Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Russell Standish]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 11:12:13PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote:
> Russell, list,
> 
> > Tegmark's 4 level "Multiverse" (actually the Multiverse is only one of the 
> > levels) does not really have viewpoints at each level.
> > In my book, which largely follows the tradition of this list, there is 3 
> > viewpoints identified: 1st person, 1st person plural and 3rd person.
> > The 3rd person corresponds to the bird viewpoint of the Multiverse, or 
> > Tegmark Level 3 'verse. Calling it a viewpoint is a stretch of the language 
> > since necessarily observers must be embedded in the Multiverse.
> 
> Where does Tegmark say that the Multiverse is only one of the levels? Which 
> one?

"Multiverse" was coined by David Deutsch to refer to the many worlds
of MWI. This corresponds to Tegmark's level 3 parallel universe. I
follow this terminology, as do many others on this list. We also tend
to use the terms "Plenitude" or "Platonia" to refer to his Level 4
parallel universe. The other levels have not been "christened" so to speak.

Tegmark uses multiverse to refer to any type of parallel universe -
which I think contradicts usual usage.

> 
> What is meant by "viewpoint"? Tegmark's elementary description of the four 
> levels sounds like the outline of four viewpoints, with "frog" and "bird" 
> marking the extremes of a four-step set of gradations. Level IV is associated 
> with "pure" maths. Level III is associated with alternatives among cases, 
> which marks it as associated with maths of logic, information, probability, 
> etc., despite what Tegmark says about logic's being the most general and 
> underlying thing in maths. Level III is more "abstract" than Level II and 
> actualizes alternate outcomes across quantum branchings, while Level II 
> actualizes alternate outcomes in various times and places along a single 
> branch, so that the two levels come out the same in their features. Level II 
> seems associable with statistical theory, some areas of information theory, 
> and some other fields deal in a general way with gathering data from various 
> actual places and times and drawing ampliatively-inductive conclusions from 
> parts, samples, etc., to totalities. Level I, with its possibly idiosyncratic 
> constants, initial conditions, historical dependencies, seems associable with 
> physical, chemical, life sciences and human & social studies. So those seem 
> four viewpoints with distinctive content and associations, though not the 
> kind of content which the idea of viewpoint seems to have received on the 
> everything list, which is decidedly not to say that there's anything wrong 
> with the kind of content given on the everything list to the idea of 
> viewpoint.
> 
> Is it Tegmark's view, that the bird's eye view is associated particularly 
> with Level III, or does it depend on ideas as developed on the everything 
> list? Why wouldn't a view be associated with Level IV as well? (I thought 
> that, at least in Tegmark's view, the bird's eye view _was_ Level IV).
> 

The term bird/frog viewpoint is Tegmark's, which he used in his 1998
paper. I can well imagine applying to his 2003 multilevel scheme.

The association of 3rd person viewpoint (not bird viewpoint) with the
Multiverse is mine, and is justified on the basis that all observers
must be embedded in quantum mechanical many worlds structure. This
result is derived by assuming a level 4 plenitude, and is given in my
2004 paper "Why Occams Razor". Bruno's work also seems to point to a
similar conclusion.

The particular Plenitude I assume (ensemble of all bitstrings) is
actually a completely uninteresting place to have a view of (it has
precisely zero informational complexity).

I do not see any particular arguments suggesting that observers must
be embedded in a universe described by string theory (which would move
the 3rd person viewpoint to level 2) or embedded in just this universe
(moved to level 1), but I would not rule it out a priori.

> > Both of the 1st person viewpoints correspond to the frog viewpoint, the 
> > difference being the 1st person plural is an objective viewpoint - all 
> > things in the 1pp vpt will be agreed upon by 2 or more observers, whereas 
> > the 1p vpt is subjective, containing items such as quantum immortality that 
> > are _necessarily_ subjective.
> 
> The idea of quantum immortality doesn't seem like something that you could 
> call an "experience." If you found yourself alive even after what seemed an 
> unlikely long period of time, after a series of periodic extraordinary 
> escapes, any other observers would agree that you're still alive -- in other 
> words, you'd still be alive from the 1pp vpt. Only in the case where _no 
> records_ remain of your much earlier existence, nothing but your personal 
> memory of it, would quantum immortality seem possibly like an experience, an 
> "especially" subjective one. The quantum immortality idea seems like, not an 
> experience, but an idea requiring one's i

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Graeme Mcquilkin]

Hi ,

Can someone please tell me how I unsubscrive from this mailing list >?

