) P is conscious entails that P cannot doubt that P is conscious, 3) P, like any of its consistent extensions, cannot justify that P (resp the consistent extensions) is (are) conscious 4) P cannot define consciousness in any 3p way. (But might with some good definition of 1p.) 4) comp: there is a level of description of P's body such that P's consciousness is invariant for a digital substitution made at that level. I have no problem with any of these axioms. They feel like a natural expansion on cogito ergo sum + the definition of comp.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 17 May 2015, at 20:24, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/17/2015 1:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Roughly speaking, consciousness originates from the fact that p -
[]p (the sigma_1 truth get represented in the body/brain of the
machine), and the fact that []p - p is true, but non justifiable
by the machine.
What does []p mean?
An abbreviation of beweisbar('p'). It is Gödel arithmetical
provability predicate, and we have an equivalent for any machine
talking correctly about itself, seen in the 3p picture.
p doesn't entail that p is provable or necessary.
It does, when p is restricted to sigma_1 sentences. Sigma_1 means
equivalent to a sentence with the shape ExA(x, ...), with A(x, ...)
decidable.
You can understand that if A(x, ...) is decidable, you will find the x
verifying it, by testing
A(0, ...)
A(1, ...)
A(2, ...)
etc. Until you find it.
When ExA(x, ...) is true (p) then it is provable (by any sigma_1
complete machine, like RA, and this is equivalent with Turing
universality). So p - []p.
You might have just skipped that we limit ourself to the sigma_truth.
All such sigma_1 truth is provable by the machine.
Löbian machine are not only sigma_1 complete (and thus p - []p is
true for them, with p Sigma_1), but they can prove p- []p, for any
p sigma_1. In particular []p is sigma_1, so we get the self-awareness
principle: []p - [][]p.
Ask any question if this is not clear enough.
Bruno
Brent
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Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 16 May 2015, at 05:41, meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 6:18 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Quite probably. But the argument was made that the detailed recording of the sequence of brain states of a conscious person could not be conscious because it was not counterfactually correct. This charge has always seemed to me to be misguided, since the recording does not pretend to be functionally equivalent to the original in all circumstances -- just in the particular circumstance in which the recording was made. It has never been proposed that the film could be used as a prosthesis for all situations. So this argument against the replayed recording recreating the original conscious moments must fail -- on the basis of total irrelevance. But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/ recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 16 May 2015, at 06:31, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/ recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by one of Disney's animitronics. What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious? Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording recreate that conscious moment. The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness. Yes, but the relevant brain activity, assuming comp, is also emulated (infinitely often) in the sigma_1 reality. We can associate consciousness to appearance of brain/computation, but we have to associate infinities of brain/computation to consciousness. The identity thesis in not one-one. Bruno How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a different matter. Bruce I think Bruno is right that it makes more sense to attribute consciousness, like intelligence, to a program that can respond differently and effectively to a wide range of inputs. And, maybe unlike Bruno, I think intelligence and consciousness is only possible relative to an environment, one with extent in time as well as space. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? From a biological perspective, I don't know. It seems to me that my genes could survive and be propagated without consciousness. There have been some week attempts at demonstrating the evolutionary value of consciousness, but they always seem to equate consciousness with self-modelling. Tell me if you think this thing is conscious: http://thefutureofthings.com/5320-self-modeling-robot/ Not particularly. But consciousness would appear to be consciousness of self in an environment, so this may be some steps along the way, although rather simple at the moment. Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? No, my personal bet is that intelligent zombies are not possible. I use intelligent zombies as a thought experiment. I bet that consciousness necessarily supervenes on the computations that allow for human intelligence. But this is a personal belief, not a scientific position. I cannot make a scientific claim because I don't know how to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Yes, one would have a problem known just what computations were involved. 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . You are referring to the argument of irreducible complexity. In that case, the claim is that there is too much a priori needed complexity for an eye to function for it to be generated by iterative improvement. This claim counts as a scientific theory because it can be tested. It has been falsified by the fossil record, examples of earlier stages of eye evolution in simpler animals, demonstrations on how a single-cell eye could work, etc. That was what I was referring to. This is not the argument I am making at all. All I am saying is that we don't know what consciousness is and, even worse, we have no way to measure or detect it. If consciousness somehow emerges from brain activity, then it surely originated from evolution, even if has a spandrel. But to make that claim you have to show a mechanism by which brain activity generates consciousness. I don't think anyone has been able to do that, or even propose a falsifiable hypothesis. I don't think you have to demonstrate the mechanism -- just that the association exists. And this has surely been done through many experiments studying brain activity in conscious and unconscious individuals. Absence of relevant brain activity is a widely used criterion for brain death and the subsequent turning off of life support systems. I think one can make too much of a mystery of consciousness. Sure, one individual's consciousness is not available for study in the way that his facial features or social behaviours are available. But that is not an insuperable barrier to scientific study. Having absolute belief that such a mechanism must exist is the same type of mistake that the creationists make. Mo. Creationists make the opposite assumption -- they claim that no such mechanism is possible. This is not so far from hinting that the mechanism doesn't exist when we don't know what it is. At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. I never claimed it wasn't possible. I simply claimed it is not known. I read what you said differently. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again Can't you argue without insulting me? You seemed to be going down that path... I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 16 May 2015, at 15:47, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I think we can say that universal numbers are conscious, but they are self-conscious only when they become Löbian. So, in a sense, I agree with you, consciousness is already there, in arithmetic, seen in some global way. Then it can differentiate on the different computation which will relatively incarnate/implement those universal numbers. I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. If the classical-comp-physics is different from the empirical physics, we wll have clues that the classical comp is false. You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the homunculus in the machine. I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness is I think you know what consciousness is (you just cannot define it). or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has nothing to say about it either. Hmm... Would you be willing to accept, if only for the sake of a discussion, the following consciousness of P axioms (P for a person): 1) P know that P is conscious, 2) P is conscious entails that P cannot doubt that P is conscious, 3) P, like any of its consistent extensions, cannot justify that P (resp the consistent extensions) is (are) conscious 4) P cannot define consciousness in any 3p way. (But might with some good definition of 1p.) 4) comp: there is a level of description of P's body such that P's consciousness is invariant for a digital substitution made at that level. If yes, then current computer science can already explains why universal machine, or Löbian machine, are already conscious (even just in arithmetic). Roughly speaking, consciousness originates from the fact that p - []p (the sigma_1 truth get represented in the body/brain of the machine), and the fact that []p - p is true, but non justifiable by the machine. That makes the machine which are developing knowledge, more and more aware of their possible relative ignorance, and above some threshold, even wise, as they understand that the augmentation of knowledge leads to the augmentation of ignorance. The more the lantern is powerful in the cavern, the more we see that the cavern is big. Also, that (axiomatic) notion of consciousness has many role, from speeding up the relative ability of the machine, and augmenting the degrees of freedom, to distinguishing efficaciously the bad (like being eaten) from the good (like eaten). It makes also possible to
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? From a biological perspective, I don't know. It seems to me that my genes could survive and be propagated without consciousness. There have been some week attempts at demonstrating the evolutionary value of consciousness, but they always seem to equate consciousness with self-modelling. Tell me if you think this thing is conscious: http://thefutureofthings.com/5320-self-modeling-robot/ Not particularly. But consciousness would appear to be consciousness of self in an environment, so this may be some steps along the way, although rather simple at the moment. Ok. My intuition is that consciousness is an all-or-nothing proposition. What can be more or less complex ais what is experienced consciously -- and this includes brain power, I see intelligence as a generator of more rich content. I don't think my cat is less conscious than me, just less intelligent (and perhaps more wise). Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? No, my personal bet is that intelligent zombies are not possible. I use intelligent zombies as a thought experiment. I bet that consciousness necessarily supervenes on the computations that allow for human intelligence. But this is a personal belief, not a scientific position. I cannot make a scientific claim because I don't know how to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Yes, one would have a problem known just what computations were involved. Ok. 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . You are referring to the argument of irreducible complexity. In that case, the claim is that there is too much a priori needed complexity for an eye to function for it to be generated by iterative improvement. This claim counts as a scientific theory because it can be tested. It has been falsified by the fossil record, examples of earlier stages of eye evolution in simpler animals, demonstrations on how a single-cell eye could work, etc. That was what I was referring to. Ok. This is not the argument I am making at all. All I am saying is that we don't know what consciousness is and, even worse, we have no way to measure or detect it. If consciousness somehow emerges from brain activity, then it surely originated from evolution, even if has a spandrel. But to make that claim you have to show a mechanism by which brain activity generates consciousness. I don't think anyone has been able to do that, or even propose a falsifiable hypothesis. I don't think you have to demonstrate the mechanism -- just that the association exists. And this has surely been done through many experiments studying brain activity in conscious and unconscious individuals. Absence of relevant brain activity is a widely used criterion for brain death and the subsequent turning off of life support systems. I think one can make too much of a mystery of consciousness. Sure, one individual's consciousness is not available for study in the way that his facial features or social behaviours are available. But that is not an insuperable barrier to scientific study. This is Brent's position, I had this debate with him several times. I will try to better explain my problem with this. I think there is a very narrow case for which such empiricism applies. I think it's fair to say that we can use MRI machines to check if a person is conscious AND able to form memories. But down the rabbit hole: - It is possible that states of consciousness exist where one is not able to form memories. Dali famously would hold a spoon above a ceramic plate while falling asleep, in an attempt to recover images from the hypnagogic state.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 May 2015, at 15:47, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I think we can say that universal numbers are conscious, but they are self-conscious only when they become Löbian. So, in a sense, I agree with you, consciousness is already there, in arithmetic, seen in some global way. Then it can differentiate on the different computation which will relatively incarnate/implement those universal numbers. I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. If the classical-comp-physics is different from the empirical physics, we wll have clues that the classical comp is false. Ok. Do you have any intuition on the level of effort necessary to extract classical physics from comp? You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the homunculus in the machine. I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness is I think you know what consciousness is (you just cannot define it). True. or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has nothing to say about it either. Hmm... Would you be willing to accept, if only for the sake of a discussion, the following consciousness of P axioms (P for a person): 1) P know that P is conscious, 2) P is conscious entails that P cannot doubt that P is conscious, 3) P, like any of its consistent extensions, cannot justify that P (resp the consistent extensions) is (are) conscious 4) P cannot define consciousness in any 3p way. (But might with some good definition of 1p.) 4) comp: there is a level of description of P's body such that P's consciousness is invariant for a digital substitution made at that level. I have no problem with any of these axioms. They feel like a natural expansion on cogito ergo sum + the definition of comp. If yes, then current computer science can already explains why universal machine, or Löbian machine, are already conscious (even just in arithmetic). Roughly speaking, consciousness originates from the fact that p - []p (the sigma_1 truth get represented in the body/brain of the machine), and the fact that []p - p is true, but non justifiable by the machine. That makes the machine which are developing knowledge, more and more aware of their possible relative ignorance, and above some threshold, even wise, as they understand that the augmentation of knowledge leads to the augmentation of ignorance. The more the lantern is powerful in the cavern, the more we see
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 18 May 2015 at 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: At a very low level, yes. It's more conscious than my computer or a rock. Maybe less conscious than an amoeba, since the amoeba not only understands how to move it also understands food and reproduction. You think amoedas are conscious? Do you have an answer to Russell's argument which I believe is entitled Ants are not conscious ? (in TON) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
