Re: Why I am I?
But since practically anything can represent nearly anything else, it's ultimately all in the mind of the beholder. The representation must account for the observation. Hmmm? I'm not sure what you're saying here. How would the representation account for the observation? Do you mean that what is observed must account for the observation? If so, virtual realities and dreams would violate this rule, right? If not you can slip into solipsism. So all that is necessary to avoid solipsism is to append to any theory that seems open to the accusation of solipsism, ...and if I exist, it seems reasonable to assume that others do as well. Why would I be the only one? Viola! Solipsism avoided, right? I think you're rather too free with the term solipsism. So it occurs to me that in physicalism or in your proposal, our experience of the world is an internal aspect of consciousness. When I say, I know my brother, I'm not saying that I know how he really is. I'm saying that I know my internal model of my brother. There are many aspects of my brother's internal life and personality that I do not know. We build a model of the world, which is updated for us by our sensory processing apparatus, and this model is what we know...our own little virtual reality. We are all alone in our heads. Certainly if physicalism is correct. If you're correct, then we might could change this to: We are all alone in our algorithms, or something. Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they do? Again, here we can explain why we cannot explain this. Like we can explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite close to the unique one) I would have thought that the apparent possibility of virtual realities, not to mention dreams and hallucinations, would indicate that you are mistaken on this point. If I can dream some of the time, why would there not be a set of conscious experiences somewhere in the infinity of relations between the numbers that constitute someone who lives in a dream that never ends? If I could write a computer simulation of a brain, and install it in a virtual reality to live out it's life in a virtual world that operates by a strange alternate set of laws, why would this set of experiences not also show up one of the programs generated by the universal dovetailer? Note that in either case, what is observed by that consciousness would probably not be sufficient to allow them to account for their observations. Again, I'd ask the same question for any other ontological theory. Why did the universe have the particular initial conditions and governing laws that it did, which lead to our present experiences? It just did. There's no explanation for that (again, at least none that doesn't depend on some other unexplained event). But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really* exists, a la Kant. If you believe that the primality of 17 does not depend on you, then you can explain why matter and consciousness is an unavoidable consequence of + and *. I would say that anyone who makes the same starting assumptions and follows the same rules of inference would conclude that 17 is prime. But the concepts of 17 and prime do not exist independently of context. I'll go with Meeker on this one: Mathematics is just precise expression and inference to avoid contradiction. I diagnostic you have still some some trouble grasping completely the 7th and 8th step of UDA, to be frank. It is OK, take it easy. Well, I think I grasp those points. I just don't think that they show that they are the source of conscious experience. Again, it seems very plausible that what I experience can be represented by physical objects (electrons moving through silicon and copper) or numbers. And by developing an algorithm that adjusts these representations in the right way you can ALSO represent how my experience changes over time. But I don't see WHY doing so would produce first person conscious experience. And so I reject it as an explanation for conscious experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Dec 2009, at 20:51, Rex Allen wrote: We see evolution...but it only exists in our minds, as a tool for our understanding. It's not something that exists in the world. Again, taking the physicalist view. We see space, time, and energy, but it only exists in our minds ... Actually, we don't see those things. Physicists share only number relations, and we lived uncommunicable qualia. So communication depends on common experiences. All fundamental concepts are ineffable, and unless both parties in the conversation have the same set of fundamental concepts, then nothing that derives from those building blocks can be discussed. So it's not the case that there's something special about the ineffability of qualia. What makes them ineffable is the fact that they are fundamental. They can't be expressed in terms of anything else. So, if you don't already have knowledge of them, gained from experience, then I can't communicate with you about them. For instance, my brother and I can use the fundamental concept of red in our conversations because we both know what red is. We both have experience of red. So when he talks about red sunsets, and red apples, and red cars, I have a good idea of what he means. We have yet to encounter difficulties due to a difference of understanding about red. However, I cannot communicate clearly with my