Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 13-juil.-07, à 18:42, David Nyman a écrit : On 13/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Perish the thought. But I was referring to 'first person primacy', not 'the One'. Maybe something like the 'primacy of the unnameable'? On the other hand Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen It doesn't seem to keep us quiet for long though :-) That was the young Wittgenstein talking. Of course Wittgenstein said too much here. He provokes the question: but what are you talking about? Well he will try to answer that his whole life, and get some points, imo, including, in his last book on certainty, that knowledge and belief could correspond to the same actual state of a brain/machine put in different context. Which is the basic of the Theaetetical notion of knowledge. Is this better? One may say neither that the one mind is prior and all dharmas posterior nor that all dharmas are prior and the one mind posterior If one derives all dharmas from the one mind, this is a vertical relationship. If the mind all at once contains all dharmas, this is a horizontal relationship. Neither vertical nor horizontal will do. All one can say is that the mind is all dharmas, and all dharmas are the mind. Therefore the relationship is neither vertical nor horizontal, neither the same nor different. It is obscure, subtle and profound in the extreme. Knowledge cannot know it, nor can words speak it. Herein lies the reason for its being called the realm of the inconceivable. Chih-i (or Zhiyi, 538-597), founder of Chinese T'ien-t'ai Buddhism, quoted by Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, Kuroda Institute, University of Hawai'i Press, 1999, p. 179 Those reminds me of the vertical and horizontal separation of the arithmetical person pov/hypostases: Indeed, incompleteness forces the machine to distinguish between p Bp Bpp BpDp BpDpp which are the vertical distinction, and then they are multiplied by two by the G/G* distinction. Except that p (truth or Sigma1-truth), with arithemtical comp) and Bpp (knowability) are interestingly enough not separated by the G/G* distinction. Note that only the modal nuance having p in their definition are unameable by the machine. p. Of course that vertical/horizontal nuance is a coincidence, with respect to the dharmas. At least at first sight I would say. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. Observed in what sense? Consciously, by a conscious being? Or decoherred into a quasi-classical state, as in QM? Reflexive would seem to imply it's observed by itself. No, it's not meant to imply that it's 'observed' by itself: rather just that it *is* itself, which is what I think you meant by 'existence simpliciter'. Another term might be instantiation. In qualifying existence by the term 'reflexive', my point was just that, when we originally entertain the idea of something 'existing' or not, we temporarily *abstract* a more tentative sense of 'existence' from any possible instantiation. The abstraction is then 'non-reflexive': it no longer refers to itself, but rather putatively to a referent from which it has (or could have) been abstracted. The danger is that such abstraction may be the very act that seems to rob it of something that is in fact the brute characteristic of instantiation. The argument from 'the One' is that its (and derivatively, any) self-awareness and consciousness derive ultimately from brute, or reflexive, self-access, and hence can't be understood independent of such instantiation. The 'deletion' of these aspects in the specification Torgny makes for the B-Universe can then be seen as precisely characteristic of the abstracted sense of 'existence' - i.e. the free-standing (i.e. non-reflexive) idea - but as making no sense in the context of reflexive instantiation. This doesn't in itself constitute any argument for materialism, because the 'instantiation' could be in terms of any 'possible' world from the plenitude of such, all of which, in this formulation, derive from the One. But my point is that, if a 'world' is arbitrarily specified as not possessing the brute 'reflexive' characteristic of instantiation, then this may just be because such a 'world' is in fact merely the kind of abstraction that is - by this very token - incapable of such instantiation, and hence not 'possible' either. The term I used to attempt to convey the brute characteristic of instantiation was 'reflexivity', in the sense of primitive self-reference or self-access. 'Observation' by contrast has the sense of a complex derivative of this brute characteristic in which various emergent entities are placed in certain kinds of relation *to each other*. Russell's sense of 'reflexive' vis-a-vis observation may indeed also be a useful one, but it's not in fact the point I was making. David Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 04:28:51PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. Observed in what sense? Consciously, by a conscious being? Or decoherred into a quasi-classical state, as in QM? Reflexive would seem to imply it's observed by itself. Brent Meeker The tree falling unobserved in the forest does not exist reflexively, but may exist in other senses of the word. It seems quite a useful concept - I may have called it anthropic existence elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to have an accepted name. Cheers --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. All other notion of existence are modal variant: like B[Ex(prime(x))], or ExB(prime(x)); I believe there is a prime number, there is a number such that I believe that that number is prime, etc. Of course, in the lobian frame, B refers itself to an arithmetical predicate (the Beweisbar of Godel 1931). I'm afraid that sometimes you are near the 1004 fallacy. That may well be, but unfortunately I tend only to discover specific examples of this by trial and error. But having done so, I try to hold on to the discovery. OK. But of course your intuition grew perhaps from non comp or non lobian origin. That's definitely the case. OK. (except that you are perhaps lobian, just not knowing it). (I see now what could be the comp lobian observer moments, and will say more in a special purpose post. I look forward to it. Thanks. I will do that in august, if you don't mind; it asks for some work. It will be related to the content of my next paper, where I currently think I will use the observer moment notion (and refer to the list). Roughly speaking, I think that we have to consider first person and third person notion of OM. Nick Bostrom original one is clearly a notion of 1-OM. I can show that with comp there is a natural notion of 3-OM, which is just the (true) Sigma1 sentence. They correspond to the accessible states of the Universal Dovetailer, or to the theorem of a Robinsonian machine or universal machine. A universal machine (or person) get Lobian when she knows (in a technically rather weak sense) that she is universal. This makes it possible (well, even necessary) for the machine to distinguish the 3-OM with all possible 1-OM notion, and this can accelerate the derivation of the physical laws from numbers/machines relations. The new and key point is the identification of 3-OM directly with Sigma1 sentences. Coming back from Siena, I know now that all my work on Church thesis is more original than I thought (meaning: I have to publish more before even logician grasp the whole thing ...). You have a hard row to plough! The difficulty is the interdisciplinary overlap of quantum physics, mathematical logic and, perhaps the harder part: philosophy or mind/theology. Is us = to the lobian machine? I just meant observers in general, using myself as the model. and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. But each point of view (hypostasis) defines its own mode of existence. Now Plotinus restricts the notion of existence for the ideas (here: the effective objects which provably exist in Platonia). That is why both God and Matter does not really exist in Plotinus theory. Of course God and Matter do exist, even for Plotinus, but it is a different mode of existence. I'm frustrated that I don't seem to be able to communicate what I mean here (I don't know if this is an example of 1004 or not). I meant that just because we can imagine something in a gods' eye way doesn't (for me) entail that it exists in any other way - what I called (but I'll desist!) 'reflexively' (i.e. with reference to itself, or just: for itself), which Brent was content to call existence simpliciter. This intuition of course just begins with knowing that *I* exist for myself, which implies that others exist for themselves, which ultimately implies that everything exists for itself - 'the One' being the ultimate expression of this. I don't mean to equate 'exists for itself' with consciousness, but to say that consciousness emerges as a complex aspect of such self-relation. I'm convinced both that you know what I mean by this, and also that it can be expressed in the Lobian discourse (though not by me). Perhaps. The problem here is that I should explain technical things just to help you to figure out the complexity of the point you single out. To translate this in the lobian discourse is less easy than you think. More on this in august. 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular process of