Thanks

Graeme


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


Danny Mayes writes:

I haven't participated in the list in a while, but I try to keep up 
with the discussion here and there as time permits.  I personally was 
raised a fundamentalist Baptist, but lost most of my interest in that 
religion when I was taught at 9 years old that all the little kids in 
Africa that are never told about Jesus Christ go to Hell.  Even at 9, 
I knew that wasn't something I was going to be buying.  Who wants to 
believe in a God that cruel?  Even without the problematic cruel 
creator, I have always been to oriented toward logic and proof to 
just accept stuff on faith.



I sympathise with the conclusions of the young Danny, but there is a 
philosophical non sequitur here. The fact that I would like something 
to be true, or not to be true, has no bearing on whether it is in fact 
true. I don't like what happened in Germany under the Nazis, but that 
doesn't mean I should believe the Nazis did not exist, so why should 
my revulsion at the thought of infidels burning in Hell lead me to 
believe that God and Hell do not exist? It might make me reluctant to 
worship such a God, but that is not the same as believing he does not 
exist.


I started redeveloping religious belief, ironically, when I picked up 
a book on quantum physics 6 or so years ago.  I was at a legal 
seminar and needed something to read during the boring  sessions, and 
the author ran through a number of experiments of QM and concluded 
that the MWI was the most logical interpretation of these 
experiments.  I had read all the Sci Fi strories of alternate 
realities and whatnot, but this was my first exposure to the concept 
that reality is created in such a way to allow all things to exist 
(that also actually appeared to be supported by some real science).  
I still remember my excitement in  contemplating this explanation, in 
that it seems to explain so many questions.


I guess I could go into a long explanation as to why I now believe 
intelligence plays a key role in understanding the nature of our 
reality and how it came to be, but I probably wouldn't be able to say 
much that almost anyone on this board has not already heard.  For me 
it boils down to this: I see absolutely no reason to believe our 
experiences are not emulable.  I strongly suspect it is possible to 
create a quantum computer.  I strongly suspect technology will 
continue to evolve and computer processing will get more and more 
powerful.  Finally, even if we are somehow precluded from creating 
new universes in the future (i.e. universes implented on the same 
level of reality as our universe, virtual universes are obviously 
possible), the one we are in will last for trillions of years.  Final 
conclusion?  Well, I'll let you do the math...



But if it's scientific, it's not religion, is it? Religion means 
believing something in the absence of sufficient evidence.


Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Benjamin Udell]

Russell, list,

> Tegmark's 4 level "Multiverse" (actually the Multiverse is only one of the 
> levels) does not really have viewpoints at each level.
> In my book, which largely follows the tradition of this list, there is 3 
> viewpoints identified: 1st person, 1st person plural and 3rd person.
> The 3rd person corresponds to the bird viewpoint of the Multiverse, or 
> Tegmark Level 3 'verse. Calling it a viewpoint is a stretch of the language 
> since necessarily observers must be embedded in the Multiverse.

Where does Tegmark say that the Multiverse is only one of the levels? Which one?

What is meant by "viewpoint"? Tegmark's elementary description of the four 
levels sounds like the outline of four viewpoints, with "frog" and "bird" 
marking the extremes of a four-step set of gradations. Level IV is associated 
with "pure" maths. Level III is associated with alternatives among cases, which 
marks it as associated with maths of logic, information, probability, etc., 
despite what Tegmark says about logic's being the most general and underlying 
thing in maths. Level III is more "abstract" than Level II and actualizes 
alternate outcomes across quantum branchings, while Level II actualizes 
alternate outcomes in various times and places along a single branch, so that 
the two levels come out the same in their features. Level II seems associable 
with statistical theory, some areas of information theory, and some other 
fields deal in a general way with gathering data from various actual places and 
times and drawing ampliatively-inductive conclusions from parts, samples!
 , etc., to totalities. Level I, with its possibly idiosyncratic constants, 
initial conditions, historical dependencies, seems associable with physical, 
chemical, life sciences and human & social studies. So those seem four 
viewpoints with distinctive content and associations, though not the kind of 
content which the idea of viewpoint seems to have received on the everything 
list, which is decidedly not to say that there's anything wrong with the kind 
of content given on the everything list to the idea of viewpoint.

