At 21:44 16/06/04 -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote:
BM (previous)
Giving that the Comp, through the UDA (for exemple) , leads to Monistic idealism, I think the use of the word "epiphenomenon" could be misleading (it is used more in the non interactive dualist approach of the mind body problem, as far as I know). It is better to to talk about simply phenomena, and I guess you pretend I don't address them (which imo is a little bit unfair as I will try to explain).
[SPK] No, Bruno, Comp does not "lead to Monistic idealism", it is based on it! One must assume Monistic Idealism in order to accept the notion that Arithmetic realism and that this "Truth" is independent of physicality, as you have written previously:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg04913.html
"By Arithmetic Realism I mean that Arithmetical Truth is independent of me, you, and the rest of humanity."
and
"if we take comp seriously (comp = AR + TC + "yes doctor") then
physics is eventually a branch of machine's psychology (itself a branch
of computer science" itself a branch of number theory."
BM:
But your very quote of what I said confirms what I was saying. I don't understand.
When I say IF comp is true THEN physics is a branch of machine psychology, it is part of the prood that comp will imply monistic idealism. This comes from the UD Argument. You have not yet tell me at which steps you disagree (cf
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3044.html
I could simplify my presentation by postulating what i call sometime Pythagorean COMP,
which postulates Arithmetical Realism AND NO MORE (but in my thesis that "pyth"
is a consequence, i have worked hard enough for not postulating it :)).
SPK:
>We cannot dismiss physicality!
BM:
Why? We can certainly dismiss it in the hypothesis once we explain its appearance. That is the point of the technical part of my thesis. Wait perhaps a little bit I provide more explanation.
I just don't need the physicalist hypothesis, and besides I show it incompatible with comp (UDA).
SPK:
One thing that I have always been attracted by in science and mathematics is that I was not required to blindly believe some statement. What you are asking of me is not different from the "blind faith" (unjustified belief) that I was raised in by Fundamentalist Christian parents. You must understand that I have a severe allergy to postulations that cannot be justified.
BM:
I do not ask you to believe in anything! I do just prove the following two things:
1) IF comp is correct THEN indeed a machine must make an act of faith to PRACTICE it.
(Put in another way : if COMP is correct, then if a doctor tells you that science implies comp, then you KNOW he is a lier).
As an analogy (which will run deeper latter) it is like CONSISTENCY for a machine:
IF a machine is consistent THEN the machine cannot prove it. With Godel + comp, you can guess that even just self-consistency need a sort of "blind faith".
SPK:
On The Other Hand (OTOH), I agree with your statement about Gödel theorem: If I am a machine I will be unable to "prove" that I am. That is not my problem. My problem is in finding a falsifiable justification for the belief that "I am a Machine".
BM:
But this is exactly what I provide: I show (simplifying a little bit for reason of shortness, giving that is what I am suppose to explain, but it *is* "my thesis"):
IF comp is true then physics is given by the propositions which are
1) true in all our consistent extensions
2) true in at least one consistent extension
(By Godel, 1 does not imply 2 !)
3) accessible par the universal dovetailer.
This is translated by
observable(p) = []p & <>p, with p sigma_1.
I showed: 1) the logic of "observable(p)" obeys a sort of quantum logic.
2) that logic is sufficiently constrained to derive the whole physical probailities.
To evaluate comp, it is enough to compare those probabilities with the empirically evaluated probabilities.
BM: previous
You say that again. Perhaps you are right. I would be please to know some references.
In the case of monistic idealist theory I do think "phenomena" or "appearances" are less misleading terms.
[SPK]
The difference is purely semantical. The Problem is not!
From: http://www.meta-religion.com/Philosophy/Articles/Philosophy_of_the_mind/mind-body.htm
"Until the present century the duality of mind and brain was never in question except, that is, to the adherents of various Idealist or Phenomenalist doctrines which, in defiance of common sense, insisted that matter was just a construction of mind and had no ontological independence. What was at issue was whether the brain was self-sufficient and operated on a purely physical basis or whether mind could intervene in its operations so as to ensure one overt action rather than another. Determinists insisted that the brain was a machine and so mental events could have no influence on behaviour, they were mere 'epiphenomena.' "
Another term related to this Problem, as it occurs of Monistic Materialism is "conscious inessentialism".