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I said in an earlier post that this amounted to a kind of solipsism of the One: IOW, the One would be justified in the view (if it had one!) that it was all that existed, and that everything was simply an aspect of itself. Yes, and this is where Aristotle and Plotinus differs the most (even more than Aristotle/Plato). Would the ONE have a pov, He/She/It would be solispsist. A sad thing for a God Sad indeed. Perhaps the One just has to differentiate to get some company. Anyway, the notion of the solipsism of the One essentially encapsulates the view I was trying to put forward from the inception of our dialogues on first person primacy. But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? David Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. All other notion of existence are modal variant: like B[Ex(prime(x))], or ExB(prime(x)); I believe there is a prime number, there is a number such that I believe that that number is prime, etc. Of course, in the lobian frame, B refers itself to an arithmetical predicate (the Beweisbar of Godel 1931). I'm afraid that sometimes you are near the 1004 fallacy. That may well be, but unfortunately I tend only to discover specific examples of this by trial and error. But having done so, I try to hold on to the discovery. OK. But of course your intuition grew perhaps from non comp or non lobian origin. That's definitely the case. OK. (except that you are perhaps lobian, just not knowing it). (I see now what could be the comp lobian observer moments, and will say more in a special purpose post. I look forward to it. Thanks. I will do that in august, if you don't mind; it asks for some work. It will be related to the content of my next paper, where I currently think I will use the observer moment notion (and refer to the list). Roughly speaking, I think that we have to consider first person and third person notion of OM. Nick Bostrom original one is clearly a notion of 1-OM. I can show that with comp there is a natural notion of 3-OM, which is just the (true) Sigma1 sentence. They correspond to the accessible states of the Universal Dovetailer, or to the theorem of a Robinsonian machine or universal machine. A universal machine (or person) get Lobian when she knows (in a technically rather weak sense) that she is universal. This makes it possible (well, even necessary) for the machine to distinguish the 3-OM with all possible 1-OM notion, and this can accelerate the derivation of the physical laws from numbers/machines relations. The new and key point is the identification of 3-OM directly with Sigma1 sentences. Coming back from Siena, I know now that all my work on Church thesis is more original than I thought (meaning: I have to publish more before even logician grasp the whole thing ...). You have a hard row to plough! The difficulty is the interdisciplinary overlap of quantum physics, mathematical logic and, perhaps the harder part: philosophy or mind/theology. Is us = to the lobian machine? I just meant observers in general, using myself as the model. and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. But each point of view (hypostasis) defines its own mode of existence. Now Plotinus restricts the notion of existence for the ideas (here: the effective objects which provably exist in Platonia). That is why both God and Matter does not really exist in Plotinus theory. Of course God and Matter do exist, even for Plotinus, but it is a different mode of existence. I'm frustrated that I don't seem to be able to communicate what I mean here (I don't know if this is an example of 1004 or not). I meant that just because we can imagine something in a gods' eye way doesn't (for me) entail that it exists in any other way - what I called (but I'll desist!) 'reflexively' (i.e. with reference to itself, or just: for itself), which Brent was content to call existence simpliciter. This intuition of course just begins with knowing that *I* exist for
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 13-juil.-07, à 17:02, David Nyman a écrit : But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Perish the thought. But I was referring to 'first person primacy', not 'the One'. Maybe something like the 'primacy of the unnameable'? On the other hand Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen It doesn't seem to keep us quiet for long though :-) David Le 13-juil.-07, à 17:02, David Nyman a écrit : But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. But isn't this just an elaboration that obscures the prior assumption that numbers exist? If numbers don't exist then Ex(prime(x)) is false, or requires a different interpretation of E. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. I'm afraid that sometimes you are near the 1004 fallacy. That may well be, but unfortunately I tend only to discover specific examples of this by trial and error. But having done so, I try to hold on to the discovery. But of course your intuition grew perhaps from non comp or non lobian origin. That's definitely the case. (I see now what could be the comp lobian observer moments, and will say more in a special purpose post. I look forward to it. Coming back from Siena, I know now that all my work on Church thesis is more original than I thought (meaning: I have to publish more before even logician grasp the whole thing ...). You have a hard row to plough! Is us = to the lobian machine? I just meant observers in general, using myself as the model. and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. But each point of view (hypostasis) defines its own mode of existence. Now Plotinus restricts the notion of existence for the ideas (here: the effective objects which provably exist in Platonia). That is why both God and Matter does not really exist in Plotinus theory. Of course God and Matter do exist, even for Plotinus, but it is a different mode of existence. I'm frustrated that I don't seem to be able to communicate what I mean here (I don't know if this is an example of 1004 or not). I meant that just because we can imagine something in a gods' eye way doesn't (for me) entail that it exists in any other way - what I called (but I'll desist!) 'reflexively' (i.e. with reference to itself, or just: for itself), which Brent was content to call existence simpliciter. This intuition of course just begins with knowing that *I* exist for myself, which implies that others exist for themselves, which ultimately implies that everything exists for itself - 'the One' being the ultimate expression of this. I don't mean to equate 'exists for itself' with consciousness, but to say that consciousness emerges as a complex aspect of such self-relation. I'm convinced both that you know what I mean by this, and also that it can be expressed in the Lobian discourse (though not by me). 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular process of self-reflexion. ? That was just another way of putting what I said above: IOW, that everything is a relativisation of the One, - i.e. the primary existent-for-itself. I see now that my '1004 fallacy' is just that when I'm not sure I've been understood, I try to say it another way. But this is confusing. I see the value of your sticking to your methodology, but then the problem for the generalist is that he has to work very hard to follow you. But that of course is my problem not yours. Self: because there is no other; ? reflexion: because there is no other relation. ? Another example of (over)precision perhaps. I sometimes think a lot of time could be saved if some of these dialogues took place in the same room! I just meant that, given that all existence-for-itself derives from relativisation of the One, the notion of 'other' itself becomes relative (i.e. everything is really just an aspect of the One: there is no 'other' in any absolute sense). Consequently, all relations are relations of the One with itself: i.e. self-relations. The reason I thought this might be important, originally, is that ISTM that it had a fundamental relevance to mind-body issues. I felt that the whole 'dualist' problem came from not seeing this. Dualism is clearly not relevant when everything is an aspect of the One, so that the relations which constitute both mind and matter are self-relations. I said in an earlier post that this amounted to a kind of solipsism of the One: IOW, the One would be justified in the view (if it had one!) that it was all that existed, and that everything was simply an aspect of itself. David Le 10-juil.-07, à 14:09, David Nyman a écrit : On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. Doesn't this strike you as perhaps consistent with what I've been saying about self-relation, or reflexive existence? I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 04:28:51PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. The tree falling unobserved in the forest does not exist reflexively, but may exist in other senses of the word. It seems quite a useful concept - I may have called it anthropic existence elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to have an accepted name. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 04:28:51PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. Observed in what sense? Consciously, by a conscious being? Or decoherred into a quasi-classical state, as in QM? Reflexive would seem to imply it's observed by itself. Brent Meeker The tree falling unobserved in the forest does not exist reflexively, but may exist in other senses of the word. It seems quite a useful concept - I may have called it anthropic existence elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to have an accepted name. Cheers --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
David Nyman skrev: On 11/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (quite contrary to the premise of the everything-list, but one that I'm glad to entertain). For what it's worth, I really don't see that this is necessarily contrary to the premise of this list. The proposition is that all POSSIBLE worlds exist, not that anything describable in words (or for that matter mathematically) 'exists'. My analysis is an attempt to place a constraint on what can be said to exist in any sense strong enough to have any discernible consequences, either for us, or for any putative denizens of such 'worlds'. So I would argue that non-reflexive worlds are not possible in any consequential sense of the term. What do you mean with a POSSIBLE world? One exemple of a possible world is that GoL-universe, of which there is a picture of on the Wikipedia page. One interesting thing about this particular GoL-universe is that it is finite, the time goes in a circle in that universe. That universe only consists of 14 situations. After the 14th situation follows the 1st situation again. This GoL-universe exists, but it is a non-reflexive world, I can not see anything reflexive in that universe. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 11/07/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One exemple of a possible world is that GoL-universe, of which there is a picture of on the Wikipedia page. One interesting thing about this particular GoL-universe is that it is finite, the time goes in a circle in that universe. That universe only consists of 14 situations. After the 14th situation follows the 1st situation again. This GoL-universe exists, but it is a non-reflexive world, I can not see anything reflexive in that universe. I don't understand why, despite everything I've said to the contrary, you still see GoL as non-reflexive. Perhaps you mean that no evolutionary stage of 'GoL-Universe' is in fact sufficiently complex to support conscious participants? But that in itself doesn't make GoL constitutively non-reflexive - i.e. lacking self-access - merely too simple in actual structure to manifest this in the form of conscious agents. I get really confused when you jump about between GoL and your original B-Universe story. I have no quarrel with GoL. It's the B-Universe that I suggested wasn't possible, because you *specified* it to be non-reflexive in just the sense I've discussed: i.e. that despite it having the same structure and behaviour as the A-Universe, it is supposed to lack all self-access. My point is just that any 'universe' described in such a comprehensively inaccessible way may just be a misconception that doesn't deserve to survive the cut of Occam's razor. We can't observe it, it can't observe itself: in what further sense is it 'possible'? My whole point in being so tediously explicit about 'reflexivity', as I said to Brent, was because I doubted that everyone shared the intuition that 'existence simpliciter', as he put it, given sufficient complexity of structure, just *entails* equivalent complexity of self-access: IOW what ultimately we term consciousness. You seem indeed not to share this intuition, and as a result, in various ways, you've either denied that you yourself are conscious, or postulated 'identical' universes which mysteriously lack this 'extra ingredient'. I don't believe such claims make much sense. David David Nyman skrev: On 11/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (quite contrary to the premise of the everything-list, but one that I'm glad to entertain). For what it's worth, I really don't see that this is necessarily contrary to the premise of this list. The proposition is that all POSSIBLE worlds exist, not that anything describable in words (or for that matter mathematically) 'exists'. My analysis is an attempt to place a constraint on what can be said to exist in any sense strong enough to have any discernible consequences, either for us, or for any putative denizens of such 'worlds'. So I would argue that non-reflexive worlds are not possible in any consequential sense of the term. What do you mean with a POSSIBLE world? One exemple of a possible world is that GoL-universe, of which there is a picture of on the Wikipedia page. One interesting thing about this particular GoL-universe is that it is finite, the time goes in a circle in that universe. That universe only consists of 14 situations. After the 14th situation follows the 1st situation again. This GoL-universe exists, but it is a non-reflexive world, I can not see anything reflexive in that universe. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. Doesn't this strike you as perhaps consistent with what I've been saying about self-relation, or reflexive existence? IOW, quanta - as they appear to *us* (how else?) - exist reflexively. Comp, like any 'TOE', is a gods' eye view, and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. We may nonetheless ask - with great care - what might the consequences be if our situation were - in some (tricky) sense - to look like this from a gods' eye view? But this is a (tricky, tricky) mode of enquiry, not a mode of existing. 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular process of self-reflexion. Self: because there is no other; reflexion: because there is no other relation. David PS - It occurs to me that 'tricky' - which just happens to be the way these things strike me - seems quite consonant with the sort of 'reality gambles' that you (and Fuchs) propose. Le 05-juil.-07, à 17:31, David Nyman a écrit : On 05/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: OK. I would insist that the comp project (extract physics from comp) is really just a comp obligation. This is what is supposed to be shown by the UDA (+ MOVIE-GRAPH). Are you OK with this. It *is* counterintuitive. DN: I believe so - it's what the reductio ad absurdum of the 'physical' computation in the 'grandma' post was meant to show. This was not so clear, but OK. My version of the 'comp obligation' would then run as follows. Essentially, if comp and number relations are held to be 'real in the sense that I am real', I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that I am real, unless you are talking of the third person I. Then you are as real as your (unknown) Godel-number. In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). then to use Plato's metaphor, it is numbers that represent the forms outside the cave. OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.) If that's so, then physics is represented by the shadows the observers see on the wall of the cave. This is what I mean by 'independent' existence in my current dialogue with Torgny: i.e the 'arithmetical realism' of numbers and their relations in the comp frame equates to their 'independence' or self-relativity. And the existence of 'arithmetical observers' then derives from subsequent processes of 'individuation' intrinsic to such fundamental self-relation. Actually, I find the equation of existence with self-relativity highly intuitive. OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point theorems). BM: Then, the interview of the universal machine is just a way to do the extraction of physics in a constructive way. It is really the subtleties of the incompleteness phenomena which makes this interview highly non trivial. DN: This is the technical part. But at this stage grandma has some feeling for how both classical and QM narratives should be what we expect to emerge from constructing physics in this way. I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA. BM: There is no direct (still less one-one) correlation between the mental and the physical, that is the physical supervenience thesis is incompatible with the comp hyp. [A quale of a pain] felt at time t in place x, is not a product of the physical activity of a machine, at time t in place x. Rather, it is the whole quale of [a pain felt at time t in place x] which is associated with an (immaterial and necessarily unknown) computational state, itself related to its normal consistent computational continuations. snip Comp makes the yes doctor a gamble, necessarily. That is: assuming the theory comp you have to understand that, by saying yes to the doctor, you are gambling on a level of substitution. At the same time you make a gamble on the theory comp itself. There is double gamble here. Now, the first gamble, IF DONE AT THE RIGHT COMP SUBSTITUTION LEVEL, is
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
David Nyman wrote: On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. Doesn't this strike you as perhaps consistent with what I've been saying about self-relation, or reflexive existence? IOW, quanta - as they appear to *us* (how else?) - exist reflexively. Comp, like any 'TOE', is a gods' eye view, and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. We may nonetheless ask - with great care - what might the consequences be if our situation were - in some (tricky) sense - to look like this from a gods' eye view? But this is a (tricky, tricky) mode of enquiry, not a mode of existing. 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular process of self-reflexion. Self: because there is no other; reflexion: because there is no other relation. David I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word reflexive. What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Do numbers exist reflexively? Do somethiings exist non-reflexively? What is self-reflexion? What's the operational definition of reflexive? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 10/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word reflexive. What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Do numbers exist reflexively? Do somethiings exist non-reflexively? What is self-reflexion? What's the operational definition of reflexive? Sorry, I'd hoped this might emerge more clearly from my dialogue with Bruno, but I'm happy to clarify further. The notion arises from the semantics of a particular 'theology', e.g. that of Plotinus' One. The One represents uniqueness and independency: broadly, that which is not subject to prior causation. This is 'existence' conceived as primary presence-to-itself; it is consequently 'reflexive' in the sense of turning in on itself. Here we are speaking of 'self' not of course in the sense of a 'person', but in terms of primary 'self-relation'. The 'many' are conceived as emerging from the One by a process of what might then be termed involution (borrowing from evolution). The One stands here as the sole fundamentally ontic category; all subsequent involution is epistemic. More poetically, but rather accurately, this is how the One 'gets to know itself'. In terms of these 'theological' premises, your questions might be answered as follows: 1) How to distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Anything whatsoever, if it is to exist in any sense other than the abstract, must emerge as a category by a process of reflexive involution from the One. Consequently all 'existents' could be said to 'exist reflexively'. Non-reflexive existence then equates to non-existence. One might then wonder: what is the point of the qualification 'reflexively'? The point is that it is an implicit qualification, and consequently we may inadvertently delete it - by abstraction - when we postulate what may 'exist', especially in the 'all possible worlds' context of this list. For example, ISTM that as soon as one explicitly conceives a 'B-Universe' - in contrast to Torgny's implicit assumption - as having emerged by reflexive involution of the One, it becomes very much harder to see how it could do so without 'getting to know itself' in the process. IOW, the 'stuff' that seemed merely a peculiar 'optional extra' in its implicitly non-reflexive (i.e. in a rather literal sense, abstracted) conceptual form, can be seen to integrate organically with the 'physical specification' through the epistemic self-relation of the One. 2) Do numbers exist reflexively? An interesting question. Bruno, I think, might say that they do, or at least that numbers and their relations can be used to mathematise Plotinus' reflexive schema. I would say that to accept any such mathematisation as a basis for our own existence, in some ineliminable sense they must be held to exist reflexively. An intuitionist answer, I guess, would be that they are abstractions of pre-mathematical emergent categories of the One. 3) Do somethings exist non-reflexively? No, a something gets to be a something solely in virtue of being a product of a process of reflexive involution of the One. 4) What is self-reflexion? Emphasis, I suppose. If reflexion is already self-relation, then self-reflexion is merely an emphatic form of the same notion. Redundant, perhaps. 5) What's the operational definition of reflexive? IOW what would one do to discover if something exists reflexively? I suppose in the end this is empiricism. If it kicks back, it's participating in the web of reflexive involution. If it never kicks back, it may be just because it isn't. So I would say that the B-Universe as conceived by Torgny isn't specified reflexively: i.e. its putative properties are characteristic of situations imagined in a form abstracted from reflexivity. For this reason I would claim that it could never kick back: i.e. have any consequences, make its presence felt, survive the cut of Occam's razor, etc. I could of course be wrong. Does this help at all? David David Nyman wrote: On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. Doesn't this strike you as perhaps consistent with what I've been saying about self-relation, or reflexive existence? IOW, quanta - as they appear to *us* (how else?) - exist reflexively. Comp, like any 'TOE', is a gods' eye view, and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. We may nonetheless ask - with great care - what might the consequences be if our situation were - in some (tricky) sense - to look like this from a gods' eye view? But this is a (tricky, tricky) mode of enquiry, not a mode of existing. 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
