RE: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. Jonathan Colvin
Re: What do you lose if you simply accept...
On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 05:39:42AM -0700, James N Rose wrote: Agreed that colour is not a characteristic of an object in itself. How does this impact on the debate, however? Russell, Realize first that you just easily and aggreably opted to completely negate Platonic 'real v. ideal' as a flawed logic. Identification of 'essential qualia' is no longer an a priori valid 'given'. By next logical extension of this de-validation, which qualia - assigned to an entity by way of external evaluation of the entity - represent qualia which the entity functions on immediately and intimately because the entity internally has an information link to it? The school prank of putting a secretly taped sign on a friends back saying 'kick me' .. the conscious performance of the student -excludes- a qualia which the environmental world identifies -with- the student-with-sign. A description of a system, and a system in and of itself, can never and will never map perfectly one to one and on to. QED Conclusions: 1. Initial condition alternatives result in alternate eventstream outcomes. 2. Alternate information sets preclude precision cloning, performances, decision gates. 3. Conscious is not perfectly transferrable. Jamie Sorry, but you've completely lost me here. I'm still looking for relevance... What does your first sentence mean, for example. What is Platonic ideal vs real? Is it Plato's cave metaphor? In which case, I don't remember Plato's cave being brought up in discussion on this list. It doesn't seem terribly relevant to me, or even to notions of arithmetic platonism for example. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
RE: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Jonathan Colvin wrote: Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. Jonathan Colvin We are thus at an impasse, agreeing on all the facts but differing in our appraisal of the facts. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Chat with 1000s of sexy singles at Lavalife! http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/
Re: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Le 21-mai-05, à 08:31, Jonathan Colvin a écrit : Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. But we can photosynthesize. And we can understand why we cannot travel at the speed of light. All this by using purely 3-person description of those phenomena in some theory. With consciousness, the range of the debate goes from non-existence to only-existing. The problem is that it seems that an entirely 3-person explanation of the brain-muscles relations evacuates any purpose for consciousness and the 1-person. That's not the case with photosynthesis. Bruno Jonathan Colvin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Le 21-mai-05, à 15:48, Bruno Marchal a écrit : Le 21-mai-05, à 08:31, Jonathan Colvin a écrit : Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. But we can photosynthesize. And we can understand why we cannot travel at the speed of light. All this by using purely 3-person description of those phenomena in some theory. With consciousness, the range of the debate goes from non-existence to only-existing. The problem is that it seems that an entirely 3-person explanation of the brain-muscles relations evacuates any purpose for consciousness and the 1-person. That's not the case with photosynthesis. ... and from this don't infer that I am saying that consciousness is not explainable. Just that consciousness cannot have the same *type* of explanation as photosynthesis. (With comp I would argue that an explanation of consciousness is of a type similar as an explanation of why there is something instead of just logic + arithmetic). Bruno Bruno Jonathan Colvin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
CONTINUUM HYPOTHESIS decided AT LAST?
Hey, this is BIG NEWS. Stephen writes also must exist, thus we have the example of the Cantor Hierarchy. http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/infinite_wisdom.html GOOD GRIEF. Woodin may soon be up for *sainthood* among us mathematical platonists. Thanks, Stephen. Get a load of the following: To Platonists, mathematical objects such as sets exist in an ideal mathematical world, and axiomatic systems are merely useful tools for illuminating which statements about those objects are true in that world. To Platonists, the continuum hypothesis feels like a concrete statement that should be true or false. To them, if the standard axioms can't settle the continuum hypothesis, it's not that the hypothesis is a meaningless question, but rather that the axioms are insufficient. From this point of view, Cohen's result indicates that mathematicians need to add to their roster of axioms about infinite sets. There is a problem, however. An axiom should be so intuitively obvious that everyone agrees immediately that it's true. Yet intuition quickly evaporates when confronted with questions about infinity. Infinite Elegance In the decades that followed Cohen's 1963 result, mathematicians trying to settle the continuum hypothesis ran into a roadblock: While some people proposed new axioms indicating the continuum hypothesis was true, others proposed what seemed like equally good axioms indicating the it false, Woodin says. Woodin decided to try a different tack. Instead of looking for the