LizR wrote: On 17 May 2015 at 11:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This is the tired old misunderstanding of the concept of a block universe. It's as though Minkowski never existed. OK. Explain to me exactly how the block universe ideas work out in Platonia. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 17 May 2015 at 11:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? I'm not particularly taking sides here but it would be nice if you actually answered the point that was made, rather than this rhetorical/emotional stuff. I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This is the tired old misunderstanding of the concept of a block universe. It's as though Minkowski never existed. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/17/2015 4:44 PM, LizR wrote: On 18 May 2015 at 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: At a very low level, yes. It's more conscious than my computer or a rock. Maybe less conscious than an amoeba, since the amoeba not only understands how to move it also understands food and reproduction. You think amoedas are conscious? Do you have an answer to Russell's argument which I believe is entitled Ants are not conscious ? (in TON) I haven't read it, but I suspect it's the same as my answer as to why I'm not Chinese. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/17/2015 1:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Roughly speaking, consciousness originates from the fact that p - []p (the sigma_1 truth get represented in the body/brain of the machine), and the fact that []p - p is true, but non justifiable by the machine. What does []p mean? p doesn't entail that p is provable or necessary. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/17/2015 12:16 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? From a biological perspective, I don't know. It seems to me that my genes could survive and be propagated without consciousness. There have been some week attempts at demonstrating the evolutionary value of consciousness, but they always seem to equate consciousness with self-modelling. Do you think there's something more to it? Tell me if you think this thing is conscious: http://thefutureofthings.com/5320-self-modeling-robot/ At a very low level, yes. It's more conscious than my computer or a rock. Maybe less conscious than an amoeba, since the amoeba not only understands how to move it also understands food and reproduction. Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? No, my personal bet is that intelligent zombies are not possible. I use intelligent zombies as a thought experiment. I bet that consciousness necessarily supervenes on the computations that allow for human intelligence. But this is a personal belief, not a scientific position. I cannot make a scientific claim because I don't know how to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . You are referring to the argument of irreducible complexity. In that case, the claim is that there is too much a priori needed complexity for an eye to function for it to be generated by iterative improvement. This claim counts as a scientific theory because it can be tested. It has been falsified by the fossil record, examples of earlier stages of eye evolution in simpler animals, demonstrations on how a single-cell eye could work, etc. This is not the argument I am making at all. All I am saying is that we don't know what consciousness is and, even worse, we have no way to measure or detect it. If consciousness somehow emerges from brain activity, then it surely originated from evolution, even if has a spandrel. But to make that claim you have to show a mechanism by which brain activity generates consciousness. I don't think anyone has been able to do that, or even propose a falsifiable hypothesis. Having absolute belief that such a mechanism must exist is the same type of mistake that the creationists make. At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. I never claimed it wasn't possible. I simply claimed it is not known. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again Can't you argue without insulting me? I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? What we can know, by scientific investigation, is that all known life forms evolved from simpler forms by processes generally described under the heading of Darwinian evolution. Consciousness is a feature of many living creatures. If you want to argue that consciousness is something outside the normal evolutionary process, then you have embraced an irreducibly dualist position. That is a fallacy. Consider: All life forms where created by evolutionary processes All life forms have mass Mass was created by evolutionary processes I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? From a biological perspective, I don't know. It seems to me that my genes could survive and be propagated without consciousness. There have been some week attempts at demonstrating the evolutionary value of consciousness, but they always seem to equate consciousness with self-modelling. Tell me if you think this thing is conscious: http://thefutureofthings.com/5320-self-modeling-robot/ Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? No, my personal bet is that intelligent zombies are not possible. I use intelligent zombies as a thought experiment. I bet that consciousness necessarily supervenes on the computations that allow for human intelligence. But this is a personal belief, not a scientific position. I cannot make a scientific claim because I don't know how to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . You are referring to the argument of irreducible complexity. In that case, the claim is that there is too much a priori needed complexity for an eye to function for it to be generated by iterative improvement. This claim counts as a scientific theory because it can be tested. It has been falsified by the fossil record, examples of earlier stages of eye evolution in simpler animals, demonstrations on how a single-cell eye could work, etc. This is not the argument I am making at all. All I am saying is that we don't know what consciousness is and, even worse, we have no way to measure or detect it. If consciousness somehow emerges from brain activity, then it surely originated from evolution, even if has a spandrel. But to make that claim you have to show a mechanism by which brain activity generates consciousness. I don't think anyone has been able to do that, or even propose a falsifiable hypothesis. Having absolute belief that such a mechanism must exist is the same type of mistake that the creationists make. At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. I never claimed it wasn't possible. I simply claimed it is not known. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again Can't you argue without insulting me? I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? What we can know, by scientific investigation, is that all known life forms evolved from simpler forms by processes generally described under the heading of Darwinian evolution. Consciousness is a feature of many living creatures. If you want to argue that consciousness is something outside the normal evolutionary process, then you have embraced an irreducibly dualist position. That is a fallacy. Consider: All life forms where created by evolutionary processes All life forms have mass Mass was created by evolutionary processes I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This, it seems to me, is just another strike against comp -- it does not fit with the scientific data. It is not hard to imagine evolutionary processes within computations. In fact, that's what I did for a living for some years. What is hard is to explain consciousness, comp or no comp. Pretending to have answers is not a valid argument. Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the homunculus in the machine. I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness is or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has nothing to say about it either. Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the homunculus in the machine. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. I didn't draw that conclusion. That's the conclusion Bruno wants to draw - or close to it (he talks about consciousness supervening on an infinite number of computational threads). There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. Right. And the system includes the environment that the consciousness refers to. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. I don't see that it's adding anything, magic or otherwise. As you say, any process can regarded as a computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. Yes, it seems like a natural extension of modeling one's surroundings as part of decision making, to add yourself into the model in order to imagine yourself making different choices. Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. But computation is also not just one specific feature of a process, it's a wholistic concept. So I disagree that there is not some special class of programs that implement consciousness; specifically those that model the device as part of it's own deicision processes. Brent Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. So you don't believe that performing the same computations that your brain does in another substrate will produce a copy of your mind? If you don't believe that, then you must believe in some unknown property of matter (magic?). If you do, then you believe that consciousness supervenes on computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. How do you know that? Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. How do you know that? Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Of course not. Nobody claims that. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. How do you know it's evolved? Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. So you don't believe that performing the same computations that your brain does in another substrate will produce a copy of your mind? If you don't believe that, then you must believe in some unknown property of matter (magic?). If you do, then you believe that consciousness supervenes on computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. How do you know that? Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. How do you know that? Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Of course not. Nobody claims that. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. How do you know it's evolved? Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. So you don't believe that performing the same computations that your brain does in another substrate will produce a copy of your mind? If you don't believe that, then you must believe in some unknown property of matter (magic?). If you do, then you believe that consciousness supervenes on computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. How do you know that? Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. How do you know that? Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Of course not. Nobody claims that. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. How do you know it's evolved? Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. So you don't believe that performing the same computations that your brain does in another substrate will produce a copy of your mind? If you don't believe that, then you must believe in some unknown property of matter (magic?). If you do, then you believe that consciousness supervenes on computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. How do you know that? Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. How do you know that? Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Of course not. Nobody claims that. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. How do you know it's evolved? Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. So you don't believe that performing the same computations that your brain does in another substrate will produce a copy of your mind? If you don't believe that, then you must believe in some unknown property of matter (magic?). If you do, then you believe that consciousness supervenes on computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. How do you know that? Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. How do you know that? Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Of course not. Nobody claims that. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. How do you know it's evolved? Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian evolution working without consciousness, even to the human intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, not a generator of it. That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to date. How so? Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation. I didn't draw that conclusion. That's the conclusion Bruno wants to draw - or close to it (he talks about consciousness supervening on an infinite number of computational threads). There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled this subroutine computes consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the whole functioning system, not of some particular feature. Right. And the system includes the environment that the consciousness refers to. That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some additional magic to the machine. I don't see that it's adding anything, magic or otherwise. As you say, any process can regarded as a computation. Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution. Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and developed. Yes, it seems like a natural extension of modeling one's surroundings as part of decision making, to add yourself into the model in order to imagine yourself making different choices. Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Consciousness is a computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one specific feature of that bulk. But computation is also not just one specific feature of a process, it's a wholistic concept. So I disagree that there is not some special class of programs that implement consciousness; specifically those that model the device as part of it's own deicision processes. The dovetailer does not implement consciousness in any particular program. The way the dovetailer runs it does not run any single program sequentially, it is always looping back to compute the next steps of all preceding programs. So the computation that implements consciousness, if that is what it is, is not a particular program -- it is found in a sequence of states that arise by chance indefinitely often. My question is what is the magic that makes that set of computational steps conscious, whereas all others are not conscious? I don't think that computationalism even begins to explain consciousness. Whereas an evolutionary account does all that is necessary -- proto-consciousness develops over evolutionary time to become more efficient, and eventually to develop a self image. As you say, the proto-consciousness added itself to its model of the surroundings, and with that became a lot more efficient at finding food and evading predators. Language and an internal narrative added further layers of efficiency and effectiveness. I find such a naturalist account, which sees consciousness as a whole-of-brain function, a lot more convincing than the computationalist account -- which doesn't seem to me to even get off first base. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Very, well. It's usually vague when science writers talk about wave-particle duality. It always seems they use the photon, and never the electron in such tests. Thanks. -Original Message- From: Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, May 14, 2015 10:26 pm Subject: Re: What does the MGA accomplish? spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: Photons can re-combine? So they are unlike electrons or positrons, which like a magnet, repell like charges. Electrons can recombine too. Just think of the two-slit experiment with electron -- we see only one spot on the screen. It is all part of the meaning of a superposition in quantum mechanics. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 16 May 2015 at 08:56, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto: meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. Thatnks, I see the point now - that the programme must be capable of responding to a certain range of inputs seems fair enough - consciousness responds to its surroundings, but has difficulty with novel inputs. (I don't see how this affects the MGA, however, which limits the computation in question to a re-run with the same inputs. Under those very specific, very limited circumstances, the computation can only follow the same path that it did previously.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? What we can know, by scientific investigation, is that all known life forms evolved from simpler forms by processes generally described under the heading of Darwinian evolution. Consciousness is a feature of many living creatures. If you want to argue that consciousness is something outside the normal evolutionary process, then you have embraced an irreducibly dualist position. I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This, it seems to me, is just another strike against comp -- it does not fit with the scientific data. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/16/2015 4:44 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? I think the obvious inference is that one way to gain intelligence is to become conscious. But being conscious isn't just one all-or-nothing ability. There's being aware of the environment...being aware of oneself...being able to model oneself in an environment, including a social environment in which you model other beings as aware and similar to yourself. I think there can be different kinds of awareness just as there are different modes of perception. Whether intelligence at the human level could be realized without the kind of self-modeling implicit in consciousness seems doubtful, but it might be possible in some radically different kind of AI. That wouldn't necessarily mean it wasn't conscious, but only that it might be conscious=self-aware in such a different way we'd have a hard time recognizing it. For example, most of our memories are reconstructions as opposed to faithful recordings. If there were an AI that had enormously greater memory capacity, it might make a lot more intelligent decisions just by repeating some remembered action (Big Blue played chess sort of like this as compared to a human player). 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. If consciousness is just a matter of self-modeling, then it is an advantage that would show up in intelligence of decisions and natural selection could act on it. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I see it as an engineering question. When we can reliably create AIs that act intelligently and appear as conscious as other human beings and we can create AIs that have more or less humor, guilt, ego,... Then we will have understood it. Brent What we can know, by scientific investigation, is that all known life forms evolved from simpler forms by processes generally described under the heading of Darwinian evolution. Consciousness is a feature of many living creatures. If you want to argue that consciousness is something outside the normal evolutionary process, then you have embraced an irreducibly dualist position. I can see that computationalism might well have difficulties accommodating a gradual evolutionary understanding of almost anything -- after all, the dovetailer is there in Platonia before anything physical ever appears. So how can consciousness evolve gradually? This, it seems to me, is just another strike against comp -- it does not fit with the scientific data. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/16/2015 4:44 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and then computationalism infused consciousness? No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for gradual evolution for the following reasons: 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; Do you find it an advantage to be conscious in your everyday life? Do you really think that your partner and/or children are zombies? I think the obvious inference is that one way to gain intelligence is to become conscious. But being conscious isn't just one all-or-nothing ability. There's being aware of the environment...being aware of oneself...being able to model oneself in an environment, including a social environment in which you model other beings as aware and similar to yourself. I think there can be different kinds of awareness just as there are different modes of perception. Whether intelligence at the human level could be realized without the kind of self-modeling implicit in consciousness seems doubtful, but it might be possible in some radically different kind of AI. That wouldn't necessarily mean it wasn't conscious, but only that it might be conscious=self-aware in such a different way we'd have a hard time recognizing it. For example, most of our memories are reconstructions as opposed to faithful recordings. If there were an AI that had enormously greater memory capacity, it might make a lot more intelligent decisions just by repeating some remembered action (Big Blue played chess sort of like this as compared to a human player). Yes. If you take an evolutionary perspective there are clearly degrees of consciosuness and degrees of intelligence. I think you are right that full human intelligence without consciousness, the inner narrative, and subconscious activity, is essentially impossible. I don't find the idea of philosophical zombies very likely. Also, things that make for 'intelligent' behaviour in humans are often no more than heuristics, rough rules of thumb. But if one is to reflect on these heuristics, and improve them according to experience, one must be conscious, and have that inner narrative, emotions, values, goals, etc. Zombies wouldn't have any of this, so would not appear adaptable or intelligent to us. 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be climbed. If consciousness is just a matter of self-modeling, then it is an advantage that would show up in intelligence of decisions and natural selection could act on it. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. This is the tired old creationist crap saying that the eye is too complicated to be explained by evolution; the bacterium's flagellum is too complicated...; the .. is too complicated . At bottom, it is just an argument from ignorance. You do not happen to know a mechanism whereby consciousness could develop from simpler forms. But that does not in any way mean that such is not possible. Creationist anti-intellectualism yet again I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? I see it as an engineering question. When we can reliably create AIs that act intelligently and appear as conscious as other human beings and we can create AIs that have more or less humor, guilt, ego,... Then we will have understood it. I agree. The only way we will ever finally understand intelligence and consciousness is to build it -- the engineering problem. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 20:22, meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 9:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 May 2015, at 02:50, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:33:06PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. I do, because it is a computation, albeit a rather trivial one. Yes, like a rock, in some theory of rock. It is not relevant for the argument. It is not to evade comp's consequences, however, which I already accept from UDA1-7. OK. I insist on the point, because the MGA is about driving an inconsistency between computational and physical supervenience, which requires care and rigour to demonstrate, not careless mislabelling. If you agree with the consequences from UDA1-7, then You don't need step 8 (MGA) to understand the epistemological inconsistency between of computational supervenience and the primitive-physical supervenience (assumed often implicitly by the Aristotelians). So, i see where your problem comes from, you might believe that step 8 shows that physical supervenience is wrong (not just the primitive one). But that is astonishing, because the that physical supervenience seems to me to be contained in the definition of comp, which refers to a doctor with a physical body, which will reinstalled my mind in a digital and physical machine. Step 8 just shows an epistemological contradiction between comp and primitive or physicalist notion of matter. How can it do that when it never mentions a physicalist notion of matter. It only invokes ordinary experience and ideas of matter - without assuming anything about whether they are fundamental? The contradiction is epistemological. It dissociate what we observed from that primitive matter. Unless you introduce a magic clairvoyance ability to Olympia (feeling the inactive Klara nearby). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. Where does the MGA show this? I don't believe you use the word magic in any of your papers on the MGA. Good point (if true, not the time to verify, but it seems the idea is there). I will use magic in some next publication. At some point, when we apply logic to reality, we have to invoke the magic, as with magic, you can always suggest a theory is wrong. Earth is flat, it just the photon who have very weird trajectories ... I agree that I take for granted that in science we don't do any ontological commitment, so there is no proof at all about reality. Then why do you say that supervenience of consciousness on physics has something to do with assuming physics is based on ur-stuff? Just that comp1 - comp2, that is physics, assuming comp1, is not the fundamental science, as it makes consciousness supervening on all computations in the sigma_1 reality, but with the FPI, not through possible particular emulations, although they have to be justify above the substitution level. It was also clearly intended that primitive-physical supervenience entails that the movie will supports the same consciousness experience than the one supported by the boolean graph. Indeed the point of Maudlin is that we can eliminate almost all physical activity why keeping the counterfactual correctness (by the inert Klara)) making the primitive-supervenience thesis (aristotelianism, physicalism) more absurd. Sorry, but this does seem a rhetorical comment. Who would have thought that? I think you might underestimate the easiness of step 8, which addresses only person believing that there is a substantially real *primitive* (that we have to assumed the existence as axioms in the fundamental TOE) physical universe, and that it is the explanation of why we exist, have mind and are conscious. That consciousness supervenes on the physical that we might extract from comp, that is indeed what would follow if the physical do what it has to do: gives the right measure on the relative computational histories. It is for those who, like Peter Jones, perhaps Brent and Bruce, who at step 7 say that the UD needs to be executed in a primitive physical universe, (to get the measure problem) with the intent to save physicalism. I don't see anything in the MGA that makes it specific to a *primitive* physics. It just refers to ordinary physical realizations of computations, and so whatever it concludes applies to ordinary physics. And ordinary physics doesn't depend on some assumption of primitive materialism - as evidenced by physicist like Wheeler and Tegmark who speculate about what makes the equations work. There is no
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 10:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Then the math confirms this, as proved by the Löbian universal machine itself, as on the p sigma_1, the first person variant of the 3p G ([]p), that is []p p, []p t, and []p t p, provides a quantization (namely [i]ip, with [i] being the corresponding modality of the variants). Went over my head. Can you expand on that? What can an ideally correct machine proves on itself, at the right level by construction? This can be handled with using the self provided by the second recursion theorem, or the little song if D'x' gives 'x'x'' what gives DD. The song is singed by some universal system understanding the notation. The math gives here the Beweisbar predicate of Gödel, for the finite entities believing in enough induction axioms, which I call the Löbian numbers or the Löbian combinators (depending if there is a r in the month). If you interpret the propositional variables (p, q, r ...) by arithmetical propositions, and the modal box []p by beweisbar(code of p in the language of the machine), Gödel and Löb's theorems prove the soundness of the formula ~[]f - ~[]~[]f , and []([]A-A)-[]A, etc. Indeed Solovay's theorem will prove that G and G* characterize what the machine can prove about its provability and consistency abilities, and G* describes what is true about them. If you define generously a mystic by any entity interested in its self, then G is the abstract mystical science, and G* is the abstract mystical truth. Gödel already saw that G, well, it is not a logic of knowledge, like T ([]p-p), or S4 ([]p-p, []p - [][]p). This means, that contrarily to the intuition of some mathematicians and scientists, formal provability is of the type belief, not knowledge. But this gives the opportunity to define knowledge by using Theaetetus idea: [k]p = [g]p p, with [g] = the usual beweisbar [] of Gödel. This does fit with Tarski mathematical analysis of truth, where il pleut is true when it rains. This leads to a (meta) definition of a knower, indeed axiomatized soundly and completely by the modal logic S4Grz. Grz for Grzegorczyk who discovered an equivalent formula, in the context of topological interpretation of intuitionisic logic. Indeed S4Grz provides an arithmetical (self-referential) interpretation of intuitionistic logic (which the first person will be, from her own perspective). But we want a probability measure of those things accessible by the UD. G has a Kripke semantic. In particular, there, there are cul-de-sac world everywhere, and they do contains sorts of white rabbits, as []f is true in those cul-de-sac world. To get a probability, we need to have the D axiom ([]p - p). What about the measure one? It is simpler to extract it than a measure different from one. Recall what I asked 10 times to John Clark: you are in Helsinki (so you are PA+I am in Helsinki, say), and you will be duplicated and reconstituted in Washington and Moscow, and you are told that both reconstitutions will be offered a coffee cup. We want to say that []A would do, as by completeness it entails truth in all models, in particular true in all consistent extensions (PA + I was in Helsinki + I am in Moscow + I got a cup of coffe), and (PA + I was in Helsinki + I am in Washington + I got a cup of coffee). But [] does not intensionally acts like that and D is false, so to get it you have to add explicilty that there is a consistent extension. [b]p = []p t (in Kripke semantic: t means that there is a world in which t exists, as t is true in all worlds, this amount to say that there is a world: it is a default hypothesis (an instinct) made explicit. the b of [b]p is for bet. To get physics, through comp, you have to restrict the local continuations to the UD's work, or to the sigma_1 reality. So the propositional logic of physics (the logic of yes no experiment) must be given by the logic of [b]p with p sigma_1 sentence. Then it happens that quantum logicians have already a nice representation of quantum logic in modal logic, and roughly a modal logic known as B, (with main axiom []p - p, p - []p) interpret quantum logic through a quantization of the classical proposition ([]A, that is B proves []p for the atomic proposition when and only when quantum logic proves p). Now, the three of SGrz1 ( = S4Grz restricted to the sigma_1), Z1* (the part of Z, restricted to sigma_1, and proved by G*, when translated), X1*, provide such a quantization, and a corresponding different quantum logics. Nobody complained that I got three quantum logics. But then as Van Frassen said: there is a labyrinth of quantum logics, and here comp provides a sort of etalon. All logic can be proved to be emulated/represented by the decidable logic G, so they are all decidable, and with the exception of the X logics ([]p
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Quite probably. But the argument was made that the detailed recording of the sequence of brain states of a conscious person could not be conscious because it was not counterfactually correct. This charge has always seemed to me to be misguided, since the recording does not pretend to be functionally equivalent to the original in all circumstances -- just in the particular circumstance in which the recording was made. It has never been proposed that the film could be used as a prosthesis for all situations. So this argument against the replayed recording recreating the original conscious moments must fail -- on the basis of total irrelevance. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 20:34, meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 9:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 May 2015, at 07:13, meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. OK. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. Not OK. You beg the question of justifying why the physical computation wins. You then miss the comp promise of explaining the physical form from something simpler like the combinatorial, or the arithmetical, or the sigma_1 complete set, etc. OK, I appreciate that. But then what does it mean that the brain prosthesis the doctor installs must be counterfactually correct? It means that, after the substitution is done, in case you *are* not hungry, then in case you would be hungry, you would eat. Is there no restriction except consistency of the possible inputs? ? Consistent applies to any system of beliefs producing (believed) propositions. In classical systems, consistent systems ate those not believing in some proposition A and in ~A, or which does not believe in the constant propositional falsity f. ~[]f, or t. Unless you talk like if UDA is understood, and suggest a way to explain physical counterfactualness in term of the physics extracted from comp, which you assume is QM. In that case, I can make sense of your sentence. I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. It means that in the physically correct mimic of the computation, like the MOVIE, we would have the right output or the relevant circuits behavior in case we would have made some change in the system. Maudlin, in MGA terms, add the Klara, physically inactive device which would only be trigged and restore the counterfactual correctness, in case a change is introduced. But, of course, restoring the counterfactualness at the right moment makes you counterfactually correct, by definition, so if we accept the physical supervenience (of consciousness on the physical activity of the computation) then we have to accept the consciousness on MOVIE + KLARA, which are during the experience identical, as the Klara are inactive. So physical supervenience makes computationalism spurious, and it is simpler to NOT assume a physical reality at the start, and relate consciousness to the semantic of the abstract program/person, which is actually supported accidentally or not to this or that universal system. This leads to the extent of Everett's formulation on the Universal Wave/Multiverse to the Sigma_1 arithmetic. That one is better seen as a web of dream emulation, as the obligatory exercise now should consist in justifying a probability measure on them (cf the FPI). I say more on this in an answer to another post. Bruno Brent Are you defending physicalism? Or are you trying to justify the appearance of physicalism in comp? Sometimes, out of context, those two things can't avoid to look similar. At some point peole should perhaps make clear all what they assume. Bruno Brent As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non- physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 6:18 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Quite probably. But the argument was made that the detailed recording of the sequence of brain states of a conscious person could not be conscious because it was not counterfactually correct. This charge has always seemed to me to be misguided, since the recording does not pretend to be functionally equivalent to the original in all circumstances -- just in the particular circumstance in which the recording was made. It has never been proposed that the film could be used as a prosthesis for all situations. So this argument against the replayed recording recreating the original conscious moments must fail -- on the basis of total irrelevance. But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 9:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by one of Disney's animitronics. What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious? Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording recreate that conscious moment. Unless we know what it is about the brain processes that make it conscious we can't know what it is necessary to record. The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness. So are you assuming that only a brain can instantiate consciousness? Do you not believe that consciousness is a matter of what information processing the brain is doing, but that it requires wetware? Bruno's idea is that he may solve the mind-body problem; but you seem not to see any problem. Of course consciousness supervenes on brain activity - but maybe not just any brain activity (c.f. anesthesia). The question is whether it can supervene on something else and if so, what? How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a different matter. But that completely avoids the question of creating a conscious AI program, whether it's possible, and whether it's identical with making an intelligent AI program. Brent Bruce I think Bruno is right that it makes more sense to attribute consciousness, like intelligence, to a program that can respond differently and effectively to a wide range of inputs. And, maybe unlike Bruno, I think intelligence and consciousness is only possible relative to an environment, one with extent in time as well as space. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by one of Disney's animitronics. What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious? Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording recreate that conscious moment. The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness. How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a different matter. Bruce I think Bruno is right that it makes more sense to attribute consciousness, like intelligence, to a program that can respond differently and effectively to a wide range of inputs. And, maybe unlike Bruno, I think intelligence and consciousness is only possible relative to an environment, one with extent in time as well as space. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 9:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by one of Disney's animitronics. What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious? Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording recreate that conscious moment. Unless we know what it is about the brain processes that make it conscious we can't know what it is necessary to record. I thought the idea was that we recorded everything that was going on. The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness. So are you assuming that only a brain can instantiate consciousness? No. All functional brains are conscious does not entail that all consciousness comes with function goo in a skull. Do you not believe that consciousness is a matter of what information processing the brain is doing, but that it requires wetware? Bruno's idea is that he may solve the mind-body problem; but you seem not to see any problem. No, I don't see any particular problem. In fact, if there is a difference between brain activity and consciousness, you are introducing some weird dualist Cartesian theatre -- the brain activity is only conscious when it is enlivened by some extra computational magic stuff. Of course consciousness supervenes on brain activity - but maybe not just any brain activity (c.f. anesthesia). The question is whether it can supervene on something else and if so, what? I don't see any problem here -- see above: brain goo activity - consciousness does not mean that consciousness - brain goo activity. How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a different matter. But that completely avoids the question of creating a conscious AI program, whether it's possible, and whether it's identical with making an intelligent AI program. I didn't think we were trying to create a conscious AI in this discussion. I think this is probably possible, and that the means by which it is done will probably be quite different from programs written to control robots. I suspect that the difference might well be in the provision of language skills -- so that an internal narrative can be developed. The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 9:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by one of Disney's animitronics. What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious? Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording recreate that conscious moment. Unless we know what it is about the brain processes that make it conscious we can't know what it is necessary to record. I thought the idea was that we recorded everything that was going on. The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness. So are you assuming that only a brain can instantiate consciousness? No. All functional brains are conscious does not entail that all consciousness comes with function goo in a skull. Do you not believe that consciousness is a matter of what information processing the brain is doing, but that it requires wetware? Bruno's idea is that he may solve the mind-body problem; but you seem not to see any problem. No, I don't see any particular problem. In fact, if there is a difference between brain activity and consciousness, you are introducing some weird dualist Cartesian theatre -- the brain activity is only conscious when it is enlivened by some extra computational magic stuff. Of course consciousness supervenes on brain activity - but maybe not just any brain activity (c.f. anesthesia). The question is whether it can supervene on something else and if so, what? I don't see any problem here -- see above: brain goo activity - consciousness does not mean that consciousness - brain goo activity. How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a different matter. But that completely avoids the question of creating a conscious AI program, whether it's possible, and whether it's identical with making an intelligent AI program. I didn't think we were trying to create a conscious AI in this discussion. I think this is probably possible, and that the means by which it is done will probably be quite different from programs written to control robots. I suspect that the difference might well be in the provision of language skills -- so that an internal narrative can be developed. The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on. I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except Running the program it instantiates. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 6:18 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Quite probably. But the argument was made that the detailed recording of the sequence of brain states of a conscious person could not be conscious because it was not counterfactually correct. This charge has always seemed to me to be misguided, since the recording does not pretend to be functionally equivalent to the original in all circumstances -- just in the particular circumstance in which the recording was made. It has never been proposed that the film could be used as a prosthesis for all situations. So this argument against the replayed recording recreating the original conscious moments must fail -- on the basis of total irrelevance. But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense. Bruce -- You received this
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 6:18 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/15/2015 4:40 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. That is probably right. But that just means that the prosthesis is functionally equivalent over the required domain. To call this 'counterfactual correctness' seems to me to be just confused. What makes the consciousness, in Bruno's view, is that it's the right kind of program being run - which seems fairly uncontroversial. And part of being the right kind is that it is counterfactually correct = functionally equivalent at the software level. Of course this also means it correctly interfaces physically with the rest of the world of which it is conscious. But Bruno minimizes this by two moves. First, he considers the brain as dreaming so it is not interacting via perceptions. I objected to this as missing the essential fact that the processes in the brain refer to perceptions and other concepts learned in its waking state and this is what gives them meaning. Second, Bruno notes that one can just expand the digital prosthesis to include a digital artificial world, including even a simulation of a whole universe. To which my attitude is that this makes the concept of prosthesis and artificial moot. I don't think you would consider just *any* piece of software running to be conscious and I do think you would consider some, sufficiently intelligent behaving software, plus perhaps certain I/O, to be conscious. So what would be the crucial difference between these two software packages? I'd say having the ability to produce intelligent looking responses to a large range of inputs would be a minimum. Quite probably. But the argument was made that the detailed recording of the sequence of brain states of a conscious person could not be conscious because it was not counterfactually correct. This charge has always seemed to me to be misguided, since the recording does not pretend to be functionally equivalent to the original in all circumstances -- just in the particular circumstance in which the recording was made. It has never been proposed that the film could be used as a prosthesis for all situations. So this argument against the replayed recording recreating the original conscious moments must fail -- on the basis of total irrelevance. But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say, Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore it's conscious. I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a modicum of common sense.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/14/2015 7:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. It comes in at the very beginning of his argument, but it's never made explicit. In the beginning when one is asked to accept a digital prosthesis for a brain part, Bruno says almost everyone agrees that consciousness is realized by a certain class of computations. The alternative, as suggested by Searle for example, that consciousness depends not only of the activity of the brain but also what the physical material is, seems like invoking magic. So we agree that consciousness depends on the program that's running, not the hardware it's running on. And implicit in this is that this program implements intelligence, the ability to respond differently to different externals signals/environment. Bruno says that's what is meant by computation, but whether that's entailed by the word or not seems like a semantic quibble. Whatever you call it, it's implicit in the idea of digital brain prosthesis and in the idea of strong AI that the program instantiating consciousness must be able to respond differently to different inputs. But it doesn't have respond differently to every different input or to all logically possible inputs. It only needs to be able to respond to inputs within some range as might occur in its environment - whether that environment is a whole world or just the other parts of the brain. So the digital prosthesis needs to do this with that same functionality over the same domain as the brain parts it replaced. In which case it is counterfactually correct. Right? It's a concept relative to a limited domain. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 21:04, meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 22:27, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer seems to me to be a red herring. It was never claimed that projecting the film of the brain substrate instantiated general consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally filmed. That is all that is required. General purpose computing and counterfactual correctness are all beside the point. If the original conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a computation in any sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not supervene on the physical body. The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red herring. No such assumption is required in order to show that the MGA fails to prove its point. It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical activity and only the physical activity, then the recording is conscious. But anyone knowing what is a computation should understand that the recording does not compute more than a trivial sequence of projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean graph. I think there are five concepts of computation in play here: 1. An abstract deterministic computer (TM) or program running with some given external input. This program is assumed to have well defined behavior over a whole class of inputs, not just the one considered. OK. That is the standard concept (although the computation does not have to be deterministic, but that is a detail here). 2. A classical (deterministic) physical computer realizing (1) supra. This is what the doctor proposes to replace part or all of your brain. Yes, and this involves physics. But this is no more a computation in the sense of Church-Turing, which does not refer to physics at all. 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. 4. An execution of (1) with a classical (deterministic) computer that has all the branching points disabled so that it realizes (1) but is not counterfactually equivalent to (1) or (2). This computes one epsilon more than the movie. That is, not a lot. 5. A physical (quantum) computer realizing (1) supra, in it's classical limit. That is the solution we hope for (as it would make comp and QM ally and very plausible). Bruno takes (1) to define computation and takes the hypothesis that consciousness is realized by a certain kind of computation, an instance of (1). So he says that if you believe this you will say yes to the doctor who proposes (2) as a prosthesis. This substitution of a physical deterministic computer will preserve your consciousness. Then he proceeds to argue via the MGA that this implies your consciousness will not be affected by using (4) instead of (2) and further that (4) is equivalent to (3) and (3) is absurd. Having found a reductio, he wants to reject the assumption that your consciousness is realized by the physics of a deterministic computer as in (2). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. this is not the reversal of physics claimed. The Democritan physicist (nothing but atoms and the void) will point out that (2) is not what the doctor can implement. ? What is possible is realizing a prosthetic computation by (5). And (5) cannot be truncated like (4); quantum mechanical systems can only be approximately classical and only when they are interacting with an environment. The classical deterministic computer (TM) is a platonic ideal which, as far as we know, cannot be realized. But then comp is false, as comp is a bet of surviving some digital truncation. That's why you need to distinguish comp1 from comp2. Comp1, which almost everyone agrees to, assumes the doctor will implant a real quantum mechanical, approximately digital device. But the reasoning of leading to the MGA assumes and ideal, abstract digital device which has no interaction with its environment except the TM I/O. I use a dream to make it simpler, but you can do the MGA with an interactive environment. There are two ways for doing that: either you put the digital approximation of the environnment, in the graph, or ... you don't. You will need different kind of magic for preventing the physical supervenience (assumed