David Nyman wrote: On 10/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word reflexive. What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Do numbers exist reflexively? Do somethiings exist non-reflexively? What is self-reflexion? What's the operational definition of reflexive? Sorry, I'd hoped this might emerge more clearly from my dialogue with Bruno, but I'm happy to clarify further. The notion arises from the semantics of a particular 'theology', e.g. that of Plotinus' One. The One represents uniqueness and independency: broadly, that which is not subject to prior causation. This is 'existence' conceived as primary presence-to-itself; it is consequently 'reflexive' in the sense of turning in on itself. I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Here we are speaking of 'self' not of course in the sense of a 'person', but in terms of primary 'self-relation'. The 'many' are conceived as emerging from the One by a process of what might then be termed involution (borrowing from evolution). The One stands here as the sole fundamentally ontic category; all subsequent involution is epistemic. More poetically, but rather accurately, this is how the One 'gets to know itself'. So something exists and then? part of it knows or learns about other parts of it. Is that what you mean by epistemic? And this process of parts knowing about other parts follows some dynamical rules? What does know mean in this context? Does it mean contains a representation of or has some information about? In terms of these 'theological' premises, your questions might be answered as follows: 1) How to distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Anything whatsoever, if it is to exist in any sense other than the abstract, must emerge as a category by a process of reflexive involution from the One. Consequently all 'existents' could be said to 'exist reflexively'. Non-reflexive existence then equates to non-existence. One might then wonder: what is the point of the qualification 'reflexively'? The point is that it is an implicit qualification, and consequently we may inadvertently delete it - by abstraction - when we postulate what may 'exist', especially in the 'all possible worlds' context of this list. For example, ISTM that as soon as one explicitly conceives a 'B-Universe' - in contrast to Torgny's implicit assumption - as having emerged by reflexive involution of the One, it becomes very much harder to see how it could do so without 'getting to know itself' in the process. This process of reflexive involution is not at all clear. Can you give an example of something emerging by reflexive involution? IOW, the 'stuff' that seemed merely a peculiar 'optional extra' in its implicitly non-reflexive (i.e. in a rather literal sense, abstracted) conceptual form, can be seen to integrate organically with the 'physical specification' through the epistemic self-relation of the One. 2) Do numbers exist reflexively? An interesting question. Bruno, I think, might say that they do, or at least that numbers and their relations can be used to mathematise Plotinus' reflexive schema. I would say that to accept any such mathematisation as a basis for our own existence, in some ineliminable sense they must be held to exist reflexively. An intuitionist answer, I guess, would be that they are abstractions of pre-mathematical emergent categories of the One. 3) Do somethings exist non-reflexively? No, a something gets to be a something solely in virtue of being a product of a process of reflexive involution of the One. 4) What is self-reflexion? Emphasis, I suppose. If reflexion is already self-relation, then self-reflexion is merely an emphatic form of the same notion. Redundant, perhaps. 5) What's the operational definition of reflexive? IOW what would one do to discover if something exists reflexively? I suppose in the end this is empiricism. If it kicks back, it's participating in the web of reflexive involution. If it never kicks back, it may be just because it isn't. So I would say that the B-Universe as conceived by Torgny isn't specified reflexively: i.e. its putative properties are characteristic of situations imagined in a form abstracted from reflexivity. For this reason I would claim that it could never kick back: i.e. have any consequences, make its presence felt, survive the cut of Occam's razor, etc. I could of course be wrong. So in your conception there are things that exist, emerge from The One by some process, and things that don't exist, Torgny's universe that he defines by some specification. This seems close to Peter's position that existence is a brute property (quite contrary to the premise of the everything-list, but one that I'm
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 11/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Frankly, I'd be happy to concur. My account was to some extent a recapitulation of the intuitive process by which I reached a view of this entailment of 'existence'. So now (like the old story of the mathematical lecturer) I can say with relief: Yes, I was right - it WAS obvious all along! If this matches your own sense of it, that's obviously OK by me. My experience nonetheless is that it doesn't match everyone's, and that much confusion arises from this. So something exists and then? part of it knows or learns about other parts of it. Is that what you mean by epistemic? Ultimately, yes. The emergence of 'persons' and 'knowledge' I take to be a long way up a developmental process that renders the appearance of decomposing into structural or perceptual components subject to perspective (i.e. who's looking at what). You haven't been terribly much in sympathy with my previous expositions of this. But do recall that my approach has been to attempt to clarify (for myself at least) what the semantic implications of a particular 'theology' might be, not to promote a TOE (god forbid). And this process of parts knowing about other parts follows some dynamical rules? What does know mean in this context? Does it mean contains a representation of or has some information about? Something along those lines. My aim was not to explicate how knowing comes about in detail, or how knowledge might be represented (either task being of course quite beyond me) but to try to understand how mental and physical descriptions might be correlated in a way that made sense in terms of either account. The correlation would I guess ultimately take the form of 'dynamical rules' for the domain in question. I feel I have a better intuition about this now, but even after my best efforts to share this I wouldn't expect everyone to agree or even follow my line of reasoning (which may be just wrong). This process of reflexive involution is not at all clear. Can you give an example of something emerging by reflexive involution? I used the term 'involution' on the model of 'evolution'. Since the theology of the One proposes that all process is a 'turning in' of the One, evolution becomes involution. The relevance of this is that the 'turning in', reflexivity, or self-relation is, as it were, the epistemic access of the One to itself: an access that manifests as our 1-personal experience, and - the communal extrapolation of this - the 'physical' world. ISTM that this isn't very far from what Bruno is proposing with comp (unsurprisingly as he takes Plotinus as a point of departure), but I'm less sure (i.e. a lot more confused) about how mental and physical aspects correlate. My working assumption has been that they follow an essentially isomorphic trajectory, and that from this we could recover mental and physical narratives that were each justifiable in (something like) their own terms. But I'm quite open to the possibility that this is terminally naive. You didn't seem to find my previous attempts to express this very satisfactory. So in your conception there are things that exist, emerge from The One by some process, and things that don't exist, Torgny's universe that he defines by some specification. This seems close to Peter's position that existence is a brute property As a matter of fact, I'd be reasonably content to go along with this. I did feel that Peter's bare substrate was a fairly good approximation to the One, and his insistence on 'real in the sense that I am real' I feel is an implicit appeal to what I've termed reflexivity. Also, Peter would from time to time try to get Bruno to concede that AR entailed just this brute property, but the debate always seemed to get bogged down. My own view is that any arithmetical realism postulated to give rise to 'reality in the sense that I am real' has this implication from the outset. But I don't want to start that argument again. (quite contrary to the premise of the everything-list, but one that I'm glad to entertain). For what it's worth, I really don't see that this is necessarily contrary to the premise of this list. The proposition is that all POSSIBLE worlds exist, not that anything describable in words (or for that matter mathematically) 'exists'. My analysis is an attempt to place a constraint on what can be said to exist in any sense strong enough to have any discernible consequences, either for us, or for any putative denizens of such 'worlds'. So I would argue that non-reflexive worlds are not possible in any consequential sense of the term. David David Nyman wrote: On 10/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word reflexive. What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 06-juil.