color-blind cousin about red, because he has no experience of red. So I know that when we discuss red sunsets, we are not communicating with perfect mutual understanding. The limits of language in this regard has nothing to do with the nature of experience, or consciousness. The problem is that fundamental concepts can't be described in terms of other things...if they could be, then by definition they wouldn't be fundamental. Fundamental things can only be pointed at...and if you can't see what I'm pointing at, then we can't really talk about it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On 12 Dec 2009, at 19:11, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Dec 2009, at 03:23, benjayk wrote: For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of matter, too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without reffering to some real (in the sense of every day usage) object. Then all physical theories are circular, and explains nothing. All theories in physics presuppose arithmetical truth (and even analytical truth, but this is just to simplify the derivations). Well every theory is circular in that there are always axiom(s) that are presumed to be true (and meaningful), and in that the theory is just correct if the reasoning is correct, which can never be proven. Basically it just comes down to whether you like or accept the reasoning and the axioms. Theories and science are just a tool. I agree. And then computer science, thanks to Kleene and others, managed very well the circularity. You may feel that some too circular theories don't explain anything, but you can only say they don't explain anything to you. I was using using circular in its sense of viciously circular. Honestly I think you are a bit dishonest to yourself here, since you already presume the appearance of matter, I assume nowhere primitive matter. I do assume consensual reality. If not, I would not post message on a list. unless you can make theories about numbers without perceiving anything, which I doubt. Humans cannot do that, but this is independent which are simùpler concept. All scientists agrees on numbers, and to day we can explain in a precise sense why numbers is the least we have to assume. When you do abstract math you nevertheless work with matter, that is, word written on paper or on a computer screen. So either you can indeed make sense of a circular theory Indeed. That is the case. Circularity is fundamental. I will soon explain this through the second recursion theorem of Kleene. The whole AUDA things is based almost exclusively based on that handling of circularity, which makes the self-reference possible, for machine, and relatively to universal machine(s). or you have to agree that no theory explains anything (or you manage to manipulate numbers without having the experience of perceiving matter). Or I missed your point. Explaining consists in reducing what I understand badly into what I have a better understanding. Also, my point in not a new theory, a new theorem. If we are machine, then matter becomes a complete mystery which has to be explained from the numbers (UDA). The theorem is in the has to. Then it happens to the derivation has been partially done (AUDA). Bruno Marchal wrote: Of course, the human conception of the numbers depends on the human conception of his neighborhood and life, but when searching a TOE we have to agree on the simplest objects (ontology) from which we derive the others (phenomenology). For me this is not meaningful. What kind of phenomology could be derived from the fundamental numbers? You may read Plotinus, for having an informal idea. The phenomenologies corresponds to the hypostases, + intelligible and sensible matter. from the numbers (+ comp) we can explain the non communicability of consciousness, its local undoubtability, how primitive matter emerges and leads to first plural quantum-like indeterminacies, etc. Basically just that they need to be phenomena and that they are not expressible in terms of something else. But this for me has little to do with what the phenomena *are*. I don't understand this. It's like a theory saying: There is something, but don't aks me what it is. You should study the theory, and makes specific remark. The theory explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it. All this in a way which is sufficiently detailed as to be tested experimentally. Strictly speaking it is not my theory, it is the universal machines' theory. It is a theology because it makes clear the part of the phenomenology which is sharable, and the part which is unsharable, except by projections, betting, hoping, fearing, praying, etc. The trick is that a Löbian machine can study the theology of the correct machine without knowing if itself is correct, and so without knowing if the theology (toy theology if you want) apply to iself. And I don't see what's especially simple about numbers. For me they are more complex than many everyday objects, because they rely on dualistic notions like classical logic and an absolute inequality of something (1 is absolutely not 2). It requires the ability of distinguishing two things, indeed, and the ability to repeat action, like taking the successor. Empirically, this is grasped by children, and elementary arithmetic is virtually a subtheory of all scientific theories, and explictly so for theories which happens to be
Re: Why I am I?