From: http://www.geocities.com/aphilosophers/zombies.html
"What this basically means is that, in principle, all the actions we perform can be performed without consciousness. Walking, eating, sleeping and talking are all things that our bodies can do. They don’t, in principle, require consciousness in order to do them. It should be noted that in discussions about zombies, consciousness is considered to be qualia of any kind. We’re not just talking about being able to think abstractly here. For something not to be conscious, it must not be able to feel anything. Zombies don’t experience anything at all. It’s not like anything to be a zombie. Now, we’re left with the question: if consciousness isn’t required for the things we do, could beings exist which perform these things without being conscious (i.e. could philosophical zombies exist)? Now, if such beings could exist, it’s very important to stress that they would be capable of doing everything we are capable of. Therefore, there could be a bunch of zombies sitting in a classroom discussing the merits of conscious inessentialism. There could be a zombie who refuses to go on a plane and says he’s afraid of heights. There could be a zombie acting angry at the fact that he didn’t win the lottery."
BM:
Your quotations illustrate well what I was saying.
SPK:
Basically, the Problem, as I see it in your thought, boils down to the fact that all examples of "physicality" are mere "appearances" that should have no "causal efficacy", e.g. that any appearance that physical state X "causes" physical state Y is merely some numerical relation. The "Physical World" is just a 1st person "appearance". I have no problem that that IFF we only considered a single Observer. When we consider many observers, each with their own 1st person "world of appearance", How can we recover any coherent notion of a 3rd person view? Somehow, the "appearances" have to mesh together and be synchronized!
BM:
I agree it looks impossible, but then tell me where I am wrong.
Be carefull to distinguish clearly (especially for the benefit of the others, what I do postulate at the beginning, and what I pretend (at least) having deduce from the postulates).
SPK:
Leibniz considered such a situation in his Monadology and argued that the synchrony of appearances where due to a "pre-ordained harmony".
http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2003/march/bookReviewDorian.asp
I am arguing that such a "pro-ordained harmony" is impossible because it would require the computation of all possible interactions between all possible observers and find, among these, the one that, to use the physics term, has the "least action". I assume that your Universal Dovetailer could do such a computation, but have a serious problem with the claim that the mere a priori existence of a numerical representation of that computation is sufficient to derive all of our 1st person appearances.
BM:
Show it, and you will refute comp. My attempt to show it has lead me toward QM, so
I conclude it is premature (at least) to conclude comp is incorrect.
SPK:
My claim is that such a computation requires at least one "step" and that for it do have such it has to be "implemented" somehow. If the computation has to be "implemented" in order to account for appearances, could we not consider that the "physicality" that we experience is the "implementation" itself?
This idea seems to argue for a kind of dualism, doesn't it?
BM:
Perhaps, but then you should be able to either find an error in my deduction, or to
abandon the comp hyp (no problem with that).
Then you will need to explain me what is matter, what is mind and how they are related.
(With comp we do not need the materialist hypothesis.)
SPK:
But you must admit that "anticipation" implies the existence of "temporal transitivity" in that an anticipated event is one that is predicted to be experienced somehow but such an event has not yet occurred. This takes me right back to my question about how it is that we can recover the experience of time from COMP. There is no "time" in Platonia! All that exists is co-present, there is no meaningful notion of "delay" or "duration". How do we fit "at least one computational step" in this?
BM:
This is an important question, but I told you before to wait I show how to extract the "temporal/intuitionistic" logic S4Grz.
BM: previous:
Please remind me what means "OTOH" I always forget this one!
It is not sufficient to make that act of faith to solve the mind-body problem, I agree. Although it is sufficient for surviving the digital brain transplantation (if comp is correct).
But I'm afraid the (epi)phenomena are addressed. I can even sum the technics up in one short sentence: just apply the Theaetetus' definition of knowledge from opinion with opinion defined by machine's formal provability.
[SPK]
Bruno, this looks like circular reasoning! COMP assumes digital substitution, thus we have to "believe" in digital substitution to believe COMP! The question, for me, is: How could we Falsify COMP?
BM:
See above.
SPK:
I see Digital brain transplantation as the falsifiable aspect of your theory and thus most of my questions are pointed at it. ;-)
BM:
I really try to do that! Comp asks for an act of faith IF TRUE, but if false then it is falsifiable by comparing the comp-physics and the empirical physics.
I will not answer your last questions because it anticipates on what I feel the need to still explain for the technical part of the thesis, and I want to avoid too much repetitions. My general feeling is that you do have a sort of (blind?) faith in matter or physicalities. But then just abandon comp or tell at which step of the UDA you are stuck. OK?
Have you bought the book "forver undecided" by Smullyan? It can help a lot.
Kindest regards,
Bruno