-07, à 19:24, David Nyman a écrit : On 06/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that I am real, unless you are talking of the third person I. Then you are as real as your (unknown) Godel-number. In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). What I meant was something looser, a tautology perhaps. That is, whatever we postulate as giving rise to our personal 'reality' must thereby be 'real' in just this sense: it 'underpins' that reality. I don't understand how you could go automatically from a postulate to something real. That can happens, but here the comp hyp puts non trivial restrictions: when that happens, we cannot be sure it happens. I recall your various debates with Peter on this issue, and whatever else was at issue, I just felt that at least implicitly this must be entailed by the 'realism' part of AR. AR is just the common idea that the elementary arithmetic taught in high school is not crackpot. OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.) You are more precise (and correct!) OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point theorems). My basic notion of self-relative existence equates I think to Plotinus' One as you describe it in the Sienna paper. I postulate it to stand for 'existence' independent of other causality. Note that (with comp) there is no need to postulate any form of primitive causality (beyond the material implication and the modus ponens deduction rule). All notion of causality, from the physical laws to the human responsibility, are captured by higher order logical modalities. I see the big One as 'self-differentiating' through spontaneous symmetry breaking, Again I think you have a right intuition, although that symmetry breaking is or should be a fourth hypostase phenomenon (not a zeroth-one). The One differentiates ? I can be ok with the image or analogy, but strictly speaking the One is static, even more static, in some sense, than the Second (the Divine Intellect (G*). The One is just above or beside time or space categories. as the basis for all subsequent categorisation whatsoever, except the original - and unique - ontic category of self-relative existence. I hope you make yourself precise enough because you enjoy to be made even more precise! There is no notion of self at the zero person point of view. Self appears with self-referential machines. Those belongs to the Nous, the Intellect, the second hypostase. (This could be seen as a detail ...) This entails that all such subsequent categorisation is in some fundamental sense epistemic: i.e. how the One 'gets to know' itself. Exact (assuming comp, etc.) So I agree with Plotinus that the One can't be said to 'know' anything without such differentiation. All right. But I would say that the differentiated One is already the Intellect. I can keep your nomenclature for a while. I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA. Well, I'm working on the technicalities. But the 'feeling' comes from what I've said above. If all categories of 'process' or 'structure' are epistemic - i.e. forms of self-relative 'coming to know' - Well the passage from a intellect self to a knower is the (subtle) passage from the intellect to the soul (from the second hypostase (or third person!) to the third hypostase (the unameable first person, the Brouwer-Post-Bergsonian builder of time). this entails that everything arises as an interpretation from a 'point of view'. You are quick but OK. So what is revealed in any given context and - at least as importantly - what is obscured, must then be characteristic of that specific point of view, in no sense 'absolute reality' (whatever that could mean). There is an absolute common part, even if they are appreciated differently according to the hypostasis/point-of-view. I would say. The point is just that physics appears as a sort of sum on your lobian ignorance. I think this is what I mean by 'obscured'. Hmmm The fact is that any sound universal machine which introspects itself/herself(?) enough will discover eventually that this self-ignorance is productive, creative in some sense. It can be considered as bright, white, flashing. It is big, and looking twice it is soon even much bigger ... and
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 08/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't understand how you could go automatically from a postulate to something real. That can happens, but here the comp hyp puts non trivial restrictions: when that happens, we cannot be sure it happens. Hmm Well, if you 'postulate' that something gives rise to something RITSIAR, then I guess you're postulating that it partakes in that reality to some ineliminable degree. Perhaps you'd rather not use the term. Sometimes in your dialogues with Peter you referred to the 'truth' of 1+1=2, rather than its 'reality'. But then again you call your scheme arithmetical realism, not just arithmetical truth. What precisely is at stake here? AR is just the common idea that the elementary arithmetic taught in high school is not crackpot. OK, but if it culminates in my being RITSIAR, isn't it just a little bit real in that sense? But I'm not sure I want to die on this battlefield! Note that (with comp) there is no need to postulate any form of primitive causality (beyond the material implication and the modus ponens deduction rule). All notion of causality, from the physical laws to the human responsibility, are captured by higher order logical modalities. Isn't this because you begin by arguing from necessity (i.e. arithmetical necessity)? I've often felt that this was the nub of Peter's difference with you, in that he was putting the contingentist position. And that position assumes some sort of self-caused, or given situation as primitive. Again I think you have a right intuition, although that symmetry breaking is or should be a fourth hypostase phenomenon (not a zeroth-one). In the sense that the primary existence of the One is non-differentiated, it could be said to be symmetrical. Thereafter, any differentiation breaks that symmetry, no? Actually, ISTM that the primary reflexive existence of the One, and its spontaneous breaking of symmetry, are equally 'primitive' or given. IOW neither admits of 'explanation', but together they drive all subsequent conceptualisation of 'one', 'many', and their relations. ISTM that AR approaches such issues from the direction of the 'necessary truth' of arithmetical reasoning. The One differentiates ? I can be ok with the image or analogy, but strictly speaking the One is static, even more static, in some sense, than the Second (the Divine Intellect (G*). The One is just above or beside time or space categories. I must be more precise. AFAICS, the dynamic notion of differentiation can't be justified until the reflexive emergence of the 1-person. I've modified my position on Torgny's game in my last reply to him because of this. So my reference to 'differentiation' above is a structural or static sense of the term. as the basis for all subsequent categorisation whatsoever, except the original - and unique - ontic category of self-relative existence. I hope you make yourself precise enough because you enjoy to be made even more precise! There is no notion of self at the zero person point of view. Self appears with self-referential machines. Those belongs to the Nous, the Intellect, the second hypostase. (This could be seen as a detail ...) Here I don't mean *a self* in the sense of a person, but 'self-' in the sense of reflexive. I'm stressing independent 'self-relative' or reflexive existence, especially in my points to Torgny, as distinct from 'dependent' existence relative to 'something else'. I, or my chair, exist relative to the One: our RITSIAR depends on the self-differentiation of One into many. But the One exists reflexively, or independently, relative only to itself. Actually, this is the main point I've been trying to make in various ways since I first posted to the list. It doesn't equate to an Aristotelian notion of the 'material'; rather it tries to avoid the many confusions that arise from *not* understanding 'existence' - in any sense other than the metaphorical - as ultimately a reflexive notion. All right. But I would say that the differentiated One is already the Intellect. I can keep your nomenclature for a while. It may indeed be the Intellect, in the sense of a superposition of all knowledge. But it takes ignorance to crystallise out all the little 'knowers' and their tiny scraps of 'knowledge'. To be all knowledge is not yet to be a knower. Well the passage from a intellect self to a knower is the (subtle) passage from the intellect to the soul (from the second hypostase (or third person!) to the third hypostase (the unameable first person, the Brouwer-Post-Bergsonian builder of time). Yes indeed. And I'm interested to know if there is any move in the comp frame that *necessitates* the 'builder' of time, or whether this must simply be assumed in the face of its manifest contingency in our own case. ISTM - and this is what I've conceded to Torgny - that the soul or 1-person is characterised precisely by such temporal discrimination,
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). AFAICS he appears to agree with your view that QM amounts to what can be recovered from some maximal 1-person plural agreement. His Bayesian 'gambling' approach with respect to maximally rational agents also seems to correlate with the Lobian interviews. The UD I guess is then a way to model an 'underlying reality', in this case computationally, from which shareable information extracted by Lobian 'interventions' can be empirically assessed. It's interesting that on my initial skimming, he doesn't appear to be a 'naively realistic' Many-Worlder, or Everettic (I like the tic :) - as in Tourettic?) David Le 05-juil.