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 21:49, meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 8:49 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. As they say on TV, This just in! Why Boltzmann Brains Don't Fluctuate Into Existence From the De Sitter Vacuum Kimberly K. Boddy, Sean M. Carroll, Jason Pollack (Submitted on 11 May 2015) Many modern cosmological scenarios feature large volumes of spacetime in a de Sitter vacuum phase. Such models are said to be faced with a Boltzmann Brain problem - the overwhelming majority of observers with fixed local conditions are random fluctuations in the de Sitter vacuum, rather than arising via thermodynamically sensible evolution from a low-entropy past. We argue that this worry can be straightforwardly avoided in the Many-Worlds (Everett) approach to quantum mechanics, as long as the underlying Hilbert space is infinite-dimensional. In that case, de Sitter settles into a truly stationary quantum vacuum state. While there would be a nonzero probability for observing Boltzmann-Brain-like fluctuations in such a state, observation refers to a specific kind of dynamical process that does not occur in the vacuum (which is, after all, time-independent). Observers are necessarily out-of-equilibrium physical systems, which are absent in the vacuum. Hence, the fact that projection operators corresponding to states with observers in them do not annihilate the vacuum does not imply that such observers actually come into existence. The Boltzmann Brain problem is therefore much less generic than has been supposed. Good opportunity to recall the answer of the question asked in the title of the thread: What MGA explains is that the computationalist has not that option, even if the winner will be that infinite but non robust physical universe (weird but not yet shown comp impossible). In the sigma_1 complete reality, you don't need to fluctuate to get all brains, in infinitely many exemplars. Perhaps too much actually, but that remains to be evaluated. Note that the quantum logics Z1*, X1*, and S4Grz1 suggest infinite dimensional (quasi-) Hilbert Space, technically. For a very nice (but a bit technical) intro to quantum logic, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/ Bruno arXiv:1505.02780v1 [hep-th] Brent David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 07:13, meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. OK. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. Not OK. You beg the question of justifying why the physical computation wins. You then miss the comp promise of explaining the physical form from something simpler like the combinatorial, or the arithmetical, or the sigma_1 complete set, etc. Unless you talk like if UDA is understood, and suggest a way to explain physical counterfactualness in term of the physics extracted from comp, which you assume is QM. In that case, I can make sense of your sentence. Are you defending physicalism? Or are you trying to justify the appearance of physicalism in comp? Sometimes, out of context, those two things can't avoid to look similar. At some point peole should perhaps make clear all what they assume. Bruno Brent As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non- physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/14/2015 9:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 May 2015, at 07:13, meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. OK. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. Not OK. You beg the question of justifying why the physical computation wins. You then miss the comp promise of explaining the physical form from something simpler like the combinatorial, or the arithmetical, or the sigma_1 complete set, etc. OK, I appreciate that. But then what does it mean that the brain prosthesis the doctor installs must be counterfactually correct? Is there no restriction except consistency of the possible inputs? Unless you talk like if UDA is understood, and suggest a way to explain physical counterfactualness in term of the physics extracted from comp, which you assume is QM. In that case, I can make sense of your sentence. I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. Brent Are you defending physicalism? Or are you trying to justify the appearance of physicalism in comp? Sometimes, out of context, those two things can't avoid to look similar. At some point peole should perhaps make clear all what they assume. Bruno Brent As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/14/2015 9:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 May 2015, at 02:50, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:33:06PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. I do, because it is a computation, albeit a rather trivial one. Yes, like a rock, in some theory of rock. It is not relevant for the argument. It is not to evade comp's consequences, however, which I already accept from UDA1-7. OK. I insist on the point, because the MGA is about driving an inconsistency between computational and physical supervenience, which requires care and rigour to demonstrate, not careless mislabelling. If you agree with the consequences from UDA1-7, then You don't need step 8 (MGA) to understand the epistemological inconsistency between of computational supervenience and the primitive-physical supervenience (assumed often implicitly by the Aristotelians). So, i see where your problem comes from, you might believe that step 8 shows that physical supervenience is wrong (not just the primitive one). But that is astonishing, because the that physical supervenience seems to me to be contained in the definition of comp, which refers to a doctor with a physical body, which will reinstalled my mind in a digital and physical machine. Step 8 just shows an epistemological contradiction between comp and primitive or physicalist notion of matter. How can it do that when it never mentions a physicalist notion of matter. It only invokes ordinary experience and ideas of matter - without assuming anything about whether they are fundamental? The contradiction is epistemological. It dissociate what we observed from that primitive matter. Unless you introduce a magic clairvoyance ability to Olympia (feeling the inactive Klara nearby). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. Where does the MGA show this? I don't believe you use the word magic in any of your papers on the MGA. Good point (if true, not the time to verify, but it seems the idea is there). I will use magic in some next publication. At some point, when we apply logic to reality, we have to invoke the magic, as with magic, you can always suggest a theory is wrong. Earth is flat, it just the photon who have very weird trajectories ... I agree that I take for granted that in science we don't do any ontological commitment, so there is no proof at all about reality. Then why do you say that supervenience of consciousness on physics has something to do with assuming physics is based on ur-stuff? Just that comp1 - comp2, that is physics, assuming comp1, is not the fundamental science, as it makes consciousness supervening on all computations in the sigma_1 reality, but with the FPI, not through possible particular emulations, although they have to be justify above the substitution level. It was also clearly intended that primitive-physical supervenience entails that the movie will supports the same consciousness experience than the one supported by the boolean graph. Indeed the point of Maudlin is that we can eliminate almost all physical activity why keeping the counterfactual correctness (by the inert Klara)) making the primitive-supervenience thesis (aristotelianism, physicalism) more absurd. Sorry, but this does seem a rhetorical comment. Who would have thought that? I think you might underestimate the easiness of step 8, which addresses only person believing that there is a substantially real *primitive* (that we have to assumed the existence as axioms in the fundamental TOE) physical universe, and that it is the explanation of why we exist, have mind and are conscious. That consciousness supervenes on the physical that we might extract from comp, that is indeed what would follow if the physical do what it has to do: gives the right measure on the relative computational histories. It is for those who, like Peter Jones, perhaps Brent and Bruce, who at step 7 say that the UD needs to be executed in a primitive physical universe, (to get the measure problem) with the intent to save physicalism. I don't see anything in the MGA that makes it specific to a *primitive* physics. It just refers to ordinary physical realizations of computations, and so whatever it concludes applies to ordinary physics. And ordinary physics doesn't depend on some assumption of primitive materialism - as evidenced by physicist like Wheeler and Tegmark who speculate about what makes the equations work. Brent If you get the UDA1-7 problem, the MGA makes no point. It only shows that physicalism or matter per se does not provide
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 08:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 14:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. Yes. Between primitive-physical supervenience (as this what is at stake). I cannot allow that this move is legitimate. The MGA does not at any point refer to the basic ontology, Read my paper and long texts. I talk only on that. I search the simplest ontology (realm) to explain both matter and mind, and in a way which makes possible to formulate mathematically the mind-body problem (that is: the body appearance problem in sigma_1 arithmetic) Why taking all the time this negative outlook. I am not criticizing physics, only the statement that physics is the fundamental science (physicalism). You need to grasp why. nor does it at any point make a distinction between what is true for a matter ontology as opposed to a Platonic ontology. The argument works in exactly the same way for both, so if you dismiss a physical ontology on the basis of this argument, you must, in logic, also dismiss the arithmetical ontology. Where is the flaw? I answered your question. Comp is either false, or it is incoherent. I guess you mean comp2. But where is the flaw in comp1 - comp2 argument? Your previous argument were based on a misunderstanding of what are computations. It seemed to me. Just try to ask question where you don't understand. You made often correct point, but non relevant for invalidating the argument. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/14/2015 10:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Then the math confirms this, as proved by the Löbian universal machine itself, as on the p sigma_1, the first person variant of the 3p G ([]p), that is []p p, []p t, and []p t p, provides a quantization (namely [i]ip, with [i] being the corresponding modality of the variants). Went over my head. Can you expand on that? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 07:25, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. No. The counterfactuals that Bruno refers to in comp seem to come from the If A the B else C construction of computer programming. This puts no restriction on the worlds containg B and C. So it actually has nothing whatsoever to do with MWI. As you say, the possible alternative worlds in MWI come from the eigenfunctions of an eigenselected basis, and those are by no means arbitrary. Right, but UDA explains that it is just not an affair of counting or weighting computations, it is also an affair of living them, or observing them, or betting on them, according to the first or third or other points of view, which eventually are self--referential. Then the logic of self-reference, non trivial (by Gödel, Löb, Solovay and others) put a mathematical structure on the set of computation. Then it is interesting that the definition of knower' by Theatetus, in arithmetic, and in this comp setting, gives an intuitionistic- solipsistic anti-mechanist, and unnameable first person, obeying to the antic soul theory in its development from Pythagorus-Parmenides- Plato-Plotinus-Porphyry-Proclus. Then on p sigma_1, restricting ourselves to the DU, or to the sigma_1 arithmetical reality, we got a quantum logic on those first person (some plurals) points of view. Yes, the FPI has nothing to do a priori with the comp global (on the UD, or the sigma_1, FPI). But if both are true, comp explains how and why to derive QM (and perhaps QM+space-time-gravitation) from arithmetic. The why is that in that (re)discovery you have the tool to separate, as far as it is possible, the communicable/justifiable truth from the non communicable/ non justifiable one. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 08:12, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 10:25 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. No. The counterfactuals that Bruno refers to in comp seem to come from the If A the B else C construction of computer programming. This puts no restriction on the worlds containg B and C. That would seem to create conundrums. The counterfactual is A taking a value other than the one it actually did. A is one of the inputs to the prosthetic brain part, so in practice the doctor would only consider a finite number of values of A that could be realized by the sense organ or other brain parts that realize it. But if A can be anything from platonia it could be If this program X halts... or The smallest even integer not the sum of two primes. If you read around the typos in my post above, the counterfactual if...then...else... construction branches on the input A, which is not necessarily *anything* at all, just what the program encounters. It is B and C that can be anything that the programmer wants them to be. We are talking computing here, not physics. Indeed. That is why the other worlds of MWI have nothing to do with counterfactual correctness. Yes and no, as it is a very difficult subject. The problem is mainly for the past false situation, like: as the following sentence any meaning: if Hitler did not born, the Nazis would have got the atomic bomb before the others, in 1960. Now, with the MWI, + ultra-quantum computer, we might imagine a day where detailed quantum emulation of that part of the earth might suggest that in 80% of the realities with Hitler not born, the nazi (sometimes with another name) got the Atomic bomb before the others, and in 30% of the situation used them. The normal reaction, before such technology exists, is in the french saying: avec des si et des mais on mets Paris en bouteille (with if and but we can put Paris in a bootle). So the MWI might still have relations with some type of counterfactuals. Like comp itself, as you can know that you would have done something differently, you would belong to different computations, most plausibly. Note the ethical problem: can we simulate earth at the substitution level of its inhabitants? Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 07:57, Bruce Kellett wrote: Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 02:51:00PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. I would expect that somewhere in the Multiverse, France still has a king in 2015, and has a beard, and somewhere else where he doesn't. If you are talking of a separate universe outside our Hubble volume then you are going to have difficulty defining exactly what you mean by 'now' or '2015'. The other worlds of the MWI are not even in the same universe, so you are going to have even more difficulty in assigning a truth value to the proposition. Philosophical 'possible worlds' are quite distinct from multiverse ideas. Absolutely, but that is why it is interesting if some philosophical hypothesis (comp) can force a relation between them, like making QM the measure of the computation (in the classical-Church-Turing sense). Then the math confirms this, as proved by the Löbian universal machine itself, as on the p sigma_1, the first person variant of the 3p G ([]p), that is []p p, []p t, and []p t p, provides a quantization (namely [i]ip, with [i] being the corresponding modality of the variants). I think that with comp, Heisenberg-Pauli-Fuchs are as much correct than Everett. The quantum, and also themrmodynamic are already bridge to a theory of mind, and with comp, eventually a theory of numbers and other CT-universal systems. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 06:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 10:33:42PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. How does that work? Are you saying the counterfactual situations never appear anywhere in the Multiverse? What principle prevents their occurrance? By the meaning of the term: *counter*factual, i.e., contrary to the facts of the situation. As far as I know there is a philosophical theory of counterfactuals based on possible worlds. Yes. The study of counterfualness often use modal logic, and is often considered as a modal notion. The problem here relies in part in the fact that logicians, physicists, and philosophers use the same words with different meaning, and here we need to unify the ideas, so it is easy to get confused. But these are generally though to be imaginary. And my feeling is that the 'other worlds' of the MWI or other Hubble volumes, etc, are just philosophical possible other worlds. We can say anything about them that we like because it can never be checked -- they are physically inaccessible in principle. But with comp, that is not enough. Even if a physically existing, but non accessible physical reality realize a computation similar to a continuation of you, it might change the measure, in principle. But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. It will indeed depends on the interpretations. But if you say it is a counterfactual, it should have the form: if there is a king of France, then he has a beard. It is trivially true in classical logic (assuming France is really a republic), but classical logic is not suited for counterfactuals, by definition, they are all true: if pigs can fly, I am Napoleon!, for example. False implies everything in classical logic. For counterfactuals, you need special classical modal logic(s), or sort or relevance logics. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015, at 02:50, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:33:06PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. I do, because it is a computation, albeit a rather trivial one. Yes, like a rock, in some theory of rock. It is not relevant for the argument. It is not to evade comp's consequences, however, which I already accept from UDA1-7. OK. I insist on the point, because the MGA is about driving an inconsistency between computational and physical supervenience, which requires care and rigour to demonstrate, not careless mislabelling. If you agree with the consequences from UDA1-7, then You don't need step 8 (MGA) to understand the epistemological inconsistency between of computational supervenience and the primitive-physical supervenience (assumed often implicitly by the Aristotelians). So, i see where your problem comes from, you might believe that step 8 shows that physical supervenience is wrong (not just the primitive one). But that is astonishing, because the that physical supervenience seems to me to be contained in the definition of comp, which refers to a doctor with a physical body, which will reinstalled my mind in a digital and physical machine. Step 8 just shows an epistemological contradiction between comp and primitive or physicalist notion of matter. The contradiction is epistemological. It dissociate what we observed from that primitive matter. Unless you introduce a magic clairvoyance ability to Olympia (feeling the inactive Klara nearby). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. Where does the MGA show this? I don't believe you use the word magic in any of your papers on the MGA. Good point (if true, not the time to verify, but it seems the idea is there). I will use magic in some next publication. At some point, when we apply logic to reality, we have to invoke the magic, as with magic, you can always suggest a theory is wrong. Earth is flat, it just the photon who have very weird trajectories ... I agree that I take for granted that in science we don't do any ontological commitment, so there is no proof at all about reality. Just that comp1 - comp2, that is physics, assuming comp1, is not the fundamental science, as it makes consciousness supervening on all computations in the sigma_1 reality, but with the FPI, not through possible particular emulations, although they have to be justify above the substitution level. It was also clearly intended that primitive-physical supervenience entails that the movie will supports the same consciousness experience than the one supported by the boolean graph. Indeed the point of Maudlin is that we can eliminate almost all physical activity why keeping the counterfactual correctness (by the inert Klara)) making the primitive-supervenience thesis (aristotelianism, physicalism) more absurd. Sorry, but this does seem a rhetorical comment. Who would have thought that? I think you might underestimate the easiness of step 8, which addresses only person believing that there is a substantially real *primitive* (that we have to assumed the existence as axioms in the fundamental TOE) physical universe, and that it is the explanation of why we exist, have mind and are conscious. That consciousness supervenes on the physical that we might extract from comp, that is indeed what would follow if the physical do what it has to do: gives the right measure on the relative computational histories. It is for those who, like Peter Jones, perhaps Brent and Bruce, who at step 7 say that the UD needs to be executed in a primitive physical universe, (to get the measure problem) with the intent to save physicalism. If you get the UDA1-7 problem, the MGA makes no point. It only shows that physicalism or matter per se does not provide a solution (without adding non Turing emulable and non FPI recoverable magic). Bruno -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015 at 17:13, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. What is an outcome consistent with QM which doesn't happen? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Photons can re-combine? So they are unlike electrons or positrons, which like a magnet, repell like charges. Based on your description, Liz, then somewhere in the universe, are glowing soft-white piles of Photonium? Ah! The creamy nougat center of every barred spiral galaxy! Sent from AOL Mobile Mail -Original Message- From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, May 14, 2015 08:39 PM Subject: Re: What does the MGA accomplish? div id=AOLMsgPart_2_b7f6f4d4-d15a-46aa-a81d-2ad28771618a div dir=ltr div class=aolmail_gmail_extra div class=aolmail_gmail_quote On 14 May 2015 at 14:40, Russell Standish span dir=ltra target=_blank href=mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au;li...@hpcoders.com.au/a/span wrote: blockquote class=aolmail_gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex div class=aolmail_HOEnZb div class=aolmail_h5 /div /divThe physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. /blockquote The difference is that the photons ican/i recombine, hence their states in different branches have a physical influence no the final outcome. But the processes leading to conciousness can't, normally, reconmbine, because brain-stuff decoheres far more rapidly than the timescales on which consciousness takes place. Hence counterfactuals aren't involved in consciousness, at least not ifwe assume consciousness supervenes on a physical system obeying QM. /div /div /div p/p -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com;everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com/a. To post to this group, send email to a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com;everything-list@googlegroups.com/a. Visit this group at a target=_blank href=http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list;http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/a. For more options, visit a target=_blank href=https://groups.google.com/d/optout;https://groups.google.com/d/optout/a. /div -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 14 May 2015 at 14:40, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: The physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. The difference is that the photons *can* recombine, hence their states in different branches have a physical influence no the final outcome. But the processes leading to conciousness can't, normally, reconmbine, because brain-stuff decoheres far more rapidly than the timescales on which consciousness takes place. Hence counterfactuals aren't involved in consciousness, at least not ifwe assume consciousness supervenes on a physical system obeying QM. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Oops - I meant on the final outcome, of course - my fingers insist on reversing the order of letters, and sometimes I don't notice. On 15 May 2015 at 12:39, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 14:40, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: The physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. The difference is that the photons *can* recombine, hence their states in different branches have a physical influence no the final outcome. But the processes leading to conciousness can't, normally, reconmbine, because brain-stuff decoheres far more rapidly than the timescales on which consciousness takes place. Hence counterfactuals aren't involved in consciousness, at least not ifwe assume consciousness supervenes on a physical system obeying QM. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
LizR wrote: On 15 May 2015 at 06:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm trying to understand what counterfactual correctness means in the physical thought experiments. You and me both. Yes. When you think about it, 'counterfactual' means that the antecedent is false. So Bruno's referring to the branching 'if A then B else C' construction of a program is not really a counterfactual at all, since to be a counterfactual A *must* be false. So the counterfactual construction is 'A then C', where A happens to be false. The role of this in consciousness escapes me too. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: Photons can re-combine? So they are unlike electrons or positrons, which like a magnet, repell like charges. Electrons can recombine too. Just think of the two-slit experiment with electron -- we see only one spot on the screen. It is all part of the meaning of a superposition in quantum mechanics. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 14:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. Yes. Between primitive-physical supervenience (as this what is at stake). I cannot allow that this move is legitimate. The MGA does not at any point refer to the basic ontology, nor does it at any point make a distinction between what is true for a matter ontology as opposed to a Platonic ontology. The argument works in exactly the same way for both, so if you dismiss a physical ontology on the basis of this argument, you must, in logic, also dismiss the arithmetical ontology. Comp is either false, or it is incoherent. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 10:25 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/13/2015 5:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. If not in any universe is meant in the Kripke sense, then something not in any universe is something that is logically impossible. But if not in any universe is meant in the MWI sense, then counterfactuals are only those outcomes consistent with QM but which don't happen. I think it is only the latter kind of counterfactual that need be considered in computations. No. The counterfactuals that Bruno refers to in comp seem to come from the If A the B else C construction of computer programming. This puts no restriction on the worlds containg B and C. That would seem to create conundrums. The counterfactual is A taking a value other than the one it actually did. A is one of the inputs to the prosthetic brain part, so in practice the doctor would only consider a finite number of values of A that could be realized by the sense organ or other brain parts that realize it. But if A can be anything from platonia it could be If this program X halts... or The smallest even integer not the sum of two primes. If you read around the typos in my post above, the counterfactual if...then...else... construction branches on the input A, which is not necessarily *anything* at all, just what the program encounters. It is B and C that can be anything that the programmer wants them to be. We are talking computing here, not physics. That is why the other worlds of MWI have nothing to do with counterfactual correctness. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 15 May 2015 at 14:19, spudboy100 via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: Photons can re-combine? So they are unlike electrons or positrons, which like a magnet, repell like charges. Based on your description, Liz, then somewhere in the universe, are glowing soft-white piles of Photonium? Ah! The creamy nougat center of every barred spiral galaxy! In the two-slit experiment, yes. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:15:59PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Not necessarily. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains. In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. bruno -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 01:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. You still miss the point. MGA just shows that physical supervenience makes them equivalent, and as they are not equivalent (from the computer science point of view which is relevant with comp), physical supervenience has to be abandoned if we keep comp. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, A relief, because this is what block the progress toward a solution of the mind-body problem since 1500 years. which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. Proof? The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, One evidence is enough. But there are none. You can try one, but from above, you will beg the question as it seems you take the existence of *primitive* physical universe for granted. it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. Do you mean that comp has been falsified? My work shows that to falsify a classical version of comp, you need to find a difference of prediction between QL, and the logics S4Grz1, X1*, Z1* or variants. Or do you mean that there is a flaw in MGA? Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 05:03, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the sequence are causally related. Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality' into a sort of dualist magic. Well, thanks Bruce! In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken. But, as I pointed out to Bruno, causal is a nomological, not logical, relation. He, of course, disagreed. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI. However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene on a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether it could be conscious. C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this particular thought experiment. Again! OK. Good. This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. Would that it were so. But so far as I can see Bruno's theory doesn't make any definite predictions that can be empirically tested. It explains a few things: quantum randomness=FPI and you can't know what program you are. But these things also have other possible explanations and they were already known. Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against comp. Consciousness is not testable, ever. But The UDA+MGA can be translated into arithmetic, by using mainly Gödel's technic, and this leads to the extraction of physics. just accepting a very classical account of knowledge (by Theaetetus), we can, and have, already derived the propositional physics. We fond quantum logic, up to now. So UDA predicts and explains the appearance of the MWI, for almost all universal machines, and AUDA makes it possible to verify this mathematically, and it predicts and explain the quantum logic, from just the Peano axioms of arithmetic. MGA would works against comp, if Gödel's and Everett's
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 07:03, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 8:03 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 4:26 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 5/11/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: [BM] Why? Have you proven that consciousness supervenes on a record? Have you proven that it does not? No, but I have a lot of evidence it supervenes on brain / *processes*/. Reducing that to /*states*/ is a further assumption. That is the pedant's reply. :-) A process reduces to a sequence of states -- you simply lower the substitution level (step rate) to whatever value is necessary to reproduce the process FAPP. No, a sequence of states is not the same as a process. In a process the states in the sequence are causally related. Need I quote Hume at you, Brent? That which we know as causality is nothing more than the constant conjunction of events. You make 'causality' into a sort of dualist magic. Whatever it is, it's what Bruno introduces to distinguish computation from a playback of computation. I find the idea of states of an extended body like the brain problematic. The speed of light is finite and the speed of neurons is slow; so to model the state as you propose means modeling it down microseconds or finer in order to capture the signaling relation between different neurons as their axons transmit pulses across several cm. This is way below anything that might be considered a 'thought' or a 'conscious momement', so the later have spacial extent and temporal overlap. To conceive them as separate discrete states is already to concede that consciousness is in platonia. This means that in case you would grasp what is a computation, in the Church-Turing sense, you would, like some computer scientist, disregard the necessity of MGA. With comp, the ontology is discrete. The continuum is recovered only in the mind of the numbers, like eventually the physical laws. But the reason why I distinguish a computation from a play-back, is that a play black computes only trivial projections, , or arbitrary computations, and the boolean graph computes quite complex and specific relations. This entails that consciousness is related to the (immaterial) number relations, and *all* their relative implementations, not just one specific, still less based on the dubious (never defined) primitive matter. Bruno Brent In playing back a *digitized* recording of states the causal relation is broken. But, as I pointed out to Bruno, causal is a nomological, not logical, relation. He, of course, disagreed. The assumption of the argument was that consciousness supervenes on the brain state. That's not the same as saying yes to the doctor. It's your added interpretation that consciousness supervenes on a brain state as opposed to a brain process that constitutes a computation. Bruno, who made the argument, I think is relying on the latter. Yes, that seems to be the case. The original claim of absurdity for the idea that consciousness could supervene on a recording has been replaced by the claim that the recording is not a computation of the required kind. This also begs the question of course -- where is it proved that that particular type of computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? It's just hypothesized as implicit in saying yes to the doctor; one would only say yes if it were a counterfactually correct AI. However, I think one can approach this in a different way. The overwhelming evidence from neuroscience, and all related experimentation, is that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain -- the goo in our skulls. Damage the goo, stimulate the goo, do anything to the goo, and our qualia or consciousness are altered. Alter our consciousness/thinking/processing and there are associated changes in the brain activity/states. (Pet scans and the like.) The MGA argues that the natural sequence of brain states and a recording of that sequence are not equivalent in that one is conscious and the other is not. It is concluded from this that consciousness does not supervene on the brain states/processes, which conclusion is contradicted by the overwhelming bulk of experimental evidence. I agree with you and Russell that it is not obvious that consciousness can't supervene on a playback of a recording. But, I don't think there's any empirical evidence regarding recordings of brains. In fact one of Russell's points is that the fact that such a recording would be so large and detailed is a reason not to trust intuitions about whether it could be conscious. C'mon, Brent. It's a thought experiment. The fact that we don't have experimental evidence of conscious recordings is irrelevant to this particular thought experiment. But I think it's jumping to a conclusion to say the supervenience on brain activity is overwhelming