Is it Tegmark's view, that the bird's eye view is associated particularly with 
Level III, or does it depend on ideas as developed on the everything list? Why 
wouldn't a view be associated with Level IV as well? (I thought that, at least 
in Tegmark's view, the bird's eye view _was_ Level IV).

> Both of the 1st person viewpoints correspond to the frog viewpoint, the 
> difference being the 1st person plural is an objective viewpoint - all things 
> in the 1pp vpt will be agreed upon by 2 or more observers, whereas the 1p vpt 
> is subjective, containing items such as quantum immortality that are 
> _necessarily_ subjective.

The idea of quantum immortality doesn't seem like something that you could call 
an "experience." If you found yourself alive even after what seemed an unlikely 
long period of time, after a series of periodic extraordinary escapes, any 
other observers would agree that you're still alive -- in other words, you'd 
still be alive from the 1pp vpt. Only in the case where _no records_ remain of 
your much earlier existence, nothing but your personal memory of it, would 
quantum immortality seem possibly like an experience, an "especially" 
subjective one. The quantum immortality idea seems like, not an experience, but 
an idea requiring one's intellectually adopting some sort of 3rd-person view.

Nevertheless, I've liked the idea of distinguishing an inclusive 1st-&-2nd 
person "we," both addressor and addressee, from an exclusive 1st person 
addressor-only, so I'm glad to see it pop up in this context.

Best, Ben Udell

> I have tried to identify 1pp with G and 1p with G*, but I'm really unsure 
> that the analogy is sound.
> Cheers

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 01:18:21PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote:
> A question arises for me here and elsewhere. To what extent do you hold with 
> Tegmark's Four-Level Multiverse view and to what extent is your theory 
> logically linked to it? I ask this because, for instance, in such a 
> Four-Level world, I'd expect not just two salient views (bird's eye & frog's 
> eye, 3rd-person & 1st-person, etc.), but four. I'd expect not just 
> mind-matter dichotomies but 4-chotomies. And so on. In some cases, one may 
> argue that one distinction across the 4-chotomy is more important than the 
> other, say in the case of inference, where arguably the truth-perservative 
> versus truth-nonpreservative is a more important distinction, more like a 
> chasm, than is the distinction between falsity-preservative and 
> falsity-nonpreservative, but I'd still want to know about that the four-way 
> distinction because its relevance should not be presumptively precluded, 
> especially in a Tegmarkian four-level Multiverse. For me there it's partly a 
> matter of some non-maximal degree of s!
 ur!
>  eness on my part, and partly a matter of my motivation; I take an interest 
> in p

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Danny Mayes writes:

I haven't participated in the list in a while, but I try to keep up with 
the discussion here and there as time permits.  I personally was raised a 
fundamentalist Baptist, but lost most of my interest in that religion when 
I was taught at 9 years old that all the little kids in Africa that are 
never told about Jesus Christ go to Hell.  Even at 9, I knew that wasn't 
something I was going to be buying.  Who wants to believe in a God that 
cruel?  Even without the problematic cruel creator, I have always been to 
oriented toward logic and proof to just accept stuff on faith.


I sympathise with the conclusions of the young Danny, but there is a 
philosophical non sequitur here. The fact that I would like something to be 
true, or not to be true, has no bearing on whether it is in fact true. I 
don't like what happened in Germany under the Nazis, but that doesn't mean I 
should believe the Nazis did not exist, so why should my revulsion at the 
thought of infidels burning in Hell lead me to believe that God and Hell do 
not exist? It might make me reluctant to worship such a God, but that is not 
the same as believing he does not exist.


I started redeveloping religious belief, ironically, when I picked up a 
book on quantum physics 6 or so years ago.  I was at a legal seminar and 
needed something to read during the boring  sessions, and the author ran 
through a number of experiments of QM and concluded that the MWI was the 
most logical interpretation of these experiments.  I had read all the Sci 
Fi strories of alternate realities and whatnot, but this was my first 
exposure to the concept that reality is created in such a way to allow all 
things to exist (that also actually appeared to be supported by some real 
science).  I still remember my excitement in  contemplating this 
explanation, in that it seems to explain so many questions.