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything a theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to everything, since the more you trascend a theory the bigger the possibilities get): The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or incomplete (we have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already made the quest for the complete theory meaningless. Gödel showed that all theories on *numbers* are contradictory of incomplete. And it is a direct consequence of Church thesis. Once you grasp the concept of universal number or machine, you understand that truth, even on just machines and numbers, is not completely axiomatisable. But that is a reason to be humble in front of arithmetical truth. Not a reason to dismiss it. It kicks back a lot. Also, if you mention Gödel, it means you accept elementary arithmetic. My logical point is that if you believe you (can) surivive with a digital *body*, then elementary arithmetic has to be enough. WE have too extract the SWE, and other appearances from that. It is a point in (applied) logic, if you want. Bruno, I have had some difficulty in seeing how to get from the numbers and arithmetic to universal machines and programs such as the universal dovetailer. For example, the existence of the Java language doesn't directly imply all possible Java programs are being executed somewhere. Is there some example you can provide of how to get from numbers to the execution of programs? I've been thinking about it myself for a while and this is the closest I have gotten, is it along the right track? 1. If all natural numbers exist, then relations between those numbers exist (e.g. 5 is 3 more than 2) 2. There are an infinite number of ways to get from some number x to number y (e.g. if x is 2, and y is 5: y = x^2+1, y = x + 3, y = x * 3 - 1) are all valid relations between 2 and 5. 3. Every relation, may be applied recursively to generate an infinite sequence of numbers, the simplest relation: y=x+1, when applied recursively gives all the successors, others more complex ones might give the Fibonacci sequence, or run through states of the Game of Life. Is this enough? It seems like something is being added on top of the numbers, the relations themselves must be treated as independent entities, as well as recursively applied relations for every number. Is there a simpler or more obvious way the existence of numbers yields the dovetailer? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On 13 Dec 2009, at 16:40, Rex Allen wrote: I diagnostic you have still some some trouble grasping completely the 7th and 8th step of UDA, to be frank. It is OK, take it easy. Well, I think I grasp those points. I just don't think that they show that they are the source of conscious experience. Again, it seems very plausible that what I experience can be represented by physical objects (electrons moving through silicon and copper) or numbers. And by developing an algorithm that adjusts these representations in the right way you can ALSO represent how my experience changes over time. But I don't see WHY doing so would produce first person conscious experience. And so I reject it as an explanation for conscious experience. OK, you think that comp is false. I really don't know. From biology and quantum physics, and computer science, I would say that there are some clues that comp is true, but there are many remaining problems, and even clues that it may be false. All my point is that if we make the Digital Mechanist hypothesis (DM = comp), then the mind body problem is two times more difficult than materialist are thinking. Indeed with DM, we have to explain how matter arise from numbers, not just mind. Then computer science gives, by itself, through universal machine self- reference, a theory of mind, which explains rather well the difference between qualia and quanta. But this needs AUDA, and, although you don't need DM, you need an open mindness for the strong AI thesis, for the idea that a machine can think. This may be true, and yet comp is false. My goal was in showing that comp, which an hypothesis in philosophy of mind/theology, is refutable empirically, and thus is amenable to the scientific study. That's all. I dunno if comp is true or not. I don't even know if I should hope of fear it. It is too complex for that. What I do believe (prove), is that comp + weak materialism is inconsistent. 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 everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On 13 Dec 2009, at 18:20, Jason Resch wrote: On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything a theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to everything, since the more you trascend a theory the bigger the possibilities get): The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or incomplete (we have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already made the quest for the complete theory meaningless. Gödel showed that all theories on *numbers* are contradictory of incomplete. And it is a direct consequence of Church thesis. Once you grasp the concept of universal number or machine, you understand that truth, even on just machines and numbers, is not completely axiomatisable. But that is a reason to be humble in front of arithmetical truth. Not a reason to dismiss it. It kicks back a lot. Also, if you mention Gödel, it means you accept elementary arithmetic. My logical point is that if you believe you (can) surivive with a digital *body*, then elementary arithmetic has to be enough. WE have too extract the SWE, and other appearances from that. It is a point in (applied) logic, if you want. Bruno, I have had some difficulty in seeing how to get from the numbers and arithmetic to universal machines and programs such as the universal dovetailer. For example, the existence of the Java language doesn't directly imply all possible Java programs are being executed somewhere. Is there some example you can provide of how to get from numbers to the execution of programs? I've been thinking about it myself for a while and this is the closest I have gotten, is it along the right track? 1. If all natural numbers exist, then relations between those numbers exist (e.g. 5 is 3 more than 2) 2. There are an infinite number of ways to get from some number x to number y (e.g. if x is 2, and y is 5: y = x^2+1, y = x + 3, y = x * 3 - 1) are all valid relations between 2 and 5. 3. Every relation, may be applied recursively to generate an infinite sequence of numbers, the simplest relation: y=x+1, when applied recursively gives all the successors, others more complex ones might give the Fibonacci sequence, or run through states of the Game of Life. Is this enough? It seems like something is being added on top of the numbers, the relations themselves must be treated as independent entities, as well as recursively applied relations for every number. Is there a simpler or more obvious way the existence of numbers yields the dovetailer? It is a long and tedious exercise to show that the computable relations can be represented in the form of arithmetical relations (provable in an already rather weak theory). I have defined computations by sequences of phi_i^s(n) for s = 0, 1, 3, 4, Those sequences can be represented in first order arithmetic, and the relevant one to describe the universal dovetailer can be represented as well and proved (by weak theories). Good question, though. I will think how to explain this more explicitly later, but not too much because it is usually longer than programing an operating system in language machine. A big part of that work is what Gödel did in his incompleteness proof: to represent metamathemetical notion in arithmetic. Like provability can be translated in arithmetic, concept like universal machine and computations can also be translated. this needs a rather long explanation, given that the machine (or elementary arithmetic) a priori knows nothing about those notions. 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 everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why I am I?
