On Jun 4, 2009, at 8:27 AM, Torgny Tholerus wrote:
How do you handle the Russell paradox with the set of all sets that
does
not contain itself? Does that set contain itself or not?
My answer is that that set does not contain itself, because no set can
contain itself. So the set of all
On Dec 3, 2008, at 5:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I struggle with the question of what a platonic object actually is,
even for something very simple. Let's say the implementation of a
circle supports roundness in the same way that a certain computation
supports consciousness. We can
On Nov 30, 2008, at 3:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Yes, and I think of consciousness as an essential side-effect of the
computation, as addition is an essential side-effect of the sum of two
numbers.
Ok, I'm with you so far. But I'd like to get a better handle your
concept of a
On Nov 30, 2008, at 9:53 AM, Günther Greindl wrote:
Kory wrote:
I have an intuition that causality
(or its logical equivalent in Platonia) is somehow important for
consciousness. You argue that the the slide from Fully-Functional
Alice to Lucky Alice (or Fully-Functional Firefox to Lucky
On Nov 30, 2008, at 10:14 AM, Günther Greindl wrote:
I must admit you have completely lost me with MGA 3.
I still find the whole thing easier to grasp when presented in terms
of cellular automata.
Let's say we have a computer program that starts with a large but
finite 2D grid of bits,
On Nov 29, 2008, at 7:52 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Threeness, computations and consciousness
exist eternally and necessarily, and can't be created, destroyed or
localised.
I understand (I think) how threeness and computations exist eternally
in Platonia, but I don't understand your
On Nov 26, 2008, at 5:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Yes. Suppose one of the components in my computer is defective but,
with incredible luck, is outputting the appropriate signals due to
thermal noise. Would it then make sense to say that the computer isn't
really running Firefox, but
On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
So you agree that MGA 1 does show that Lucky Alice is conscious
(logically).
I think I have a less rigorous view of the argument than you do. You
want the argument to have the rigor of a mathematical proof. You say
Let's start with the
On Nov 24, 2008, at 5:40 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
The question turns on what is a computation and why it should have
magical properties. For example, if someone flips the squares on a
Life board at random and accidentally duplicates the Life rules does
that mean the computation is
On Nov 25, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
You could have perhaps still a problem with the definitions or with
the hypotheses?
I think I haven't always been clear on our definitions of mechanism
and materialism. But I can understand and accept definitions of those
terms under
and a sheet of paper and
write the following on it:
The patterns of markings on this paper were caused by Kory Heath. Of
course, that doesn't mean that the molecules in this piece of paper
touched the hands of Kory Heath. Maybe the paper has been teleported
since Kory wrote it, and reconstructed out
On Nov 23, 2008, at 11:24 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:
Kory Heath wrote:
Or maybe I'm still misdiagnosing the problem. Is anyone arguing that,
when you play back the lookup table like a movie, this counts as
performing all of the Conway's Life computations a second time?
Why shouldn't
On Nov 24, 2008, at 3:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
MGA 1 shows that MEC+MAT implies lucky Alice is conscious (during the
exam). OK?
MGA 2 shows that MEC+MAT implies Alice is dreaming (and thus
conscious)
when the film is projected. OK?
I don't mean to hold up the show, but I'm still stuck
On Nov 22, 2008, at 6:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Similarly, whenever we
interact with a computation, it must be realised on a physical
computer, such as a human brain. But there is also the abstract
computation, a Platonic object. It seems that consciousness, like
threeness, may be a
On Nov 24, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
If your argument were not merely convincing but definitive, then I
would not need to make MGA 3 for showing it is ridiculous to endow the
projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness (in real
space-time, like the physical
On Nov 24, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
Kory Heath wrote:
On Nov 23, 2008, at 11:24 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:
Kory Heath wrote:
Or maybe I'm still misdiagnosing the problem. Is anyone arguing
that,
when you play back the lookup table like a movie, this counts as
performing all
On Nov 22, 2008, at 1:56 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
But how would they agree on this? If we knew the answer to that we
wouldn't
need to be considering these (nomologically) impossible thought
experiments.
They would use the same criteria that they use to decide that humans
are conscious
On Nov 22, 2008, at 6:52 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Which leads again to the problem of partial zombies. What is your
objection to saying that the looked up computation is also conscious?
How would that be inconsistent with observation, or lead to logical
contradiction?
I can only
On Nov 22, 2008, at 1:10 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
So why should it make a difference
whether those state changes are decided by gates in the cpu or a
huge look-up table?
The difference is in the number of times that the relevant computation
was physically implemented. When you query the
On Nov 21, 2008, at 6:53 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
What about a case when only some of Alice's neurons have ceased
normal function and became dependent on the lucky rays?