missing axiom, he gathered circumstantial evidence about what the implications of that axiom would be. To do this without knowing what the axiom was, Woodin tried to figure out whether some axioms are somehow better than others. A good axiom, he felt, should help mathematicians settle not only the continuum hypothesis but also many other questions about Cantor's hierarchy of infinite sets. Mathematicians have long known that there is no all-powerful axiom that can answer every question about Cantor's hierarchy. However, Woodin suspected a compromise is possible: There might be axioms that answer all questions up to the level of the hierarchy that the continuum hypothesis concernsthe realm of the smallest uncountably infinite sets. Woodin called such an axiom elegant. In a book-length mathematical argument that has been percolating through the set theory community for the last few years, Woodin has provedapart from one missing piece that must still be filled inthat elegant axioms do exist and, crucially, that every elegant axiom would make the continuum hypothesis false. If there's a simple solution to the continuum hypothesis, it must be that it is false, Woodin says. And if it is false, then there are indeed infinite sets bigger than the counting numbers and smaller than the real numbers. Woodin's novel approach of sidestepping the search for the right axiom doesn't conform to the way mathematicians thought the continuum hypothesis would be settled, says Joel Hamkins of the City University of New York and Georgia State University in Atlanta. Mathematicians haven't yet absorbed the ramifications of Woodin's work fully enough to decide whether it settles the matter of the continuum hypothesis, says Akihiro Kanamori of Boston University (Mass.). [It's] considered a very impressive achievement, but very few people understand the higher reaches [of Woodin's framework], he says. Does Woodin himself believe that the continuum hypothesis is false? If anyone should have an opinion on this, I should, but even I'm not sure, he answers. What I can say is that 10 years ago, I wouldn't have believed there was a chance the continuum hypothesis was solvable. Now, I really think it has an answer.
RE: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Stephen writes
Consider the Cantor hierarchy and the way that nameability seems to
become more and more difficult as we climb higher and higher.
Yeah, remember Rudy Rucker's joke in Infinity and the Mind where
he points out It is interesting to note that the smaller large
cardinals have much grander names than the really big ones. Down
at the bottom you have the self-styled inaccessible and indescribable
cardinals loudly celebrating their size, while above, one of the
larger cardinals quietly remarks that it is measurable.
What has happened, I think, is that the seventh or eighth time that
your mind is completely blown, even having your mind *blown* gets
familiar---and even perhaps a bit dull. The Red Queen could also
have told Alice that every day before breakfast, she has her
whole world view turned upside-down and inside-out at least several
times.
The reason why this question has no answer is because there is no point
at which the question about First Causes can be posed such that an answer
obtains that is provably True. This is the proof that Bruno's work shows us,
taking Gdel's to its logical conclusion.
Come on, now. Nobody here, understands what Bruno's done, except
*maybe* Bruno. You draw the most sweeping conclusions from the smallest
things. Common sense tells one that questions about First Causes
don't have any answers of substance, but it's a stretch to say that
this comes from rumination about Gdel's theorem. Sounds just like
the people who derived moral relativism from Einstein's work.
Additionally, the notion of a first cause, in itself, is fraught with
tacit assumptions. Consider the possibility that there is no such a thing as
a first cause just as there is no such thing as a privileged frame of
reference. We are assuming that there is a foundation that is manifested
by the axiom of regularity:
http://www.answers.com/topic/axiom-of-regularity?method=5
Every non-empty set S contains an element a which is disjoint from S.
Exactly how can Existence obey this axiom without being inconsistent?
Before we run away screaming in Horror at this thought, consider the
implications of Norman's statement here:
You misunderstand what the axiom is saying. (I admit, I was
shocked and appalled at your rewording of it---but then it
turned out that *you* were not the criminal who reworded it
this way. It's actually in the link you provide!! (Thanks.))
Well, at least liability if not criminality, unless it's
immediately added that what this is saying is that we
demand that any S set have the property, in order to
qualify as being a real set, that it is not incestuous
with at least one of its elements: I mean, there is at
least one of its elements that it doesn't share an element
with.
For example, if S = {a,b,c}, say, then we cannot have
a = {b,c}, and b = {a}, and c = {a,b,c}, because then it's,
like, totally devoid of substance. Whereas if there was
some *honest* element d in S such that d = {a, S, c, f},
then while it is pretty wild to have S itself, along with
the other suspiciously incestuous elements like a and c
contributing to the potential delinquency, at least it has
f, which makes it free from total engagement in perverse
behavior.
