Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hi David,
Le 18-août-06, à 02:16, David Nyman wrote (answering John):
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
John
Thanks for taking the trouble to express your thoughts at such length.
I won't say too much now, as I have to leave shortly to meet a long
lost relative - from Hungary! However, I just want to make sure it's
clear, both for you and the list, that:
Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads.
isn't intended as a definitive claim that comp *is* false.
To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in
your long anti-roadmap post.
Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis +
Arithmetical Realism).
So, strictly speaking comp can be false in seven ways:
YD CT AR
1 1 1comp is true
1 1 0comp is false 1
1 0 1 2
1 0 0 3
0 1 1 4
0 1 0 5
0 0 1 6
0 0 0 7
1. AR is false, but CT is true, and YD is true. This would mean there
is a program which stops or does not stop according to my knowledge of
it. It is beyond my imagination, even if, as a logician I know that I
have to postulate AR. Of course the UD would loose all its purpose.
2. CT is false. This would mean there exist a way to explain in a
finite time how to compute a function from N to N, such that no
computer can be programmed to compute it. Possible but unlikely.
3) YD is true, but CT is false and AR is false. This means the doctor
is helped by Gods or Goddesses.
4) YD is false (and CT and AR are true). This means I am an actual
infinite object.
5) 6) 7): combination of above.
Rather, *if*
it is false, in what ways specifically, and what are the alternatives?
Can they be stated as clearly and explicitly as Bruno is trying to do
for his approach ('to see where it leads')? Hence the 'anti-roadmap',
or perhaps better - 'another roadmap', or some ideas for one.
It is certainly interesting. But comp is a very weak statement, so
non-comp is very strong. It needs some actual infinite to be
implemented. Judson Webb range comp in the finitist doctrines
(but not in the ultra-finitist doctrine).
I believe that we are finite, but as I said in the computationalsim
and supervenience thread, it doesn't seem that this is a strong enough
statement to be useful in a TOE. It seems that you cannot have YD
without CT, but if true I would leave Bruno to explain exactly why.
The substitution level being a finite level is not strong enough to
conclude that there is a non-zero probability that the doctor will get
it right. That would be a bad bet/faith.
Most of
the thoughts in it were originally expressed in some earlier postings
on 'The Fabric of Reality' list, which Bruno was kind enough to copy to
this list. Anyway, it's intended as a point of departure (for me
certainly) and I look forward to some strenuous critiques.
One misgiving I have, now that I've finally grasped (I think) that the
comp 'theology' entails 'faith' in the number realm, ...
I prefer to reserve faith for the resurection promised but not
guarantied by the (honest) doctor.
I need infinitely less faith to believe that each number has a
successor than to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. AR is very weak.
Sometimes I regret to have been explicit on AR, because it looks like
everyone believe in it, except when we write it explicitly. People put
many things in it, which are not there. Not believing in AR also
entails that there is a finite polynomial (on the integers) such that
two different people can find different integer values when applying
the polynomial on the same number, and despite those people agree on
the meaning of + and * and zero and +1.
... is that by this
token it seeks to provide a TOE (Bruno, am I wrong about this?)
You are right. By the UDA it is not a matter of choice.
That
is, beginning with an assertion of 'faith' in UDA + the number realm,
we seek to axiomatise and 'prove' a complete theory of our origins.
Bruno is a very modest person, but I worry about the 'modesty' of the
goal.
Modesty is not incompatible with ambitious goal. You can decide to
climb the everest Mountain, and recognize you have climb only two
meters high :)
Of course, it's highly probable that I just misunderstand this
point. However, I'm having trouble with my faith in numbers,
monseigneur.
We cannot build a theory without accepting some intuitive truth, and
some third person presentation of those truth. AR false means that the
simple y = sin(x) real function could intersect the real axes on some
non integer abscisse. Do you really believe that? Quantum mechanics
relies completely on AR. If AR is false, QM is inconsistent (and almost
all math).