-07, à 17:31, David Nyman a écrit : On 05/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: OK. I would insist that the comp project (extract physics from comp) is really just a comp obligation. This is what is supposed to be shown by the UDA (+ MOVIE-GRAPH). Are you OK with this. It *is* counterintuitive. DN: I believe so - it's what the reductio ad absurdum of the 'physical' computation in the 'grandma' post was meant to show. This was not so clear, but OK. My version of the 'comp obligation' would then run as follows. Essentially, if comp and number relations are held to be 'real in the sense that I am real', I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that I am real, unless you are talking of the third person I. Then you are as real as your (unknown) Godel-number. In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). then to use Plato's metaphor, it is numbers that represent the forms outside the cave. OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.) If that's so, then physics is represented by the shadows the observers see on the wall of the cave. This is what I mean by 'independent' existence in my current dialogue with Torgny: i.e the 'arithmetical realism' of numbers and their relations in the comp frame equates to their 'independence' or self-relativity. And the existence of 'arithmetical observers' then derives from subsequent processes of 'individuation' intrinsic to such fundamental self-relation. Actually, I find the equation of existence with self-relativity highly intuitive. OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point theorems). BM: Then, the interview of the universal machine is just a way to do the extraction of physics in a constructive way. It is really the subtleties of the incompleteness phenomena which makes this interview highly non trivial. DN: This is the technical part. But at this stage grandma has some feeling for how both classical and QM narratives should be what we expect to emerge from constructing physics in this way. I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA. BM: There is no direct (still less one-one) correlation between the mental and the physical, that is the physical supervenience thesis is incompatible with the comp hyp. [A quale of a pain] felt at time t in place x, is not a product of the physical activity of a machine, at time t in place x. Rather, it is the whole quale of [a pain felt at time t in place x] which is associated with an (immaterial and necessarily unknown) computational state, itself related to its normal consistent computational continuations. snip Comp makes the yes doctor a gamble, necessarily. That is: assuming the theory comp you have to understand that, by saying yes to the doctor, you are gambling on a level of substitution. At the same time you make a gamble on the theory comp itself. There is double gamble here. Now, the first gamble, IF DONE AT THE RIGHT COMP SUBSTITUTION LEVEL, is comp-equivalent with the natural gamble everybody do when going to sleep, or just when waiting a nanosecond. In some sense nature do that gamble in our place all the time ... But this is somethjng we cannot know, still less assert in any scientific way, and that is why I insist so much on
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 05-juil.-07, à 17:31, David Nyman a écrit : On 05/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: OK. I would insist that the comp project (extract physics from comp) is really just a comp obligation. This is what is supposed to be shown by the UDA (+ MOVIE-GRAPH). Are you OK with this. It *is* counterintuitive. DN: I believe so - it's what the reductio ad absurdum of the 'physical' computation in the 'grandma' post was meant to show. This was not so clear, but OK. My version of the 'comp obligation' would then run as follows. Essentially, if comp and number relations are held to be 'real in the sense that I am real', I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that I am real, unless you are talking of the third person I. Then you are as real as your (unknown) Godel-number. In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). then to use Plato's metaphor, it is numbers that represent the forms outside the cave. OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.) If that's so, then physics is represented by the shadows the observers see on the wall of the cave. This is what I mean by 'independent' existence in my current dialogue with Torgny: i.e the 'arithmetical realism' of numbers and their relations in the comp frame equates to their 'independence' or self-relativity. And the existence of 'arithmetical observers' then derives from subsequent processes of 'individuation' intrinsic to such fundamental self-relation. Actually, I find the equation of existence with self-relativity highly intuitive. OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point theorems). BM: Then, the interview of the universal machine is just a way to do the extraction of physics in a constructive way. It is really the subtleties of the incompleteness phenomena which makes this interview highly non trivial. DN: This is the technical part. But at this stage grandma has some feeling for how both classical and QM narratives should be what we expect to emerge from constructing physics in this way. I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA. BM: There is no direct (still less one-one) correlation between the mental and the physical, that is the physical supervenience thesis is incompatible with the comp hyp. [A quale of a pain] felt at time t in place x, is not a product of the physical activity of a machine, at time t in place x. Rather, it is the whole quale of [a pain felt at time t in place x] which is associated with an (immaterial and necessarily unknown) computational state, itself related to its normal consistent computational continuations. snip Comp makes the yes doctor a gamble, necessarily. That is: assuming the theory comp you have to understand that, by saying yes to the doctor, you are gambling on a level of substitution. At the same time you make a gamble on the theory comp itself. There is double gamble here. Now, the first gamble, IF DONE AT THE RIGHT COMP SUBSTITUTION LEVEL, is comp-equivalent with the natural gamble everybody do when going to sleep, or just when waiting a nanosecond. In some sense nature do that gamble in our place all the time ... But this is somethjng we cannot know, still less assert in any scientific way, and that is why I insist so much on the theological aspect of comp. This is important in practice. It really justify that the truth of the yes doctor entails the absolute fundamental right to say NO to the doctor. The doctor has to admit he is gambling on a substitution level. If comp is true we cannot be sure on the choice of the subst. level. DN: ISTM that a consequence of the above is that the issue of 'substitution level' can in principle be 'gambled' on by cloning, or by evolution (because presumably it has been, even though we can't say how). But by engineering or design??? Would there ever be any justification, in your view, for taking a gamble on being uploaded to an AI program - and if so, on the basis of what theory? Well, if you are willing to believe in neurophilosophy, you can bet on some high level description. If you bet on Hammerof's theory, you have to duplicate the qunatum state of the brain (and this is of courese not possible). I don't think we are concerned with those practical matter. The point is just that physics appears as a sort of sum on your
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 06/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that I am real, unless you are talking of the third person I. Then you are as real as your (unknown) Godel-number. In general, when people use the word I they refer to their first person, or to first person plural feature of their physical body. It is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could be right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs). What I meant was something looser, a tautology perhaps. That is, whatever we postulate as giving rise to our personal 'reality' must thereby be 'real' in just this sense: it 'underpins' that reality. I recall your various debates with Peter on this issue, and whatever else was at issue, I just felt that at least implicitly this must be entailed by the 'realism' part of AR. OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.) You are more precise (and correct!) OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point theorems). My basic notion of self-relative existence equates I think to Plotinus' One as you describe it in the Sienna paper. I postulate it to stand for 'existence' independent of other causality. I see the big One as 'self-differentiating' through spontaneous symmetry breaking, as the basis for all subsequent categorisation whatsoever, except the original - and unique - ontic category of self-relative existence. This entails that all such subsequent categorisation is in some fundamental sense epistemic: i.e. how the One 'gets to know' itself. So I agree with Plotinus that the One can't be said to 'know' anything without such differentiation. I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA. Well, I'm working on the technicalities. But the 'feeling' comes from what I've said above. If all categories of 'process' or 'structure' are epistemic - i.e. forms of self-relative 'coming to know' - this entails that everything arises as an interpretation from a 'point of view'. So what is revealed in any given context and - at least as importantly - what is obscured, must then be characteristic of that specific point of view, in no sense 'absolute reality' (whatever that could mean). The point is just that physics appears as a sort of sum on your lobian ignorance. I think this is what I mean by 'obscured'. As I said this is a point where I would like to disagree with the lobian machine. The fact is that even the lobian machine warns us on the possibility of zombie. Certainly the current artificial cops on the road are zombie. Tomorrow we will be able to build artificial skin for androids capable of making us believe they are normal humans citizens, ... We should distinguish local zombie which are capable to fail you during some finite time, and theoretical global zombie which are capable to fail you, in principle, for ever (like Torgny try to make us believe he belongs too: nobody can prove him wrong). You're right, we must distinguish zombies. The kind I have in mind are the kind that Torgny proposes, where 'everything is the same' as for a human, except that 'there's nothing it is like' to be such a person. My key point is that this must become incoherent in the face of self-relativity. My reasoning is that a claim for the 'existence' of something like Torgny's B-Universe is implicitly a claim for self-relative existence: i.e. independent of other causality, like the One. When Torgny proposed the Game of Life as an example of 'another universe', I pointed out that GoL clearly doesn't possess independent existence: it's just a part of the A-Universe. If one is to postulate a universe suitable for the thought experiment, one must in effect propose 'another One' - i.e. an independently self-relative 'B-Universe'. It follows that, given the other assumptions of 'sameness', conversations with machines in such a B-Universe must then proceed exactly as they do in the A-Universe, because they depend on self-relation in the same ways. Now, it may seem that - beyond all relativity - the question still remains of the 'absolute' quality of 'what it's like' to be 'One' in the context of such self-individuation. I leave it for you to judge whether - if a machine can report just as we do on what it's like to be itself, with exactly the same self-relative justification - it can then remain coherent to claim that 'it's not like anything' to be that machine. Before a long time (despite Kurzweyl) we just can do it, even at a high level. A brain is *very* complex, for any theory. In the future people will just bet on the available theory through some Pascal wag.