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: I'm thinking of something similar to the symbol grounding problem: The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words (symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful. According to a widely held theory of cognition, computationalism, cognition (i.e., thinking) is just a form of computation. But computation in turn is just formal symbol manipulation: symbols are manipulated according to rules that are based on the symbols' shapes, not their meanings. How are those symbols (e.g., the words in our heads) connected to the things they refer to? This question seems like a conundrum generated by abstracting symbols out their context of communication and action and then being surprised that you can't say what they communicate or what action they will elicit. So the quote mentions the words in our heads, but let's also include the images in my head. Or more generally yet, the thoughts in my head which are about things out in the world. You make the point that these taking these out of the context of communication and action is what generates the conundrum. But with respect to consciousness it's not clear to me that context should matter. So let's go to a Boltzmann Brain scenario. In far distant future, the de Sitter radiation being emitted from the cosmological horizon just happens to come together in a extremely improbable but not impossible configuration that is functionally isomorphic to a computer containing the simulation of a brain, plus a set of lookup tables (keyed by time slice) storing 70 years worth of sensory data. The lookup tables don't contain a virtual world, instead (by complete chance) the tables contain values that match the output that a computer simulation of a virtual world WOULD produce if such an environmental simulation were executed in tandem with the simulated brain. So. Extremely unlikely. But not obviously impossible. Which means that given enough time, it's probably inevitable. So would this physical system experience consciousness? Would the person being simulated have meaningful thoughts, even though it existed outside of any meaningful context? Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no evolution field or particle. Evolution doesn't select anything. Evolution has no causal power. It's true it's a description and as such has no causal power - but neither do any of the laws of physics. I guess the question is do the laws of physics as currently formulated *approximate* something that actually exists out in the world? In the case of a universe where there really is no reason for the distribution of matter and events in 4-D space-time, then the laws of physics are indeed JUST a description of the way things seem to us as conscious observers. They are not an approximation of anything that actually exists, and so in that case I agree that they have no causal power. Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we observe in the present. If there is some randomness, then the initial state + laws of physics do NOT completely determine the present. Let's say that I have some quantum dice and I say, if the numbers rolled add to an odd value I will do A, but if they add to even value I will do B. In this case, whether I do A or B is completely determined by the random outcome of the quantum dice, right? Well...that random outcome plus whatever caused me to entrust my fate to those dice in the first place. So randomness is fundamental...it doesn't reduce to anything else. So I don't think that I've gone wrong by saying that if the physical laws have a random aspect, then they (plus the initial state of the universe) completely determine what happens. More philosophical scientists don't assume their theories indicate what's really real. I wonder why all scientists don't avoid such an assumption? It seems to me that Kant makes a good argument that we probably can't know anything about the underlying nature of reality. It seems to hold up pretty well even after 200+ years. What we know are phenomena, with knowledge of the underlying noumena being beyond our reach. Quoting (http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5g.htm): Having seen Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories as pure concepts of the understanding applicable a priori to every possible experience, we might naturally wish to ask the further question whether these regulative principles are really true. Are there substances? Does every event have a cause? Do all things interact? Given that we must suppose them in order to have any