*Regularity* was the nicest axiom that Zermelo found that
saved us from the very worst kind of circularity, I guess.
Lee
RE: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Stathis writes I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Well put. An interesting point to add is that since human behavior is almost surely not compressible, the *only* way that they can learn what a human is going to do is to, in effect, run one (the mocked up one in their lab). As you say, they run an *emulation*. But this could mean that they had *no* special insight into consciousness, because by adjusting the teleporter, Scotty can find out things too just by making a physical copy of the Captain, and, for example, finding out what he'd say about giving the engineers a raise. But you have described Martian science very well. Here is what I think that they are capable of that *is* important: they could tell (or announce) with very high accuracy whether a species was conscious, and to what extent, in its natural environment, and do all this just from the creature's DNA (and perhaps a little info on the inter- uterine environment). Here is an analogy: in a cold hut in the Scottish highlands in 1440, two bright, but shivering, people are debating the nature of warmth. Says one: Brrr. Some day the scientists will be so advanced that the can objectively measure hotness, and you and I will more closely agree. And he turned out to be right, as we know now. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. Yes, but what does that mean? What does it mean for, say, you to know what it's like when I play 1. e4 in a game of chess? I can tell you that it's probably nothing at all like when *you* play 1. e4. But it's strickly a function of how similar our chess careers have been, whether we both have the same opinion of the Alapin counter to the Sicilian, and so forth. So in effect, it really comes down to how much you are already me when you play 1. e4. Somebody here said it much better than I: they said that you have to almost be someone to in order to know what it's like to be them. Jonathan then says No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. I totally agree. We are thus at an impasse, agreeing on all the facts but differing in our appraisal of the facts. Maybe. But since you (Stathis) write so well, could you summarize what your adversaries seem to be saying and what you say? I'm less sure (than you) that no progress can be made. thanks, Lee
Re: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Hi Lee,
I see that you have not yet experienced the wonders of non-well founded
set theory! Let me point you to the first paper that I read that started me
down this road:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/papers/math1.ps
I hope you can view Postscript files. Let me know if otherwise.
Stephen
- Original Message -
From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 2:32 PM
Subject: RE: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Stephen writes
Consider the Cantor hierarchy and the way that nameability seems to
become more and more difficult as we climb higher and higher.
Yeah, remember Rudy Rucker's joke in Infinity and the Mind where
he points out It is interesting to note that the smaller large
cardinals have much grander names than the really big ones. Down
at the bottom you have the self-styled inaccessible and indescribable
cardinals loudly celebrating their size, while above, one of the
larger cardinals quietly remarks that it is measurable.
What has happened, I think, is that the seventh or eighth time that
your mind is completely blown, even having your mind *blown* gets
familiar---and even perhaps a bit dull. The Red Queen could also
have told Alice that every day before breakfast, she has her
whole world view turned upside-down and inside-out at least several
times.
The reason why this question has no answer is because there is no
point
at which the question about First Causes can be posed such that an
answer
obtains that is provably True. This is the proof that Bruno's work shows
us,
taking Gdel's to its logical conclusion.
Come on, now. Nobody here, understands what Bruno's done, except
*maybe* Bruno. You draw the most sweeping conclusions from the smallest
things. Common sense tells one that questions about First Causes
don't have any answers of substance, but it's a stretch to say that
this comes from rumination about Gdel's theorem. Sounds just like
the people who derived moral relativism from Einstein's work.
Additionally, the notion of a first cause, in itself, is fraught
with
tacit assumptions. Consider the possibility that there is no such a thing
as
a first cause just as there is no such thing as a privileged frame of
reference. We are assuming that there is a foundation that is
manifested
by the axiom of regularity:
http://www.answers.com/topic/axiom-of-regularity?method=5
Every non-empty set S contains an element a which is disjoint from S.
Exactly how can Existence obey this axiom without being inconsistent?
Before we run away screaming in Horror at this thought, consider the
implications of Norman's statement here:
You misunderstand what the axiom is saying. (I admit, I was
shocked and appalled at your rewording of it---but then it
turned out that *you* were not the criminal who reworded it
this way. It's actually in the link you provide!! (Thanks.))
Well, at least liability if not criminality, unless it's
immediately added that what this is saying is that we
demand that any S set have the property, in order to
qualify as being a real set, that it is not incestuous
with at least one of its elements: I mean, there is at
least one of its elements that it doesn't share an element
with.