I guess I could go into a long explanation as to why I now believe 
intelligence plays a key role in understanding the nature of our reality 
and how it came to be, but I probably wouldn't be able to say much that 
almost anyone on this board has not already heard.  For me it boils down to 
this: I see absolutely no reason to believe our experiences are not 
emulable.  I strongly suspect it is possible to create a quantum computer.  
I strongly suspect technology will continue to evolve and computer 
processing will get more and more powerful.  Finally, even if we are 
somehow precluded from creating new universes in the future (i.e. universes 
implented on the same level of reality as our universe, virtual universes 
are obviously possible), the one we are in will last for trillions of 
years.  Final conclusion?  Well, I'll let you do the math...


But if it's scientific, it's not religion, is it? Religion means believing 
something in the absence of sufficient evidence.


Stathis Papaioannou

_
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Russell Standish]

Tegmark's 4 level "Multiverse" (actually the Multiverse is only one of
the levels) does not really have viewpoints at each level.

In my book, which largely follows the tradition of this list, there is
3 viewpoints identified: 1st person, 1st person plural and 3rd person.

The 3rd person corresponds to the bird viewpoint of the Multiverse, or
Tegmark Level 3 'verse. Calling it a viewpoint is a stretch of the
language since necessarily observers must be embedded in the Multiverse.

Both of the 1st person viewpoints correspond to the frog viewpoint,
the difference being the 1st person plural is an objective viewpoint -
all things in the 1pp vpt will be agreed upon by 2 or more observers,
whereas the 1p vpt is subjective, containing items such as quantum
immortality that are _necessarily_ subjective.

I have tried to identify 1pp with G and 1p with G*, but I'm really
unsure that the analogy is sound.

Cheers

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 01:18:21PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote:
> A question arises for me here and elsewhere. To what extent do you hold with 
> Tegmark's Four-Level Multiverse view and to what extent is your theory 
> logically linked to it? I ask this because, for instance, in such a 
> Four-Level world, I'd expect not just two salient views (bird's eye & frog's 
> eye, 3rd-person & 1st-person, etc.), but four. I'd expect not just 
> mind-matter dichotomies but 4-chotomies. And so on. In some cases, one may 
> argue that one distinction across the 4-chotomy is more important than the 
> other, say in the case of inference, where arguably the truth-perservative 
> versus truth-nonpreservative is a more important distinction, more like a 
> chasm, than is the distinction between falsity-preservative and 
> falsity-nonpreservative, but I'd still want to know about that the four-way 
> distinction because its relevance should not be presumptively precluded, 
> especially in a Tegmarkian four-level Multiverse. For me there it's partly a 
> matter of some non-maximal degree of sur!
>  eness on my part, and partly a matter of my motivation; I take an interest 
> in patterns of four-way logical distinctions, though I do wander from that 
> interest in an interesting place like this.
> 
> Best, Ben Udell
> 

-- 
*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] 
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Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Benjamin Udell]

Bruno, list,

[Bruno]> The neoplatonician use often the term "God" for "ultimate 
explanation", 
and also use often (but it is an idiosyncrasies) the names of the greek 
Gods for concept (EROS = love, THANATOS = death, etc.). Strictly 
speaking, it has nothing to do with the judeo-christian notion of God.
Still, I like to define axiomatically God by something so big that it 
escapes any attempt to define it, except perhaps in some negative way. 
In that sense I could argue that the "God" of comp theology can be 
identified either with either the "ultimate explanation", the "root of 
everything" or even with the unnameable SELF which caracterizes the 
comp first person.
Perhaps the chapter of "God" will be a necessary blank page in comp 
treatise.
Now, I think that "GOD" as a term has much more heavy connotation than 
theology, but I am probably underestimating the stealing of "rational 
theology" by the political power (this happened sometimes after 
Plotinus death).

Whatever the seminal events thousands of years ago, there the word is now in 
the sense in which it has been used by a cumulative and widespread tradition. 
"Theology" really sounds nowadays like it means "God study" or "gods study." 
You culd "get away with it" in that sense if you include that blank page (not a 
bad idea, I think) and draw out the ramifications of its blankness -- there's 
quite a tradition of negative theology and a widely noted parallelism with the 
reflection principle and the idea of upper-case Omega and absolute infinity. 