Yes, those are exactly the cases that are highlighting the problem.
(For me. For Bruno, Lucky Alice is still conscious.
On Nov 22, 2008, at 2:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption
that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of
a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on
physical activity. Q.E.D.
On Nov 21, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
So let us suppose that poor Alice got, again, a not very good optical
plane graph, so that some (1 to many to all, again) NOR gates break
down, in that precise computation corresponding to her dream
experience. And let us project, in real
On Nov 22, 2008, at 7:26 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Ok, but what if consciousness is a computational process that
potentially depends on the entire state of the universe? Let's suppose
for example that quantum particles are the fundamental building
blocks, i.e. the hardware, and that
On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I am afraid you are already too much suspect of the contradictory
nature of MEC+MAT.
Take the reasoning has a game. Try to keep both MEC and MAT, the game
consists in showing the more clearly as possible what will go wrong.
I understand
On Nov 20, 2008, at 11:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 Nov 2008, at 10:13, Kory Heath wrote:
What is your definition of mathematicalism here?
Strong definition: the big everything is a mathematical object.
(But perhaps this is asking too much. The whole of math is already
On Nov 21, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument
(http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must
be conscious.
The same argument can be used to show that Empty-Headed Alice must
also be conscious. (Empty-Headed Alice
On Nov 21, 2008, at 8:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 21 Nov 2008, at 10:45, Kory Heath wrote:
However, the materialist-mechanist still has some grounds to say that
there's something interestingly different about Lucky Kory than
Original Kory. It is a physical fact of the matter that Lucky
On Nov 21, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
This is very similar to an existing thought experiment in identity
theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_man
Cool. Thanks for that link!
-- Kory
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because
On Nov 21, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I
saw on a documentary.
It might seem similar on the surface, but it's actually very
different. The observers of the split-brain patient and the patient
himself know that
On Nov 19, 2008, at 1:43 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
So I'm puzzled as to how answer Bruno's question. In general I
don't believe in
zombies, but that's in the same way I don't believe my glass of
water will
freeze at 20degC. It's an opinion about what is likely, not what is
possible.
Hi Bruno,
I should probably let this thread die so that we can concentrate on
the MGA thread. But there are a few more things I wanted to respond to.
On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 18 Nov 2008, at 14:14, Kory Heath wrote:
In the meantime, I at least want to say
On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:38 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:
I think you really you mean nomologically possible.
I mean logically possible, but I'm happy to change it to
nomologically possible for the purposes of this conversation.
I think Dennett changes the question by referring to
On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:33 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
Doesn't the question go away if it is nomologically impossible?
I'm sort of the opposite of you on this issue. You don't like to use
the term logically possible, while I don't like to use the term
nomologically impossible. I don't see the
On Nov 18, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The last question (of MGA 1) is: was Alice, in this case, a zombie
during the exam?
Of course, my personal answer would take into account the fact that I
already have a problem with the materialist's idea of matter. But I
think we're
On Nov 16, 2008, at 1:32 PM, Günther Greindl wrote:
nicely put (the below), it captures my current metaphysical position
quite accurately :-)
Thanks, Günther! It'll be interesting to see if we continue to agree
as the MGA thread progresses. :)
-- Kory
On Nov 16, 2008, at 6:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Some believe that for having a real conscious person, you have to
implement it in a real primary material universe. It is clearly what
Peter Jones thinks. I am saying that a person can be fully conscious
like you or me, even when implemented
On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:22 PM, m.a. wrote:
Isn't some sort of substrate necessary for any mathematical event,
whether it be a brain or a screen or a universe? And isn't that
substrate sufficiently different from the math to be called physical
existence?
That's certainly the prevailing
On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
But if any computation can be mapped onto any physical state, then
every computation can be mapped onto one physical state; and why not
the null state?
I guess I don't really have a clear picture of why the fact that any
computation
On Nov 13, 2008, at 10:02 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
I think there is a misunderstanding of the MWI.
Ok. I wanted to try putting things in terms of the MWI rather than a
more extreme version of many-worlds like Bruno's, since a lot more
people accept the MWI. But of course, I can make the
On Nov 14, 2008, at 9:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Now a computationalist cannot say I believe that persons represented
by unimplemented computations are conscious for the reason that all
computations have to be implemented.
Ok, I see your point. Computations are actions that people (or
On Nov 14, 2008, at 5:09 PM, Michael Rosefield wrote:
Take this level of abstraction much further and what you have
essentially is the 'dust theory' from Greg Egan's Permutation City.