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
David Nyman skrev: You're right, we must distinguish zombies. The kind I have in mind are the kind that Torgny proposes, where 'everything is the same' as for a human, except that 'there's nothing it is like' to be such a person. My key point is that this must become incoherent in the face of self-relativity. My reasoning is that a claim for the 'existence' of something like Torgny's B-Universe is implicitly a claim for self-relative existence: i.e. independent of other causality, like the One. When Torgny proposed the Game of Life as an example of 'another universe', I pointed out that GoL clearly doesn't possess independent existence: it's just a part of the A-Universe. It is intresting to study the GoL-universe we can see on the Wikipedia page. What will happen if we stop the program that shows this GoL-universe? Will the GoL-universe stop to exist then? No, the GoL-universe will not stop, it will continue for ever. The rules for this GoL-universe makes it possible to compute all future situations. It is this that is important. This GoL-universe is not dependent of the A-Universe. What we see when we look at the Wikipedia page is just a picture of a part of this GoL-universe. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 06/07/07, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, the GoL-universe will not stop, it will continue for ever. The rules for this GoL-universe makes it possible to compute all future situations. It is this that is important. This GoL-universe is not dependent of the A-Universe. What we see when we look at the Wikipedia page is just a picture of a part of this GoL-universe. Torgny, I'm really confused now. In your original post, you postulated: Imagine that we have a second Universe, that looks exactly the same as the materialistic parts of our Universe. We may call this second Universe B-Universe. (Our Universe is A-Universe.) This B-Universe looks exactly the same as A-Universe. Where there is a hydrogen atom in A-Universe, there will also be a hydrogen atom in B-Universe, and everywhere that there is an oxygen atom in A-Universe, there will be an oxygen atom i B-universe. The only difference between A-Universe and B-Universe is that B-Universe is totally free from consciousness, feelings, minds, souls, and all that kind of stuff. The only things that exist in B-Universe are atoms reacting with eachother. All objects in B-Universe behave in exactly the same way as the objects in A-Universe. Now, surely you're not claiming that GoL is fully equivalent to your specification for the B-Universe? 'GoL' may exist in the plenitude, but it doesn't look exactly the same as the A-Universe. And if it should turn out to be capable of evolving to this stage, it will by then have acquired the full characteristics of self-relativity, just like the A-Universe. This list is devoted to the idea that all possible universes exist. There is a trap contained in this proposition. You, I think, read this as any describable state of affairs, but what is describable may not be possible, and what is not possible cannot exist. GoL is in fact possible in this sense, as you haven't postulated any self-contradictory properties for it. But B-Universe? Sure, you can describe a 'universe' that looks exactly the same but doesn't have all that kind of stuff. But this comes from imagining all that kind of stuff as a sort of optional extra that you can decide not to pay for but still retain a 'possible' universe. But the error is that there is no such stuff to dispense with: all the characteristics of the A-Universe, whether 'mental' or 'physical', arise necessarily from self-relativity (i.e. independent existence). The 'split personality' of the B-Universe is therefore self-contradictory. As such, it can't exist self-relatively, and consequently exists only relative to the A-Universe, in the form of a misconception. David David Nyman skrev: You're right, we must distinguish zombies. The kind I have in mind are the kind that Torgny proposes, where 'everything is the same' as for a human, except that 'there's nothing it is like' to be such a person. My key point is that this must become incoherent in the face of self-relativity. My reasoning is that a claim for the 'existence' of something like Torgny's B-Universe is implicitly a claim for self-relative existence: i.e. independent of other causality, like the One. When Torgny proposed the Game of Life as an example of 'another universe', I pointed out that GoL clearly doesn't possess independent existence: it's just a part of the A-Universe. It is intresting to study the GoL-universe we can see on the Wikipedia page. What will happen if we stop the program that shows this GoL-universe? Will the GoL-universe stop to exist then? No, the GoL-universe will not stop, it will continue for ever. The rules for this GoL-universe makes it possible to compute all future situations. It is this that is important. This GoL-universe is not dependent of the A-Universe. What we see when we look at the Wikipedia page is just a picture of a part of this GoL-universe. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 05/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: OK. I would insist that the comp project (extract physics from comp) is really just a comp obligation. This is what is supposed to be shown by the UDA (+ MOVIE-GRAPH). Are you OK with this. It *is* counterintuitive. DN: I believe so - it's what the reductio ad absurdum of the 'physical' computation in the 'grandma' post was meant to show. My version of the 'comp obligation' would then run as follows. Essentially, if comp and number relations are held to be 'real in the sense that I am real', then to use Plato's metaphor, it is numbers that represent the forms outside the cave. If that's so, then physics is represented by the shadows the observers see on the wall of the cave. This is what I mean by 'independent' existence in my current dialogue with Torgny: i.e the 'arithmetical realism' of numbers and their relations in the comp frame equates to their 'independence' or self-relativity. And the existence of 'arithmetical observers' then derives from subsequent processes of 'individuation' intrinsic to such fundamental self-relation. Actually, I find the equation of existence with self-relativity highly intuitive. BM: Then, the interview of the universal machine is just a way to do the extraction of physics in a constructive way. It is really the subtleties of the incompleteness phenomena which makes this interview highly non trivial. DN: This is the technical part. But at this stage grandma has some feeling for how both classical and QM narratives should be what we expect to emerge from constructing physics in this way. BM: There is no direct (still less one-one) correlation between the mental and the physical, that is the physical supervenience thesis is incompatible with the comp hyp. [A quale of a pain] felt at time t in place x, is not a product of the physical activity of a machine, at time t in place x. Rather, it is the whole quale of [a pain felt at time t in place x] which is associated with an (immaterial and necessarily unknown) computational state, itself related to its normal consistent computational continuations. snip Comp makes the yes doctor a gamble, necessarily. That is: assuming the theory comp you have to understand that, by saying yes to the doctor, you are gambling on a level of substitution. At the same time you make a gamble on the theory comp itself. There is double gamble here. Now, the first gamble, IF DONE AT THE RIGHT COMP SUBSTITUTION LEVEL, is comp-equivalent with the natural gamble everybody do when going to sleep, or just when waiting a nanosecond. In some sense nature do that gamble in our place all the time ... But this is somethjng we cannot know, still less assert in any scientific way, and that is why I insist so much on the theological aspect of comp. This is important in practice. It really justify that the truth of the yes doctor entails the absolute fundamental right to say NO to the doctor. The doctor has to admit he is gambling on a substitution level. If comp is true we cannot be sure on the choice of the subst. level. DN: ISTM that a consequence of the above is that the issue of 'substitution level' can in principle be 'gambled' on by cloning, or by evolution (because presumably it has been, even though we can't say how). But by engineering or design??? Would there ever be any justification, in your view, for taking a gamble on being uploaded to an AI program - and if so, on the basis of what theory? Essentially, this is what I've been trying to get at. That is: assuming comp, HOW would we go about making a 'sound bet', founded on a specific AI theory, that some AI program instantiated by a 'physical' computer, will equate to the continuity of our own observation? The second question I have is summarised in my recent posts about 'sense and 'action'. Essentially, I've been trying to postulate that the correlation of consciousness and physics is such that the relations between both sets of phenomena are a necessary entailment, not an additional assumption. ISTM that this is essential to avoid all the nonsense about zombies. And not only this, but to show that the reciprocity between experience - e.g. suffering - and behaviour (indeed the whole entailment of 'intentionality') is a necessary consequence of fundamental self-relation (arithmetical relations, in the comp frame). Now, my attempt to do this has been to postulate that 'sense' and 'action' are simply observer-related aspects of a non-decomposable fundamental self-relation, which in the comp frame would equate to a set of number-relations. But ISTM that for this to be true, the observer and physical narratives would somehow need to follow an 'identical' or isomorphic trajectory for their invariant relation to emerge in the way that it seems to. Do you think that this idea has any specific sense or relevance in the comp frame? BM: Does this help? I assert some propositions without justifying them, because the
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 02-juil.-07, à 18:12, David Nyman a écrit : After very kindly concurring with bits of my recent posts, Bruno nonetheless quite reasonably questioned whether I followed his way of proceeding. Having read the UDA carefully, I would say that in a 'grandmotherly' way I do, although not remotely at his technical level. Concerning the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) a subtle prerequisite is Church Thesis, if only to understand the relation with arithmetical realism and also to understand the term Universal in the UD. Coming back from Siena I am not sure Church thesis is well understood today. BTW I have discovered that the book edited by Martin Davis The undecidable has been republished in 2004 by Dover. This is really the comp basic bible. It contains the readable original paper by Godel, Church, Kleene, Rosser, and, above all the incredible anticipation by Post. Actually Post did even anticipate my thesis, that is the platonistic reversal physics/number-computer-science. To be sure he adds a footnote (footnote 118) saying he changed his mind ... I think I will write a paper just on that footnote But I had been doing thought experiments of a somewhat similar nature literally for decades, based on questions like why am I me and not you? or how do I know that me now is the same as me 5 minutes ago? or is the person who gets out of the transporter the same person as the one who began the journey? For some time, faced largely with incomprehension or disinterest, and seeing hardly anything remotely like this referred to in print, I despaired of finding others who believed these questions were anything but irrelevant or crazy. But gradually these topics seemed to emerge into discussion from a variety of directions, and now I've found a community of similarly crazy people on the Internet. Actually those typical comp or mechanist thought experiences (reasonings) exist since humans use tools. Reference are in the biblios of conscience et mécanisme. Many Sc. fiction book go through such experience, and the book Mind's I (ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett) contains relevant thought (but miss my favorite sc. fi. book, the SIMULACRON III by Daniel Galouye). Mind'I eyes missed the first person comp indeterminacy and the subsequent reversal. The conclusion I had come to is broadly