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 06:24, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 09:26:02AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: This is science. When your theory is contradicted by overwhelming experimental evidence, it is conventionally taken as evidence that your theory has been falsified. The MGA puts Bruno's theory in this category: it has been falsified by the experimental results. I don't see that, because AFAICT, the MGA only works for a non-robust ontology. So the only valid conclusion to draw is that COMP + non-robustness has been falsified by the experimental results. Which is what I state in my paper. COMP assumes of course at least a robust reality (N, +, *). MGA is just used for people believing that the UD needed to be executed *physically* (i.e. they need a robust physical universe). MGA does not show that illogical, but it shows that physicalism and/or primitive matter invokes a god-of-the-gap. Bruno -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. So IIUC, in your terminology, 'primitive physicalism' just stands for the assumption that some definite 'laws of physics' are assumed to be more basic than anything else. If so, on that assumption, such laws would of necessity be the ultimate basis of any effective computation (i.e. in some physical approximation). The MGA then points out that in principle we can always devise ways to preserve the purely physical dispositions of any given approximate realisation (by fortuitous or deliberate one-time interventions) even in circumstances where any or all of its original computational characteristics have been grossly disrupted. MGA then argues that, if conscious experience fundamentally depends on preservation of such physical dispositions, we should thereby conclude that it should be unaffected in such scenarios. But the problem is that the interventions cannot be guaranteed to preserve the original 'computational' architecture (in particular, its counter-factual capabilities). Hence it would seem that, on the one hand, that if consciousness supervenes on particular physical dispositions of the brain it should be preserved, but on the other, if it depends on the particular *computational* characteristics of such dispositions, it could not be (since these can always be disrupted or simplified). It is the incompatibility of these two views that forces a choice between the principles of physical and computational supervenience. It is argued in opposition to the rejection of physical supervenience that it appears everywhere to be supported by observation. However, if two observed phenomena (e.g. brain function and conscious experience) are found to be in constant conjunction, an alternative to one or the other having a 'primary' role would be that they both emanate from some common underlying progenitor. Under computationalism, that role is subsumed by the entire spectrum of computations below the substitution level of either (i.e. the 'computational everything'). Is that more or less your view? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 12 May 2015, at 22:27, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2015 3:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 May 2015, at 02:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: The fact that projecting the film isn't a general purpose computer seems to me to be a red herring. It was never claimed that projecting the film of the brain substrate instantiated general consciousness -- the only claim ever made here is that this projection recreates the conscious moment that was originally filmed. That is all that is required. General purpose computing and counterfactual correctness are all beside the point. If the original conscious moment is recreated, then the film is a computation in any sense that is necessary to produce a conscious moment. This is sufficient to undermine the claim that consciousness does not supervene on the physical body. The matter of whether the physical is primitive or not is also a red herring. No such assumption is required in order to show that the MGA fails to prove its point. It is a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousnesss requires the physical activity and only the physical activity, then the recording is conscious. But anyone knowing what is a computation should understand that the recording does not compute more than a trivial sequence of projection, which is not similar to the computation of the boolean graph. I think there are five concepts of computation in play here: 1. An abstract deterministic computer (TM) or program running with some given external input. This program is assumed to have well defined behavior over a whole class of inputs, not just the one considered. OK. That is the standard concept (although the computation does not have to be deterministic, but that is a detail here). 2. A classical (deterministic) physical computer realizing (1) supra. This is what the doctor proposes to replace part or all of your brain. Yes, and this involves physics. But this is no more a computation in the sense of Church-Turing, which does not refer to physics at all. 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. 4. An execution of (1) with a classical (deterministic) computer that has all the branching points disabled so that it realizes (1) but is not counterfactually equivalent to (1) or (2). This computes one epsilon more than the movie. That is, not a lot. 5. A physical (quantum) computer realizing (1) supra, in it's classical limit. That is the solution we hope for (as it would make comp and QM ally and very plausible). Bruno takes (1) to define computation and takes the hypothesis that consciousness is realized by a certain kind of computation, an instance of (1). So he says that if you believe this you will say yes to the doctor who proposes (2) as a prosthesis. This substitution of a physical deterministic computer will preserve your consciousness. Then he proceeds to argue via the MGA that this implies your consciousness will not be affected by using (4) instead of (2) and further that (4) is equivalent to (3) and (3) is absurd. Having found a reductio, he wants to reject the assumption that your consciousness is realized by the physics of a deterministic computer as in (2). Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. this is not the reversal of physics claimed. The Democritan physicist (nothing but atoms and the void) will point out that (2) is not what the doctor can implement. ? What is possible is realizing a prosthetic computation by (5). And (5) cannot be truncated like (4); quantum mechanical systems can only be approximately classical and only when they are interacting with an environment. The classical deterministic computer (TM) is a platonic ideal which, as far as we know, cannot be realized. But then comp is false, as comp is a bet of surviving some digital truncation. Now that doesn't invalidate Bruno just developing his theory of the UD and showing that it realizes QM and the wholistic quasi-classical physical behavior of macroscopic systems in some limit. Right. In the original thesis, UDA and MGA is used only to explain the mind-body problem: the AUDA theory is explained as the main thing before them; and then used to solve the UD and MG Paradoxes. But I do think that they are strong argument, and easier than AUDA, that's why I like to argue on this. But I don't think he can just help himself to the conclusion that there MUST BE some measure or some way of looking at the UD in which this is so because the MGA has refuted Democritus. Only Democritus + (CT+YD). Bruno Brent
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. I think this is where you misunderstand me, Bruno. You are ascribing to me a particular metaphysical position to which I do not necessarily subscribe. As has been said a few times, the basic ontology of physics is whatever our best physical theories tell us it is. This is not generally primitive matter, whatever that is. In my criticism of the MGA, I am not committed to any particular ontology. I am simply pointing to the fact that the physical world exists independently of you or me, just as 2+2=4 exists independently of you or me. Our physical brains are part of this physical world, whether the basic ontology be quarks and electrons, quantum fields, or computations in Platonia. And our consciousness supervenes on these physical brains, however constituted -- the overwhelming weight of neurophysiological and other scientific evidence shows this. As published, the MGA shows that *any* physical supervenience entails that replacing the brain by a recording of its activity will recreate the original conscious state. This is claimed to be absurd, since a recording does not consist of a computation of the kind required by comp, which says that a recording cannot be conscious. So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. If you allow that the recording can be conscious, then the MGA is toothless -- is does not accomplish anything. But in allowing a recording to be conscious, you have contradicted what I take to be one of your basic tenets of comp. So comp is either false or it is incoherent. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 01:03, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 12:19:02PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Exactly. Regardless of truth, it is an interesting model that could well inform us about the truth. Provided it is tractable, of course, which so far it has tended not to be (John Clark's criticism). No, the UD does not need to be tractable, because the first person are not aware of the delays. John simply cannot understand this, because this needs step 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Sorry - you misunderstood me. In this case, I was referring to the consequences of the AUDA, ie the programme of extracting physics from COMP. But that is tractable. The current algorithm that I provided makes it untractable for complex propositions, but that is contingent (CP is NP- complete too). I would worry more if someone found a simple efficacious algorithm, as this would raise a doubt that such logic incarnate quantum computing. Bruno -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 07:45, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 15:03, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno does make a prediction that can be empirically tested. He predicts that consciousness does not supervene on physical brains but on computations. The MGA purports to show that the assumption of physical supervenience leads to a contradiction. But supervenience of consciousness on brains is an indisputable empirical result, so the MGA works against comp. I'm not sure that's what Bruno is trying to show, because he knows any TOE must explain all observations to date, at least in principle, so he would hardly be making a claim that is obviously refutable (or not for longer than it took him to notice that it was refutable, I hope). I think Bruno's argument isn't attempting to refute supervention of the mind on the brain, but primary materialism - but I'm sure he will correct me if I'm wrong. That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. It does, as usually supervenience in philosophy of mind means primitively-physical supervenience, and it should be clear that this is what is at stake. Step 0 and 1 makes clear that we do agree that comp, if true, is realized through some physical supervenience (at that stage, we are neutral on the primitiveness of that physical aspect). Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. The argument might then be that since the reconstruction of the brain states from the filmed recording is not a computation to be found in the dovetailer, it does not pass through my actual state, so is not part of what sustains my consciousness. Or something like that. yes. In the worst case of some consciousness superverning on the movie, it might be the consciousness of a mosquito (but frankly, I think that an amoeba is more conscious than such a movie). But I don't think that this move succeeds. Whether the physical universe and its laws come out of the dovetailer or not, I can set up the situation in which the sequence of brain states is reproduced from a recording *in the universe I inhabit*, whatever its ultimate origin. So talk about primitive materialism and computational dovetailer states are both equally irrelevant to the actual MGA. The thought experiment can be carried out, whatever substrate underlies the physical world. Are you claiming that the movie is not only conscious, but that it is the same consciousness (in different time) than the original boolean graph? The claim that the sequence of brain states reconstructed from the recording is not conscious contradicts the physical supervenience hypothesis, whether the 'physical brain' in this case is made of primitive matter (whatever that is) or extracted from the infinite computations of the dovetailer. And physical supervenience in the world we inhabit has overwhelming empirical support. For an Aristotelian who believes a priori in a primitive physical universe. But there is no evidence at all for a primitive physical supervenience, which is the only thing at stake. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 13:08, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. The observed co-variance of physical brain activity and conscious experience, assuming comp, would presumably be the net result of FPI over the entire spectrum of computation underlying both (or else comp is false). If this were indeed the case, I don't see why we would expect consciousness to survive the kind of disruption described in the MGA, despite the preservation of gross physical outcomes on a one-time basis. IOW, the device, after disruption and intervention, has merely degenerated to a one-time simulacrum, the consciousness of the original having depended on *computational* characteristics no longer capable of physical realisation. This doesn't strike me as being particularly counter-intuitive. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. I can get it, but by an indirect route. Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. But it is the only place where we need it. In robust ontologies, UDA1-7 is enough (to get the problem, not his solution!). For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then- else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of empirical satisfaction. I don't think so, unless you mean physical in some non aristotelian sense, in which case you are right, but that does not falsified comp, in that case. So we can conclude either that computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any other ontological property of primitive reality. Therefore we can excise the physicalness of ontology - anything capable of universal computation will do, such as arithmetic. But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it, dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and also that other issue I just raised about the recording player machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole thing falls apart. This is a bit unclear to me. You might decompose your thought in some steps, with what is assumed and what is derived, as I am lost here. Bruno -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 15:22, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The fact that coffee can change my mind, and that my mind can change my brain is part of evidence for comp, not for the primitive physical supervenience thesis, whose main weakness at the start is that it assumes physicalism, primary matter, which are metaphysical concept, and no real scientific evidences have ever been given to them. It is a strong assumption in theology. There are no evidence that there is a *primitive* physical universe, or that some laws of physics has to be assumed. So IIUC, in your terminology, 'primitive physicalism' just stands for the assumption that some definite 'laws of physics' are assumed to be more basic than anything else. If so, on that assumption, such laws would of necessity be the ultimate basis of any effective computation (i.e. in some physical approximation). The MGA then points out that in principle we can always devise ways to preserve the purely physical dispositions of any given approximate realisation (by fortuitous or deliberate one-time interventions) even in circumstances where any or all of its original computational characteristics have been grossly disrupted. MGA then argues that, if conscious experience fundamentally depends on preservation of such physical dispositions, we should thereby conclude that it should be unaffected in such scenarios. But the problem is that the interventions cannot be guaranteed to preserve the original 'computational' architecture (in particular, its counter-factual capabilities). Hence it would seem that, on the one hand, that if consciousness supervenes on particular physical dispositions of the brain it should be preserved, but on the other, if it depends on the particular *computational* characteristics of such dispositions, it could not be (since these can always be disrupted or simplified). It is the incompatibility of these two views that forces a choice between the principles of physical and computational supervenience. It is argued in opposition to the rejection of physical supervenience that it appears everywhere to be supported by observation. However, if two observed phenomena (e.g. brain function and conscious experience) are found to be in constant conjunction, an alternative to one or the other having a 'primary' role would be that they both emanate from some common underlying progenitor. Under computationalism, that role is subsumed by the entire spectrum of computations below the substitution level of either (i.e. the 'computational everything'). Is that more or less your view? I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 14:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 06:28, Russell Standish wrote: In which case their consciousness supervenes on their simulated physics. Simulated beings could be conscious with their simulated brains in arithmetic. This is still physical supervenience, yes, even when the brains are simulated in arithmetic, as to get the right measure, that simulation will have to have the right relative measure. of the sort Bruce was talking about. I think he was using primitive-physical supervenience. I think this is where you misunderstand me, Bruno. You are ascribing to me a particular metaphysical position to which I do not necessarily subscribe. Apology if I did. As has been said a few times, the basic ontology of physics is whatever our best physical theories tell us it is. This is not generally primitive matter, whatever that is. Primitive matter, is, by definition whatever physical you assume in the fundamental theory. For example the standard model (in physics) assumes some particles, having relation, through some other particles. But you can do physics without assuming the metaphysical assumpitions that those particles are real, and if that there are not fundamenal, they are made of physical things, that we still need to assume. I don't want to classify diverse degree of naivety in the concept of primitive matter, and we can saty at the level of the assumption needed. It also assumes a fundamental physical reality at the ground of