Actually, I think my formulation already goes further than the theory
outlined in PC. Although it's a
On Nov 13, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Be careful with the term. The MGA is subtle and to explain it we will
have to be more precise. For example here it is better to remember
that only *person* are conscious. Computations are not conscious (be
it soft or hard wired).
Good point.
On Nov 11, 2008, at 9:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The problem with Dennett is that he takes physical reality for
granted.
I agree. But from his perspective, the burden is on us to explain why
we can't take physical reality for granted. I've never seen the
arguments laid out quite clearly
On Nov 12, 2008, at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
First, I have never stop to work on that and try to share the argument
with people interested in the matter.
True. You're tireless! (That's a complement.)
Second, it happens that sometimes I think the burden his on him to
tell us what he
On Nov 9, 2008, at 3:24 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
I'm with you and Dennett - except I'm reserved about the use of
logical
possibility.
Fair enough. I might be misusing that term. Maybe a better way to
state my position would be that I think the standard conception of
philosophical zombie
On Nov 7, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Do you understand that if comp is false, then arithmetical truth
contains (immaterial) zombies (because it contains already the
relative implementations of all solutions of Schroedinger equations
and variant, if only that for example ...)?
On Nov 7, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:
I think I agree with Bruno that it is *logically* possible, e.g.
accidental zombies. It's just not nomologically possible.
I'm not sure what counts as an accidental zombie. Do you mean
something like the following:
I can write a very short
On Nov 9, 2008, at 9:56 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:
It's sort of what I meant; except I imagined a kind of robot that,
like your
Turing test program, had it's behavior run by a random number
generator but just
happened to behave as if it were conscious.
Ok. That works just as well for me.
On Nov 5, 2008, at 3:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Just consider the computation which correspond to your actual real
life. That computation is encoded (indeed an infinity of times) in the
Universal Deploiement, which is itself encoded (indeed an infinity of
times) in the set of all
On Nov 2, 2008, at 8:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Assuming comp the answer should be this:
If you agree that you survive (100%) in some car accident where you
lose some 90% of you (third and first person descriptions), then
accepting one halve in the WM perfect duplication, entails P= 1/2
On Nov 1, 2008, at 7:07 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
We can ask how similar each one is to the Kory
that stepped into the teleporter, but there's no fact of the matter
about which one is *really* Kory.
I completely agree with that. But I don't agree with (and don't think
the above implies) the
On Oct 30, 2008, at 3:58 PM, Brent Meeker wrote:
Of course the point is that you're not the same you
from moment to moment in the sense of strict identity of information
down to the
molecular level, or even the neuron level.
I agree, but that doesn't change the point I was trying to
On Oct 28, 2008, at 12:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Measure theory is the branch of math which has been invented to tackle
those infinities, and those similarity relations.
I don't know much about measure theory. I understand a bit about how
it's supposed to tackle those infinities, but I
On Oct 30, 2008, at 10:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But ok, perhaps I have make some progress lately, and I will answer
that the probability remains invariant for that too. The probability
remains equal to 1/2 in the imperfect duplication (assuming 1/2 is
the perfect one).
But of
On Oct 23, 5:34 pm, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If I am copied to two
locations A and B, with each copy being identical, it seems reasonable
to say that I have a 1/2 probability iof finding myself at A and a 1/2
probability of finding myself at B. But if I am copied perfectly
At 04:47 PM 10/10/2004, Jesse Mazer wrote:
If I get heads, I know the only possible way for the winning flip to be
heads would be if both the other players got tails, whereas the winning
flip will be tails if the other two got heads *or* if one got heads and
the other got tails.
I agree with
At 07:17 PM 10/10/2004, Kory Heath wrote:
We can also consider the variant in which the Winning Flip is determined
after people decide whether or not to switch.
In a follow-up to my own post, I should point out that your winning chances
in this game depend on how your opponents are playing
At 02:17 PM 7/2/2004, CMR wrote:
Would it not be more to the point to ask whether I believe in an ideal
computer
No! It isn't more to the point. You may believe that all physical things
are subject to entropy, and that therefore no physical computer could last
forever, but you should still be
At 10:12 AM 7/3/2004, Bruno Marchal wrote:
True, but if we want to make sure no confusion will ever appear later in
the conversation we will never start. So it is better to tackle confusion
when they appear.
Yes, but some confusions are so easy to avoid! Confusions will always
appear in the
To finish, Kory, I would avoid the term essentialist giving that its
modern philosophical use is more precise than our admittedly rather
imprecise use of it.
I see what you mean, but we need *some* way of referring to specific
(although perhaps imprecise) ideas or beliefs. I might feel
At 03:09 PM 7/1/2004, Jim Whitescarver wrote:
Platonist reasoning is the antithesis of constructionism.