But also I have to revise what I said and say that theology not only has God or 
gods at its hub, and but also the word "theology" is pretty rigidly associated 
with the idea of a discipline which postulates or axiomatizes the truth of the 
contents of some religious belief, faith, or revelation. Trying to treat this 
as an illegitimate or "Johnny-come-lately" meaning is like trying to treat as 
illegitimate or derivative or "unneeded among basics" the more or less 
straightforward idea of a structure as a stable balance of forces or movements, 
on mere account of Aristotle's often applying his conception of form to actions 
and activities, in the sense of a manner or pattern of action. In some 
accounts, some mathematicians are sometimes described as doing a kind of 
"theology," but that's a very different thing from _naming_ a field "theology." 
There's not to minimize this hurdle, even if you choose to try to overcome it.

You may be able to get away with it, but you may find it prudent to defend your 
use of the word "theology" in a severely scholarly way -- not only citing 
Plato, Plotinus, etc., but in terms of the history of the word in general. I 
don't think that a justificatory discussion of the word's acceptations (= 
accepted meanings) should be based so squarely and directly on what will 
certainly be taken as strident views about history and politics of thousands of 
years ago, even if you feel passionately about those events. Modern Greeks 
can't even get us English-speakers to call them "Hellenes" as we probably 
should. Tradition and monosyllabic compaction make the word "Greek" so 
expressive to us.

I seem to remember that "metaphysics" was ruled out for some reason here. I 
forget, but maybe it was because the word has the wrong meanings in some 
languages. I'm told by Colombians, that the Spanish _metafisica_ is a 
straightforward way of saying "supernatural," which is certainly not the 
meaning that you want.

I know I keep mentioning Peirce like a special authority even though I'm only 
partly peircean. Anyway, he was very scholarly, even for a polymath, and can be 
counted on to seek to use a word in accordance with its cumulative technical 
meaning, and he was one of the contributors to the Century Dictionary. Here 
from his 1903 "Syllabus - Classification of Sciences" 
http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm is his account of what 
metaphysics is about:

66~~~
 192. Metaphysics may be divided into, i, General
Metaphysics, or Ontology; ii, Psychical, or Religious, Metaphysics,
concerned chiefly with the questions of 1, God, 2, Freedom,
3, Immortality; and iii, Physical Metaphysics, which discusses
the real nature of time, space, laws of nature, matter, etc. The
second and third branches appear at present to look upon one
another with supreme contempt.
~~~99

That's:

Metaphysics
i, General Metaphysics, or Ontology;
ii, Psychical, or Religious, Metaphysics,
~ 1, God
~ 2, Freedom
~ 3, Immortality
iii, Physical Metaphyiscs (real nature of time, space, laws of naure, matter, 
etc.)

If it weren't for the problem that, in some languages, "metaphysical" = 
"supernatural," "metaphysics" would probably be the right word. "Metaphysics" 
has been used by many English-language philosophers as a pejorative, but it 
does not straightforwardly mean "supernatural studies" in English. Anyway, from 
what I understand, it's not used pejoratively as often as it used to b

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Benjamin Udell]

Bruno, list,

It occurred to me that I ought not merely to "wing it" on the meaning of 
"theology" as a word. There are various places online to look it up, but this 
is an interesting one and, anyway, some may find this to be an introduction to 
a good resource.

>From the Century Dictionary http://www.global-language.com/century/ 
(About the really rather useful Century Dictionary: 
http://www.leoyan.com/century-dictionary.com/why.php )

(Requires installing software) Century Dictionary, Vol. VIII, Page 6274, 
Theologus to Theorbo (DjVu)
http://www.leoyan.com/century-dictionary.com/08/index08.djvu?djvuopts&page=66 ,
(DjVu Highlighted), (Java) (JPEG)

theology (the¯-ol' o¯-ji), n. [< ME. theologie, < OF. theologie, F. théologie = 
Pr. teologia = Sp. teología = Pg. theologia = It. teologia = D. G. theologie = 
Sw. Dan. teologi, < LL. theologia, < Gr. theología, a speaking concerning God, 
< theológos, speaking of God (see theologue), < theós, god, + légein, speak.] 
The science concerned with ascertaining, classifying, and systematizing all 
attainable truth concerning God and his relation to the universe; the science 
of religion; religious truth scientifically stated. 
The ancient Greeks used the word to designate the history of their gods; early 
Christian writers applied it to the doctrine of the nature of God; Peter 
Abelard, ill the twelfth century, first began to employ it to denote scientific 
instruction concerning God and the divine life. Theology differs from religion 
as the science of any subject differs from the subject matter itself. Religion 
in the broadest sense is a life of right affections and right conduct toward 
God; theology is a scientific knowledge of God and of the life which reverence 
and allegiance toward him require. Theology is divided, in reference to the 
sources whence the knowledge is derived, into natural theology, which treats of 
God and divine things in so far as their nature is disclosed through human 
consciousness, through the material creation, and through the moral order 
discernible in the course of history apart from specific revelation, and 
revealed theology, which treats of the same subject-matter as mad!
 e known in the scriptures of the 0ld and the New Testament. The former is 
theistic merely; the latter is Christian, and includes the doctrine of 
salvation by Christ, and of future rewards and punishments. In reference to the 
ends sought and the methods of treatment, theology is again divided into 
theoretical theology, which treats of the doctrines and principles of the 
divine life for the purpose of scientific and philosophical accuracy, and 
practical theology, which treats of the duties of the divine life for immediate 
practical ends. Theology is further divided, according to subject-matter and 
methods, into various branches, of which the principal are given below.
  Ac Theologie hath tened me ten score tymes, 
 The more I muse there-inne the mistier it seemeth. 
 Piers Plowman (B), x. 180. 
  Theology, what is it but the science of things divine? 
 Hooker, Eccles. Polity, iii. 8. 
  Theology, properly and directly, deals with notional apprehension; religion 
with imaginative. 
 J. H. Newman, Gram. of Assent, p. 115. 
--Ascetical theology. See ascetical.
--Biblical theology, that branch of theology which has for its object to set 
forth the knowledge of God and the divine life as gathered from a large study 
of the Bible, as opposed to a merely minute study of particular texts on the 
one hand, and to a mere use of philosophical methods on the other.
--Dogmatic theology, that department of theology which has for its object a 
connected and scientific statement of theology as a complete and harmonious 
science as authoritatively held and taught by the church.
--Exegetical theology. See exegetical.
--Federal theology, a system of theology based upon the idea of two covenants 
between God and man--the covenant of nature, or of works, before the fall, by 
which eternal life was promised to man on condition of his perfect obedience to 
the moral law, and the covenant of grace, after the fall, by which salvation 
and eternal life are promised to man by the free grace of God. Kloppenburg, 
professor of theology at Franeker in the Netherlands (died 1652), originated 
the system, and it was perfected (1648) by John Koch (Cocceius), successor of 
Kloppenburg in the same chair. See Cocceian. 
--Fundamental theology, that branch of systematic theology which vindicates 
man's knowledge of God by the investigation of its grounds and sources in 
general, and of the trustworthiness of the Christian revelation in particular, 
and which therefore includes both natural theology and the evidences of 
Christianity.
--Genevan theology. See Genevan.
--Historical theology, the science of the history and growth of Christian 
doctrines.
--Homiletic theology. Same as homiletics.
--Liberal theology. See liberal Christianity, under liberal

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith

[Benjamin Udell]

Bruno, list,

If I understand you correctly, then you mean, more generally:

G* \ G will correspond to any true conclusion that the machine can draw by 
other than deductive (= truth-preservative)inference.

Best, Ben Udell

- Original Message - 
From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Everything-List List" 
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith

Le 09-janv.-06, à 18:30, Benjamin Udell a écrit :

> By "ampliative induction" I mean, not mathematical induction.

Nice!  I hope you will be patient enough to see that this is a good 
description of G* \ G.
G characterises the self-referential discourse of the lobian machine, 
which is fundamentally a machine capable of using mathematical 
induction(+).
G* \ G will correspond to anything true that the machine can guess 
without using mathematical induction.

Bruno

(+) IF a property is such that 1) it is true for 0, and 2) if true for 
n it is true for n+1; THEN it will be true for all numbers.
More compactly:   {P(0) & [for all n:  P(n) -> P(n+1)]} -> for all n 
P(n).

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 11-janv.-06, à 17:57, Benjamin Udell a écrit :



Bruno, list,

Well, on the basis of that which you say below (much of which I 
unfortunately only vaguely understand), where you don't focus it all 
decidedly on the particular issues of faith and belief, it actually 
does now sound more like some sort of theology. It has various 
elements of theology in the broader or more comprehensive sense.




Thanks for telling. Note that it is all normal you only vaguely 
understand my last post, because it is a very concise summary.






The thing that it seems to be missing is gods or God. Considered as 
theology, it seems like a wheel sorely missing its hub.



The neoplatonician use often the term "God" for "ultimate explanation", 
and also use often (but it is an idiosyncrasies) the names of the greek 
Gods for concept (EROS = love, THANATOS = death, etc.). Strictly 
speaking, it has nothing to do with the judeo-christian notion of God.
Still, I like to define axiomatically God by something so big that it 
escapes any attempt to define it, except perhaps in some negative way. 
In that sense I could argue that the "God" of comp theology can be 
identified either with either the "ultimate explanation", the "root of 
everything" or even with the unnameable SELF which caracterizes the 
comp first person.
Perhaps the chapter of "God" will be a necessary blank page in comp 
treatise.
Now, I think that "GOD" as a term has much more heavy connotation than 
theology, but I am probably underestimating the stealing of "rational 
theology" by the political power (this happened sometimes after 
Plotinus death).





At this point, in terms of descriptive accuracy, this hublessness 
seems the hub of the matter. So it sounds like a kind of 
psycho-cosmology, or -- well, not a psychophysics, but, in order to 
suggest your computationalist primacy of the soul -- a physiopsychics 
(in English, if the adjective is "physicopsychical," it's a little 
less suggestive of paranormalism, which is strongly associated 
nowadays with the adjective "psychic.")


(C.S. Peirce held that matter is "congealed mind." Though he thought 
that space would turn out to be curved, he was pre-Einstein and saw 
matter as a kind of spentness and barrenness rather than as a tight 
lockup of energy.)


Your theory may be empirically refutable but, if it survives such 
tests, what is there to support its affirmation?



The UDA+MOVIEgraph argument. I will simply say UDA. (Universal 
Dovetailer Argument).






 Is derivability of physical laws from "laws of mind" really enough?



Would be nice, but the UDA shows there is no choice. Please understand 
that the UDA argument explains only but completely that if the comp 
hyp. is true then necessarily matter emerges from mind. Because this 
sounds so weird I have begin a derivation, at first just in order to 
illustrate what that could mean.




An information theorist, John Collier, said at the peirce email forum 
"peirce-l" that he had managed to derive each two among logic, 
information theory, and probability theory, from the third remaining, 
though I don't know whether he ever published these derivations.



Could be interesting.



Have you shown that your "laws of mind" cannot be derived from physics 
in a way that shows that the nonderivability is not merely a result of 
our insufficent knowledge of physical law? You may also encounter some 
flak on your conception of mind.



The problem is that physics does never really address the mind-body 
problem, with some exception like Mario Bunge, but he dismisses it and 
explain it "away" in a manner similar to Dennett. Many people have try 
and generally the honest one (like Dennett) admit their failure. It 
*is* a tricky problem. my original goal of my research (and thesis) was 
*just* to explain that the mind body problem was not yet solved. That 
is how and why I eventually translate it into a measure (on 
computational histories) problem, quite in line with discussion on this 
list.






For what it's worth, for my part, I would hold that a key factor in 
intelligence, at least, which learns and grows, is an evolvability 
factor, a kind of sufficient un-boundness to its "codes" and its 
methods and systems of interpretation, in order to be able to test 
those codes, methods, systems and to do so not only by trial and error 
but more sophisticated kinds of learning and testing, such that memory 
and active recollection take on particular importance.



I do agree with you here.




Do your laws of mind take evolvability into account? Maybe they don't 
need to, though, depending on what you mean by "mind." I tend to think 
that the mind must involve the retention and evolvability factor in 
some radical way, but it's quite vague to me how that would work. 
Maybe there are things which could fairly be called "mind" though I 
would never have thought of them that way.



As far as you don't (re)introduce substances, there is a possibility of 
stayin

Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 09-janv.-06, à 18:30, Benjamin Udell a écrit :


By "ampliative induction" I mean, not mathematical induction.


Nice!  I hope you will be patient enough to see that this is a good 
description of G* \ G.
G characterises the self-referential discourse of the lobian machine, 
which is fundamentally a machine capable of using mathematical 
induction(+).
G* \ G will correspond to anything true that the machine can guess 
without using mathematical induction.


Bruno

(+) IF a property is such that 1) it is true for 0, and 2) if true for 
n it is true for n+1; THEN it will be true for all numbers.
More compactly:   {P(0) & [for all n:  P(n) -> P(n+1)]} -> for all n 
P(n).



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/