all other realities (chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, etc.). In my criticism of the MGA, I am not committed to any particular ontology. I am simply pointing to the fact that the physical world exists independently of you or me, just as 2+2=4 exists independently of you or me. But this is ambiguous. If you use physical world in the aristotelian sense, I have no evidence that it is true. If you define the physical by the (stable) appearance to us, then you already slip on self- reference, and the Platonic idea that we might dream that physical reality. It is less demanding in assumption, given that those dreams exist in virtue of the minimal amount of math we need to talk about the physical reality. if not you beg the question. Our physical brains are part of this physical world, whether the basic ontology be quarks and electrons, quantum fields, or computations in Platonia. And our consciousness supervenes on these physical brains, however constituted -- the overwhelming weight of neurophysiological and other scientific evidence shows this. Yes. Comp starts from this constatation. But we just beg the qeustion of how the physical world, whatver it is, succeed in selecting this or that comp histoiry in arithmetic. Solution: we take them all. And do the math to see if that works, and the thing is that it works, even if modestly. As published, the MGA shows that *any* physical supervenience entails that replacing the brain by a recording of its activity will recreate the original conscious state. In real time, yes. This is claimed to be absurd, since a recording does not consist of a computation of the kind required by comp, Well, required by the guy who was hoping to survive. which says that a recording cannot be conscious. Then all real numbers are conscious, you go out completely from computer science. Your TOE is just the counting algorithm, and you can predict nothing. You dismiss that we say yes to the dorcor, because the artificial brain will do the right computation, which means by defifnition, be counterfactually correct. So you claim that there is a contradiction between physical supervenience and comp. Yes. Between primitive-physical supervenience (as this what is at stake). But the physical brain on which consciousness supervenes might well be itself a product of comp (and is, if you take the robust UD seriously). With the FPI, yes. So you have shown that, either your whole theory is internally inconsistent, or else you have to abandon the supervenience of consciousness on brain goo, in contradiction to the empirical evidence. Not with empirical evidence, just with the usual identity mind-brain, which is doubted since long, and is related to a difficult problem since the antic time. If you allow that the recording can be conscious, then the MGA is toothless -- is does not accomplish anything. But in allowing a recording to be conscious, you have contradicted what I take to be one of your basic tenets of comp. So comp is either false or it is incoherent. Lol Well tried :) I think that if you understand what is a computation, in the Turing- Church sense, you can't believe that the movie is a computation, except in ad hoc a posteriori sense in which everything can compute everything. But then I have to retract that
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015, at 18:31, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 17:14, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Well, if I were a mosquito, I wouldn't of course be participating in this conversation. So ideally I would want to be able to justify why the kind of observer capable of this class of interaction might be restricted to 'physical' environments of the sort we observe. I think this may be related to Bruno's idea that our being embedded in an observably 'physical' environment is more than merely geographical - i.e. that we are somehow the beneficiaries of some 'absolute' measure battle for the emergence of observably 'lawlike' phenomena. Quentin is right that the predominance is not absolute, but only relative to us. Now, what we can find below our same and sharable subst level has to obey the same law everywhere, as it is defined by the same sum on all computation everywhere. The quantum laws are a very good candidate for that universal physics, but the hamiltonian might be more variable; yet still obey conditional laws, etc. Computationalism offers a criterion to distinguish geography from physics, but it might not be the according to fact that the real physics is given by S4Grz1, Z1*, or X1* ([]p p, etc.). Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 10:33:42PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. For once I agree with Bruno. I think this is right and that counterfactuals are not, as Russell suggests, instantiated in the other worlds of the MWI in any useful sense. How does that work? Are you saying the counterfactual situations never appear anywhere in the Multiverse? What principle prevents their occurrance? By the meaning of the term: *counter*factual, i.e., contrary to the facts of the situation. As far as I know there is a philosophical theory of counterfactuals based on possible worlds. But these are generally though to be imaginary. And my feeling is that the 'other worlds' of the MWI or other Hubble volumes, etc, are just philosophical possible other worlds. We can say anything about them that we like because it can never be checked -- they are physically inaccessible in principle. But we are always going to have difficulty assigning a truth value to a counterfactual like: The present king of France has a beard. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 01:04:09PM +1200, LizR wrote: On 14 May 2015 at 12:32, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:26:17AM +1200, LizR wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) No - counterfactual just means not in this universe. If its not in any universe, then its not just counterfactual, but actually illogical, or impossible, or something. As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? Why is communication needed? Because otherwise there can be no physical influence, and - within the branch(es) in which the MGA is being carried out - the recorded system is identical to the non-recorded one. Without any physical communication / interference there is no difference from a single universe version. Well, ISTM, at least. The physical system refers to all parallel instantiations of an object ISTM. If I refer to a photon travelling through a ZM apparatus (to fix things - you know two half silvered mirrors, so the photons are split and travel over two spatially disinct paths before being recombined), we don't have two different physical systems in play. Its just the one physical system, even though it occupies two distinct universes. That is not the way the term 'worlds' or 'universes' is used in moder quantum physics. The term 'world' is reserved for (related) systems that have totally decohered, so that there is no possibility of recombination. Or, in the cosmological setting, two regions of space-time outside each other's Hubble volume. The small number of people who still think that every possible path in QM is a separate world form a fast-vanishing rump. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 5/13/2015 8:49 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. As they say on TV, This just in! /Why Boltzmann Brains Don't Fluctuate Into Existence From the De Sitter Vacuum// //Kimberly K. Boddy, Sean M. Carroll, Jason Pollack// //(Submitted on 11 May 2015)// // //Many modern cosmological scenarios feature large volumes of spacetime in a de Sitter vacuum phase. Such models are said to be faced with a Boltzmann Brain problem - the overwhelming majority of observers with fixed local conditions are random fluctuations in the de Sitter vacuum, rather than arising via thermodynamically sensible evolution from a low-entropy past. We argue that this worry can be straightforwardly avoided in the Many-Worlds (Everett) approach to quantum mechanics, as long as the underlying Hilbert space is infinite-dimensional. In that case, de Sitter settles into a truly stationary quantum vacuum state. While there would be a nonzero probability for observing Boltzmann-Brain-like fluctuations in such a state, observation refers to a specific kind of dynamical process that does not occur in the vacuum (which is, after all, time-independent). Observers are necessarily out-of-equilibrium physical systems, which are absent in the vacuum. Hence, the fact that projection operators corresponding to states with observers in them do not annihilate the vacuum does not imply that such observers actually come into existence. The Boltzmann Brain problem is therefore much less generic than has been supposed. / arXiv:1505.02780v1 [hep-th] Brent David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 18:20, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. Can you elaborate on this? ISTM that counterfactuals aren't, and indeed can't, be physically instantiated. (Isn't that what being counterfactual means?!) As I mentioned, a simple example is my decision between tea and coffee. In the MWI (or an infinite universe) there are separate branches (or locations) in which I have both - but in the branch where I had tea, I didn't have coffee, and vice versa. And because those branches can't communicate, the road not taken remains counterfactual and non-physical within each branch. Isn't that enough for the MGA to not need to worry about counterfactuals, even in the MWI/Level whatever multiverse? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:07:52PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 08:20, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 03:45:09PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. Before we get to the MGA, the dovetailer has been introduced, and this is supposed to emulate the generalized brain (even if the generalized brain is the whole galaxy or even the entire universe) infinitely often, and the laws of physics emerge from the statistics of all UD-computations passing through my actual state. I can get it, but by an indirect route. Basically, the MGA shows a contradiction between computationalism and physical supervenience. But only for non-robust ontologies. But it is the only place where we need it. In robust ontologies, UDA1-7 is enough (to get the problem, not his solution!). For a robust ontology, counterfactuals are physically instantiated, therefore the MGA is invalid. I don't see this. The if A then B else C can be realized in a newtonian universe, indeed in the game of life or c++. And the duplication of universe, one where A is realized, and B is realized + one in which A is not realized and C is realized, might NOT makes a non counterfactually correct version of that if-then-else suddenly counterfactually correct. It makes the non counterfactually correct version _physically_ different from the counterfactually correct version. So one cannot drive the MGA conclusion, which relies on the versions being physically indistinguishable. Counterfactuals and MWI (and robustnesse) are a priori independent notions. Sure - but the MGA (if valid) connects them. Now physical supervenience has been demonstrated to a high level of empirical satisfaction. I don't think so, unless you mean physical in some non aristotelian sense, in which case you are right, but that does not falsified comp, in that case. I mean in the usual sense of physical - atom, electrons and so on. So we can conclude either that computationalism is falsified, or that our ontology is robust. But if the ontology is robust, UDA 1-7 demonstrates the reversal - physics depends only on the properties of the universal machine, not on any other ontological property of primitive reality. Therefore we can excise the physicalness of ontology - anything capable of universal computation will do, such as arithmetic. But this chain of argument is not the usual one, so clearly it needs to be examined critically. Bruno has not given his imprimatur to it, dor example. Also, the MGA itself needs to shoring up, particularly with respect to the requirement of counterfactual correctness, and also that other issue I just raised about the recording player machinery changing the physical arrangement, perhaps by just enough to render physical supervenience toothless too. In which case the whole thing falls apart. This is a bit unclear to me. You might decompose your thought in some steps, with what is assumed and what is derived, as I am lost here. Did you mean the first paragraph of the second? The first paragraph is my argument, that I asking you to focus on in the first sentence of the second para. The latter portion of the second paragraph is just referring to all the niggling issues we've been discussing in this thread - the role of intuition and absurdity, whether counterfactual correctness is required for consciousness and the issue of whether a replayed recording really is physically identical in a non-robust setting (I suspect that it can be made to be, but the usual formulations such as the MGA or Maudlin's are not so clear cut, as the machinery required to implement the replaying is usually ignored). -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On 13 May 2015 at 17:14, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Well, if I were a mosquito, I wouldn't of course be participating in this conversation. So ideally I would want to be able to justify why the kind of observer capable of this class of interaction might be restricted to 'physical' environments of the sort we observe. I think this may be related to Bruno's idea that our being embedded in an observably 'physical' environment is more than merely geographical - i.e. that we are somehow the beneficiaries of some 'absolute' measure battle for the emergence of observably 'lawlike' phenomena. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
2015-05-13 17:49 GMT+02:00 David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com: On 13 May 2015 at 14:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think it is a good summary, yes. Thanks! Building on that then, would you say that bodies and brains (including of course our own) fall within the class of embedded features of the machine's generalised 'physical environment'? Their particular role being the relation between the 'knower' in platonia and the environment in general. At a 'low' level, the comp assumption is that the FPI results in a 'measure battle' yielding a range of observable transformations (or continuations) consistent with the Born probabilities (else comp is false). A physics consistent with QM, in other words. But the expectation is also that the knower itself maintains its capacity for physical manifestation in relation to the transformed environment, in each continuation, in order for the observations to occur. BTW, Bruce made the point that the expected measure of the class of such physically-consistent observations, against the background of UD*, must be very close to zero. ISTM that this isn't really the point (e.g. the expected measure of readable books in the Library of Babel must also be close to zero). What seems more relevant is the presumed lack of 'un-physical' observer -environment relations (i.e. not only 'why no white rabbits?' but 'why physics?'). From this perspective, the obvious difference between the Library of Babel and UD* is that the former must be 'observed' externally whereas the latter is conceived as yielding a view 'from within'. Hence what must be justified is why our particular species of internal observer - i.e. the kind capable of self-manifesting within consistently 'physical' environments, should predominate. Hi, why should they predominate ? They should only have higher probability relatively to you.. you're in that class of observers, that certainly constrains what you can observe... there are many more insects than humans, yet, you're human... and should not expect to be a mosquito the next second. We could be absolutely rare, only a geographical incident in the whole and yet if the whole is... such observers as ourselves observing consistent physical environment must be. Quentin David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:17:34PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2015, at 07:45, Bruce Kellett wrote: That might be the idea. It is difficult to get to this, though, since the notion of primary materialism doesn't really feature in the argument. It does, as usually supervenience in philosophy of mind means primitively-physical supervenience, and it should be clear that this is what is at stake. That's never been made clear in the usual discussion of supervenience - eg the Plato.stanford article. Even Maudlin's article doesn't refer to primitiveness. He is still talking about regular physical supervenience. -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What does the MGA accomplish?
On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 02:33:06PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3. A recording of (2) supra being played back. Nobody would call that a computation, except to evade comp's consequences. I do, because it is a computation, albeit a rather trivial one. It is not to evade comp's consequences, however, which I already accept from UDA1-7. I insist on the point, because the MGA is about driving an inconsistency between computational and physical supervenience, which requires care and rigour to demonstrate, not careless mislabelling. Whether (3) preserving consciousness is absurd or not (and I agree with Russell that's to much of a stretch of intuition to judge); There is no stretch of intuition, the MGA shows that you need to put magic in the primitive matter to make it playing a role in the consciousness of physical events. Where does the MGA show this? I don't believe you use the word magic in any of your papers on the MGA. Sorry, but this does seem a rhetorical comment. -- 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