Thanks for the clarification. In this short discussion I've seen at least
three conflicting ways that people use the term Platonism:
1. Platonism == Mathematical Realism.
2. Platonism == The
At 02:45 PM 7/2/2004, Jesse Mazer wrote:
As for the non-constructivism definition, is it possible to be a
non-constructivist but not a mathematical realist? If not then these
aren't really separate definitions.
It may be that all non-constructivists are mathematical realists, but some
At 03:25 PM 6/30/2004, CMR wrote (quoting www.fact-index.com):
Mathematical realism holds that mathematical entities exist independently
of the human mind. Thus humans do not invent mathematics, but rather
discover it, and any other intelligent beings in the universe would
presumably do the same.
At 01:25 PM 6/14/2004, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Bruno,
Does your thesis survive without the notion of duplicatability or
copying? As I have pointed out, QM does not allow duplication and I am
hard pressed to understand how duplication can be carried out in
classical physics.
If
Hi Bruno,
At 06:46 AM 4/26/04, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The important point is that once we keep up comp
through the eight points, we see that the laws of
physics, whatever they are, must be given
by the invariant in the comp-accessible worlds.
I'm pretty sure I now understand points 1-8, but let me
At 06:08 AM 4/27/04, Bruno Marchal wrote:
(BTW, concerning Parfit, he still believe (in his book Reasons
and Persons) that we are token. I have already
argued that with the comp hyp we can only be type.
That means we cannot been made singular. The only argument
Parfit gives for our token
At 10:17 AM 4/27/04, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Don't worry, I will try NOT to give a 120h course in
mathematical logic which is just impossible without chalk
black board. But I will try to give some insights. I must think
how to do it. It will help me, btw, to prepare my talk in Paris
and Amsterdam so
At 10:36 AM 4/24/04, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Does the fact that we never find ourselves in one of the bizarre,
inconsistent worlds that are postulated to exist in Platonia cast doubt on
the reality of these worlds and the validity of the underlying theory?
Not yet. We know that the bizarre,
At 10:16 AM 4/25/04, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Consider now a similar theory, but multiple copies of you are allowed. The
theory predicts that there will be one billion branchings of the world in
the next second, with each branch containing a person who shares all your
memories up to that
At 10:48 AM 4/25/04, Saibal Mitra wrote:
This is the ''white rabbit'' problem which was discussed on this list a few
years ago. This can be solved by assuming that there exists a measure over
the set of al universes, favoring simpler ones.
I don't believe there are any grounds for assuming that,
One day, without warning, you suddenly find yourself in a featureless white
room. In front of you are your old friends Blue Genie and Yellow Genie.
The Blue Genie says, I'm about to make two identical copies of you (I'll
destroy the original), and place one copy in a red room and one in a green
Forwarded at the request of the author:
From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 25 April 2004 Kory Heath wrote:
QUOTE-
Yes, your theory states that the chances are 100% that some copy will find
itself in the non-bizarre world. But the theory also states that the
chances are very low
, but I no longer think that's what you were saying.
My new interpretation of what you're saying (and correct me if I'm wrong
again) is that if you were to examine the entire ensemble of
next-possible-states of *me* (Kory Heath) at this moment, you would find
that (as a mathematical fact, part
Bruno Marchal wrote a 10-point argument about determining whether or not we
are simulated by some massive computer. Here is point 9 from that post:
9) Now, from computer science and logic, startlingly enough perhaps,
we can isolate a measure on the 1-person comp histories, and this
give us the
At 1/27/04, Hal Finney wrote:
One way to approach an answer to the question is to ask, is there such
a CA in which a universal computer can be constructed? That would be
evidence for at least a major prerequisite for conscious observations.
Do you have any examples like this?
In my opinion,
At 1/26/04, Stephen Paul King wrote:
The modern incarnation of this is the so-called
4D cube model of the universe. Again, these ideas only work for those who
are willing to completely ignore the facts of computational complexity and
the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.
I think you and I are
At 1/19/04, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Were and when is the consideration of the physical resources required
for the computation going to obtain? Is my question equivalent to the old
first cause question?
The view that Mathematical Existence == Physical Existence implies that
physical resources
At 1/19/04, Hal Finney wrote:
However, here is an alternate formulation of my argument which seems to
be roughly equivalent and which avoids this objection: create a random
program tape by flipping a coin for each bit. Now the probability that
you created the first program above is 1/2^100, and
At 1/18/04, Hal Finney wrote:
Now consider all possible program tapes being run at the same time,
perhaps on an infinite ensemble of (virtual? abstract?) machines.
Of those, a fraction of 1 in 2^100 of those tapes will start with that
100 bit sequence for the program in question.
[snip]
Now
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