summarised in my recent posts. It seemed to me that the 'transporter' questions could only be resolved if I thought in terms of my being incorporated in some unique or 'global' pre-differentiated manner, which nonetheless multifariously self-localised by differentiation of structures that embodied distinct 'histories'. I would say that, once we accept comp, the only problem which remains is the white rabbit problem, that is: the problem of isolating from computer science the measure on the relative computational histories capable of justifying the apparent normality of the observable laws. This seemed somehow to entail the emergence of finitude from the not-finite, which seemed weirdly right. ? (comp presupposes the natural numbers. Indeed they constitute the absolutely unsolvable mysteries). Anyway, it would be the histories that differed, not the 'self'. This could depend on choice of vocabulary. If you define the self by what is consistent, or better sound, and invariant in all comp histories, you will get the arithmetical hypostases. The histories would break the symmetry of the self into differentiated sub-selves that would be 'I' with respect to their own private environments. Hopefully. That is what is under the course of verification. Again, accepting the positive integers makes such symmetry breaking easy to understand. The real mystery (partially solved though) is in the understanding of the physical initial apparent symmetry. These environments, being participatory, could only be shared with other such sub-selves by signalling', and the sum total of shareable signals, re-embodied, would be the 'objective' or 'outside' physical description of the situation. Hopefully again. This would correspond to the first person plural notion, as far as some part of the comp indeterminacy is sharable (like the quantum reality seems to confirm). But since these 'entities' could only be self-defined emergents of the original self- relativisation, everything was in fact 'outside-less' and continued to exist uniquely or monistically as a network of self-relation. ... itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative number relations. The self itself is what computer science and provability logic explains the better. Depending on whether the participatory or 'objective' perspective was adopted, self-relation could apparently decompose into 'sense' or 'action' narratives, but such decomposition was in fact illusory, or perspective-dependent. Self-relation in fact remained singular or decomposable in nature This is fuzzy. I can
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 03/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: BTW I have discovered that the book edited by Martin Davis The undecidable has been republished in 2004 by Dover. DN: I've just ordered it from Amazon. BM: Many Sc. fiction book go through such experience, and the book Mind's I (ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett) contains relevant thought (but miss my favorite sc. fi. book, the SIMULACRON III by Daniel Galouye). Mind'I eyes missed the first person comp indeterminacy and the subsequent reversal. DN: Yes, science fiction did stimulate some of my speculations, and I found Minds's I frustrating for just the reasons you give. This seemed somehow to entail the emergence of finitude from the not-finite, which seemed weirdly right. BM: ? (comp presupposes the natural numbers. Indeed they constitute the absolutely unsolvable mysteries). DN: Yes, I know. One might say that (at least the human understanding of) mathematics is cast as a kind of figure-ground relation between finite and not-finite, but this is more poetical than technical, and hence need not detain us. You propose the natural numbers and their relations as a necessary point of departure for comp, and show that this leads to unexpected results. My own thought was that analysis of the semantics of whole and part leads to a fundamentally self-relative epistemology and ontology, and this can also lead to unexpected results. But this is non-technical and largely intuitive hand-waving on my part. Anyway, it would be the histories that differed, not the 'self'. BM: This could depend on choice of vocabulary. If you define the self by what is consistent, or better sound, and invariant in all comp histories, you will get the arithmetical hypostases. DN: Here I intended 'self' in the primary or 0-person sense. 1-person would be attached to the histories, and hence the arithmetical hypostases would pick out sound and invariant features of 1-personal histories. Consciousness would then be associated with the relation of the 0-self to such features of itself. In a sense this equates to a sort of all-embracing 'solipsism' - but a solipsism of the All. The histories would break the symmetry of the self into differentiated sub-selves that would be 'I' with respect to their own private environments. BM: Hopefully. That is what is under the course of verification. Again, accepting the positive integers makes such symmetry breaking easy to understand. DN: Yes, this is how I understand comp with respect to the semantics of self-relation I've been using. But since these 'entities' could only be self-defined emergents of the original self- relativisation, everything was in fact 'outside-less' and continued to exist uniquely or monistically as a network of self-relation. BM: .. itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative number relations. The self itself is what computer science and provability logic explains the better. DN: Yes, in the comp frame the numbers and their relations would be the basis of what I've been calling sense and action (i.e. self-relation in its 1 and 3-person aspects). Depending on whether the participatory or 'objective' perspective was adopted, self-relation could apparently decompose into 'sense' or 'action' narratives, but such decomposition was in fact illusory, or perspective-dependent. Self-relation in fact remained singular or decomposable in nature BM: This is fuzzy. I can agree but I have more than one interpretation. It's hard not being more technical here. DN: I'm sorry, I missed out a 'non'! I should have said self-relation in fact remained non-decomposable. By 'non-decomposable' I mean that the terms 'sense' and 'action' should be understood as observer effects in a self-relative frame. So epistemologically they are decomposable, but ontologically they aren't. To avoid further confusion, I see that in the comp frame 'self-relation' can indeed be 'decomposed' into different numbers and their relations, but that these are not further decomposable. I would have no problem with this. Consequently, if physics is held to be fundamental to consciousness, and consciousness is an observer effect, then such observers must be fully describable by physical relationships, not functional ones, and the appropriate substitution level is physical duplication, to some level of tolerance. BM: OK, but this is explicitly what cannot be done in the comp frame. A good thing given that physical can hardly be defined by the product of observation. DN: Yes. I'm sorry if it wasn't absolutely clear that my point in this section of the argument was precisely to give a reductio of the materialist position on functionalism or computationalism. So of course I'm claiming that it can't be done. I assume then that you agree with my line of argument? By contrast, if the reality of parts and relationships is to be considered fundamentally numerical, BM: The main first half of my work
Some thoughts from Grandma
After very kindly concurring with bits of my recent posts, Bruno nonetheless quite reasonably questioned whether I followed his way of proceeding. Having read the UDA carefully, I would say that in a 'grandmotherly' way I do, although not remotely at his technical level. But I had been doing thought experiments of a somewhat similar nature literally for decades, based on questions like why am I me and not you? or how do I know that me now is the same as me 5 minutes ago? or is the person who gets out of the transporter the same person as the one who began the journey? For some time, faced largely with incomprehension or disinterest, and seeing hardly anything remotely like this referred to in print, I despaired of finding others who believed these questions were anything but irrelevant or crazy. But gradually these topics seemed to emerge into discussion from a variety of directions, and now I've found a community of similarly crazy people on the Internet. The conclusion I had come to is broadly summarised in my recent posts. It seemed to me that the 'transporter' questions could only be resolved if I thought in terms of my being incorporated in some unique or 'global' pre-differentiated manner, which nonetheless multifariously self-localised by differentiation of structures that embodied distinct 'histories'. This seemed somehow to entail the emergence of finitude from the not-finite, which seemed weirdly right. Anyway, it would be the histories that differed, not the 'self'. The histories would break the symmetry of the self into differentiated sub-selves that would be 'I' with respect to their own private environments. These environments, being participatory, could only be shared with other such sub-selves by signalling', and the sum total of shareable signals, re-embodied, would be the 'objective' or 'outside' physical description of the situation. But since these 'entities' could only be self-defined emergents of the original self- relativisation, everything was in fact 'outside-less' and continued to exist uniquely or monistically as a network of self-relation. Depending on whether the participatory or 'objective' perspective was adopted, self-relation could apparently decompose into 'sense' or 'action' narratives, but such decomposition was in fact illusory, or perspective-dependent. Self-relation in fact remained singular or decomposable in nature Having said this, I can now perhaps contextualise more clearly my concern about functionalism. Functionalism is the doctrine that consciousness is a function of the relationship between parts. This entails that, discounting eliminativism, consciousness must be actualised by such relations, and that if such parts were to be considered 'ultimately' to be physical, then the relevant relations could only be physical relations. If this were so, the actual or realised relationships existent in a physical structure would be exhausted by its physical description, and the ascription of a super- added set of 'computational' relationships would merely be metaphorical and hence not real enough to be I. Consequently, if physics is held to be fundamental to consciousness, and consciousness is an observer effect, then such observers must be fully describable by physical relationships, not functional ones, and the appropriate substitution level is physical duplication, to some level of tolerance. By contrast, if the reality of parts and relationships is to be considered fundamentally numerical, then consciousness and physics could indeed be derived functionally or computationally from this kit of parts and their relations. From this perspective, the physical structure of the body and the observational structure of the mind could be held to emerge respectively from 'action' and 'sense' decompositions of the fundamental self-relative nature of number- relations. Nonetheless, if the observer decomposition continues to be regarded as 'functional' with respect to the physical one, they remain in some deep sense orthogonal - i.e. the 'functionalism' is that of 'imaginary parts' and 'imaginary relations' with respect to the physical description. It follows that there may be no final way of 'de-crypting' any unambiguous observer structure from the physical description alone. We would then be left unavoidably with an 'objectively' unknowable and unprovable imputation of consciousness to any physically-defined structure. So be it. But it might then be questioned how observer and physical narratives could somehow 'converge' on a common or consistent environmental interface as a result of any form of co-evolution. Such a notion would seem to imply that equivalent selection effects could be operating on both environments despite their orthogonal orientation. It is not immediately apparent why this should be so. It may consequently offer some theoretical advantages to suppose that a single evolutionary path is followed as a consequence of one-to-one