For example, if S = {a,b,c}, say, then we cannot have
a = {b,c}, and b = {a}, and c = {a,b,c}, because then it's,
like, totally devoid of substance. Whereas if there was
some *honest* element d in S such that d = {a, S, c, f},
then while it is pretty wild to have S itself, along with
the other suspiciously incestuous elements like a and c
contributing to the potential delinquency, at least it has
f, which makes it free from total engagement in perverse
behavior.
*Regularity* was the nicest axiom that Zermelo found that
saved us from the very worst kind of circularity, I guess.
Lee
Re: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Bruno Marchal wrote: Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. But we can photosynthesize. And we can understand why we cannot travel at the speed of light. All this by using purely 3-person description of those phenomena in some theory. With consciousness, the range of the debate goes from non-existence to only-existing. The problem is that it seems that an entirely 3-person explanation of the brain-muscles relations evacuates any purpose for consciousness and the 1-person. That's not the case with photosynthesis. To be more strictly analogous with the situation for consciousness, what Jonathan could have said is that we have no idea what it is like to *be* a photon or to *be* a tree photosynthesising. Most people would say that photons and trees aren't conscious, and therefore they *can* be entirely understood from a 3rd person perspective. Perhaps this is true, but it is not logically consistent to say that it must be true and still maintain the 1st person/ 3rd person distinction we have been discussing. This is because the whole point of the distinction is that it is not possible to deduce or understand that which is special about 1st person experience (namely, consciousness) from an entirely 3rd person perspective. The aliens I have described in my example could be as different from us as we are different from trees, and they could easily conclude that an emulation of our minds is not fundamentally different from an emulation of our weather. --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: What do you lose if you simply accept...
Le 22-mai-05, à 06:29, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Stathis: People certainly seem to take their consciousness seriously on this list! I've now managed to alienate both the consciousness doesn't really exist and the it exists and we can explain it factions. I did not mean that there is no explanation possible for consciousness. It is likely that in the course of time the neuronal mechanisms behind the phenomenon will be worked out and it will be possible to build intelligent, conscious machines. Imagine that advanced aliens have already achieved this through surreptitious study of humans over a number of decades. Their models of human brain function are so good that by running an emulation of one or more humans and their environment they can predict their behaviour better than the humans can themselves. Now, I think you will agree (although Jonathan Colvin may not) that despite this excellent understanding of the processes giving rise to human conscious experience, the aliens may still have absolutely no idea what the experience is actually like. No, I'd agree that they have no idea what the experience is like. But this is no more remarkable than the fact that allthough we may have an excellent understanding of photons, we can not travel at the speed of light, or that although we may have an excellent understanding of trees, yet we can not photosynthesize. Neither of these problems seem particularly hard. But we can photosynthesize. And we can understand why we cannot travel at the speed of light. All this by using purely 3-person description of those phenomena in some theory. With consciousness, the range of the debate goes from non-existence to only-existing. The problem is that it seems that an entirely 3-person explanation of the brain-muscles relations evacuates any purpose for consciousness and the 1-person. That's not the case with photosynthesis. To be more strictly analogous with the situation for consciousness, what Jonathan could have said is that we have no idea what it is like to *be* a photon or to *be* a tree photosynthesising. Most people would say that photons and trees aren't conscious, and therefore they *can* be entirely understood from a 3rd person perspective. Perhaps this is true, but it is not logically consistent to say that it must be true and still maintain the 1st person/ 3rd person distinction we have been discussing. This is because the whole point of the distinction is that it is not possible to deduce or understand that which is special about 1st person experience (namely, consciousness) from an entirely 3rd person perspective. The aliens I have described in my example could be as different from us as we are different from trees, and they could easily conclude that an emulation of our minds is not fundamentally different from an emulation of our weather. Which means we agree completely. I thought Jonathan, in the manner of John Searle, was arguing that nothing in principle distinguishes a phenomenon like consciousness and photosynthesis. And this is just a traditional move made by the so-called elimininative materialists who just pretend consciousness (and first person) does not exist. The error they make, I think, comes from the fact that scientific discourses are (by construction) made only in the 3-person manner. But nothing prevents us to try (at least) to have some axiomatic of the first person discourse and to make some 3-person statements about it. And knowledge theory are like that. There is even a quasi-unanimity on the basic axiom of knowledge to know p entails p (Cp - p). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
