Re: Numbers
peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? Also, you reject mathematical monism as not making sense for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, though Tegmark might no be the first to propose the idea) make sense? Have some chance of being true? Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ? All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they succeed in explaining experience. Also, you reject mathematical monism as not making sense for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, though Tegmark might no be the first to propose the idea) make sense? Have some chance of being true? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), All the evidence points to this. mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) Not supported by empirical evidence; not needed to explain the epistemic objectivity of mathematics. and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, Must be at least partially true, or physics would not work, Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ? I can try to answer to this but I do not see how it helps to answer my question. It is hard to explain what it means to someone that resist the idea (that must be like trying to explain a mystic experience to a non believer). It is just the idea that there could be no difference between mathematical existence and physical existence. I would say that it makes sense only in the case in which the three other mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true. I believe that we have a diffculty here because we have very different intuitions about what mathematical objects can be and about what a mathematical object corresponding to a universe hosting conscious beings could look like. I already mentionned three possibilities to deal with the HP universe problem in this context. I understood that it did not make it for you because of this difference between our intuitions. All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they succeed in explaining experience. Do you mean that it is just so that the mathematical object that is isomorph to our universe is instantiated and that the mathematical objects that would be isomorph to HP universes are not? Isn't that a bit ad'hoc? Does it explain anything at all? Also, you reject mathematical monism as not making sense for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, though Tegmark might no be the first to propose the idea) make sense? Have some chance of being true? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), All the evidence points to this. OK. So in your view this makes sense and is likeky to be true. Evidence is also that a lot of people resist physical monism just as you resist mathematical monism. mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) Not supported by empirical evidence; not needed to explain the epistemic objectivity of mathematics. That could be a language problem. In my view, what I was thinking of is likely to be equivalent to the epistemic objectivity of mathematics in your view. and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, Must be at least partially true, or physics would not work, Partially is not of much help in this context. Th question is whether it can/could be *fully/absolutely* true. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Indeterminism
Johnathan Corgan wrote: Still, there is a certain appeal to shifting the question from Why are we conscious? to Consciousness doesn't exist, so why do we so firmly believe that it does? It is possible to imagine a machine that doubts (or perhaps I should say doubts, i.e. we should not assume that it has doubts in the same way we do) whether it is conscious. Imagine a simple theorem-proving machine, one of Bruno's logic machines, complicated enough to have a representation of itself. We want to ask it if it is conscious. So we have to define consciousness in logical terms. That seems quite daunting. If we allow room for indeterminacy in our definitions, the machine might also have indeterminacy in its estimation of whether it is conscious. Or, imagine we meet aliens. How do we know if they are conscious? Or, turning it around, how would they know if they possess what humans call consciousness? How would we describe consciousness to them, who have very different brains and ways of information processing, such that they can know for sure whether they are conscious in the same way that humans are? The question of whether someone is conscious is far more problematic than is often supposed, given that we cannot even define consciousness! I tend to think that it is simply a convenient assumption, that everyone is conscious, to avoid facing up to the overwhelming difficulties that a true analysis of the question brings. The mere fact that we cannot define consciousness ought to be a pretty big red flag that we should not be making facile assumptions about who has it and who doesn't! (Or, if you say that we can in fact define consciousness, tell me how to know which AI programs have it, and which don't?) Hal Finney --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ? I can try to answer to this but I do not see how it helps to answer my question. It is hard to explain what it means to someone that resist the idea (that must be like trying to explain a mystic experience to a non believer). It is just the idea that there could be no difference between mathematical existence and physical existence. Then why do we use two different words (mathematical and physical) ? I would say that it it meaning mathematical existence IS different to physical existence. ? makes sense only in the case in which the three other mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true. I don't see why the mathematical realism needs to be true. The difference between mathematical existence and physical existence could consist in physical things exisitng, and mathematical objects not exisiting. I believe that we have a diffculty here because we have very different intuitions about what mathematical objects can be and about what a mathematical object corresponding to a universe hosting conscious beings could look like. I already mentionned three possibilities to deal with the HP universe problem in this context. I understood that it did not make it for you because of this difference between our intuitions. All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they succeed in explaining experience. Do you mean that it is just so that the mathematical object that is isomorph to our universe is instantiated and that the mathematical objects that would be isomorph to HP universes are not? We can go some way to explaining the non-existence of HP universes by their requiring a more complex set of laws ( where we are believers in physical realism). However, we are bound to end up with physical laws being just so. However -- so every other explanation ends up with a just so. In physical MWI it is just so that the SWE delimits the range of possible universes. In Barbour's theory it is just so that Platonia consists of every possible 3-dimensional configuration of matter, not every 7dimensional one, or n-dimensional one. In Mathematical Monism, it is just so that , while very mathematical object exists, no non-mathematical object exists. Isn't that a bit ad'hoc? Does it explain anything at all? Also, you reject mathematical monism as not making sense for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, though Tegmark might no be the first to propose the idea) make sense? Have some chance of being true? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), All the evidence points to this. OK. So in your view this makes sense and is likeky to be true. Those are two different claim: it is likely to be true, but seeing *how* it is true, making sense of it is the Hard Problem. IMO the hardest part of the hard problem is seeing how mind emerges from mathematical description -- from physics in the map sense, rathert than the territory sense. Switching to a maths-only metaphysics can only make the Hard Problem harder. Evidence is also that a lot of people resist physical monism just as you resist mathematical monism. Under my analysis the problem with physical monism is reification (confusion of map with territory) of the maths! mathematical realism (mathematical objects exist by themselves) Not supported by empirical evidence; not needed to explain the epistemic objectivity of mathematics. That could be a language problem. In my view, what I was thinking of is likely to be equivalent to the epistemic objectivity of mathematics in your view. Epistemic objectivity of maths means every competent mathematician gets the same answer to a given problem. It doesn't say anything about the existence of anything (except possibly mathematicians). and Tegmark's hypothesis (our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object, Must be at least partially true, or physics would not work, Partially is not of much help in this
Re: Indeterminism
Hal Finney wrote: Johnathan Corgan wrote: Still, there is a certain appeal to shifting the question from Why are we conscious? to Consciousness doesn't exist, so why do we so firmly believe that it does? It is possible to imagine a machine that doubts (or perhaps I should say doubts, i.e. we should not assume that it has doubts in the same way we do) whether it is conscious. Imagine a simple theorem-proving machine, one of Bruno's logic machines, complicated enough to have a representation of itself. We want to ask it if it is conscious. So we have to define consciousness in logical terms. That seems quite daunting. If we allow room for indeterminacy in our definitions, the machine might also have indeterminacy in its estimation of whether it is conscious. Or, imagine we meet aliens. How do we know if they are conscious? Or, turning it around, how would they know if they possess what humans call consciousness? How would we describe consciousness to them, who have very different brains and ways of information processing, such that they can know for sure whether they are conscious in the same way that humans are? The question of whether someone is conscious is far more problematic than is often supposed, given that we cannot even define consciousness! I think we can define it for AI systems. We know, for example, that the Mars rover is conscious of its position relative to its landning point, its conscious of its available power, the slope of the terrain, the temperature, the wind, the ambient light level, which way its pointing,... It's even aware of whether its programs have satisfied various checksums. Now you may object that I'm using conscious and aware in a different sense than you meant - since you meant it to apply to humans. But I would say that I'm using it in the sense that the rover acts based on these perceptions that it has, including internal perceptions of its own state and its goals. And this sense applies to humans too. I tend to think that it is simply a convenient assumption, that everyone is conscious, to avoid facing up to the overwhelming difficulties that a true analysis of the question brings. The mere fact that we cannot define consciousness ought to be a pretty big red flag that we should not be making facile assumptions about who has it and who doesn't! (Or, if you say that we can in fact define consciousness, tell me how to know which AI programs have it, and which don't?) If we define consciousness as have defined it for application to a Mars rover, then it's clear that humans and all animals are conscious, but to different extents. But by my defintion something is only conscious if it is conscious of being an entity within a larger context and is able to act to satisfy some internal goals. An AI system like the Mars rover may be much more self-aware than a human being in the sense that it can compare copies of its programs and do error correction. I think a lot of the difficulty in trying to define consciousness is that we try to think of a definition that includes both the Mars rover's consciousness and our own internal narrative stream of thought in one concise definition - while they are two different kinds of consciousness. Our internal stream of thoughts is primarily verbal and in terms of a Mars rover is a kind of log-book recording things I classify as worth attending to and putting into at least short-term memory. Experiments point to it being largely a rationalization and 'after-the-fact' relative to decision making. It's probably not even the part of the program in the Mars rover that we would point to as 'what provides the consciousness'. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Smullyan Shmullyan, give me a real example
Bruno Marchal wrote: <> Le 25-mars-06, 00:51, George Levy a crit : Smullyan's white knigth had the mission to teach me about the logic of G and G*. Sorry, he failed. All right, but this is just because he miss Church Thesis and Comp. His purpose actually is just to introduce you to Godel and Lob theorems, not to computer science. The heart of the matter is that mathematical systems (machines, angels, whatever) cannot escape the diagonalisation lemma, and so life for them is like the life of those reasoners travelling on fairy knight Knave island with curious self-referential question. With comp *we* cannot escape those diagonal propositions. I am looking forward to examples involving people being diagonalized...hmmm Hilbert did come up with a thought experiment with an infinite number of people lodged in a hotel actually we want to go further than that and assume an infinite number of selves in the many-worldOnce upon many times (Ils etaient des fois...), there were several princesses...they looked into self referential magic mirrorsand they lived ever after. I would like someone to come up with an extreme adventure story like the travelling twin, Schroedinger's cat, or Tegmark's suicide experiment to illustrate G and G*. For example this story would describe a close brush with death.. It would create a paradox by juxtaposing 1) classical or common sense logic assuming a single world, I think you miss the diagonalization notion. I will work on that. I am looking forward to being diagonalized. I hope it won't hurt too much. I will give you "real examples", but don't throw out FU to quickly. \ OK. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
1Z wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ? I can try to answer to this but I do not see how it helps to answer my question. It is hard to explain what it means to someone that resist the idea (that must be like trying to explain a mystic experience to a non believer). It is just the idea that there could be no difference between mathematical existence and physical existence. Then why do we use two different words (mathematical and physical) ? I would say that it it meaning mathematical existence IS different to physical existence. ? makes sense only in the case in which the three other mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true. I don't see why the mathematical realism needs to be true. The difference between mathematical existence and physical existence could consist in physical things exisitng, and mathematical objects not exisiting. I believe that we have a diffculty here because we have very different intuitions about what mathematical objects can be and about what a mathematical object corresponding to a universe hosting conscious beings could look like. I already mentionned three possibilities to deal with the HP universe problem in this context. I understood that it did not make it for you because of this difference between our intuitions. All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they succeed in explaining experience. Do you mean that it is just so that the mathematical object that is isomorph to our universe is instantiated and that the mathematical objects that would be isomorph to HP universes are not? We can go some way to explaining the non-existence of HP universes by their requiring a more complex set of laws ( where we are believers in physical realism). However, we are bound to end up with physical laws being just so. However -- so every other explanation ends up with a just so. In physical MWI it is just so that the SWE delimits the range of possible universes. In Barbour's theory it is just so that Platonia consists of every possible 3-dimensional configuration of matter, not every 7dimensional one, or n-dimensional one. In Mathematical Monism, it is just so that , while very mathematical object exists, no non-mathematical object exists. You would like this book by Vic Stenger: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/nothing.html Vic defends the view that physical laws are based on point-of-view-invariance; that is a constraint we place on what we call a law. As such, they are not really laws constraining nature, they are symmetries that are an absence of 'law' (i.e. structure). Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