So, either you put in AR something which is
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Tom Caylor writes: As I remember it, my interpretation/expansion of the Yes Doctor assumption is that 1) there is a (finite of course) level of (digital) substitution (called the correct level of substitution) that is sufficient to represent all that I am, and all that I could be if I hadn't undergone a substitution, and 2) we (including the doctor) cannot know what the correct level of substitution is, therefore we have to gamble that the doctor will get it right when we say Yes Doctor. Suppose that the level of substitution actually *performed* by the Doctor is S_p. Denote the *correct* level of substitution S_c. S_p can be expressed by a finite number, since the substitution itself can be expressed by a finite number (whatever is written on the tape/CD or other storage/transmitting device). We know what S_p is and it is a *fixed* finite number. But since S_c (*correct* level) is totally unknowable, all we know about it is our assumption that it is finite. The next *obvious* step in the logical process is that the probability that S_p = S_c is infinitesimal. I.e. the probability that the doctor got it right is zilch. This is because most numbers are bigger than any fixed finite number S_p. So it seems that our step of faith in saying Yes Doctor in not well founded. It's definitely a bad bet. It seems that we need a stronger statement than S_c is finite. Surely an upper limit can be ascribed to S_c, probably way lower than the Beckenstein bound for a brain-sized object. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 21-août-06, à 20:28, Russell Standish a écrit : On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 01:32:14PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: The other sticking point is, given computationalism is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have been arguments that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, Searle, Moravec) and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal). OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like me) that we have: NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE That sentence summarises the problem pretty well. We have to agree that there is this dichotomy before proceeding further, and I don't think most computationalists do. To be sure, this is not how I interpret Maudlin or the movie-graph argument. I interpret it as NOT COMP or NOT PHYS SUP or NOT SINGLE_UNIVERSE. In a multiple universe (eg Everett style MWI), all counterfactuals are instantiated as well, so physical supervenience (over all branches) is compatible to COMP, and not equivalent to a recording. This is a very interesting remark, although I am not convinced. I have also believed for a while that a material universe could be saved by the way the quantum multiverse actualizes the counterfactuals. But if that were true, consciousness would not supervene on a *classical* machine running deterministically an emulation of a universal quantum turing itself running my brain, making comp false. Your move could belong to what I will perhaps eventually call the magical use of matter for explaining (away) consciousness. That move is subtler with respect to the movie-graph, than with respect to the seven first step of UDA. But I think you are correct, and it could be a pedagogical clever idea to show first clearly that the movie graph entails (not-comp OR not-phys-sup OR many-world), and then to show the perhaps less easy point that the concrete primitively material many-world is a red herring in this setting. We should come back on this in a the 8th step (movie graph) thread. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 19-août-06, à 16:35, 1Z a écrit : No, I am suggesting that 0-width slices don't contain enough information to predict future states in physics. What about a quantum state? 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, and the physical laws must take that into account. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Le 19-août-06, à 21:13, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John M.) a écrit : BTW I have a problem with the perfect 6: ITS DIVISORS are 1,2,3,6, the sum of which is 12, not 6 and it looks that there is NO other perfect number in this sense either. I have define a number to be perfect when it is equal to the sum of its proper divisor. Six is not a proper divisor of six. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Le 22-août-06, à 05:32, [EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : x-tad-bigger- Original Message -/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerFrom:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggerBruno Marchal/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerTo:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggereverything-list@googlegroups.com/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerSent:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger Monday, August 21, 2006 6:39 AM/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerSubject:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really.../x-tad-bigger skip I already told you that I interpret There exists a prime number in plato heaven, by There exist a prime number is true independently of me, you, the universe ... comp does not need a magical platonic realm in your sense. I don't introduce it for the notion of matter and it would be a fatal damage for comp if we were needing such a magic stuff for numbers. Comp needs just arithmetical realism AR. It is just the idea that the truth value of arithmetical proposition, including existential propositions, does not depend on me or of any cognition apparatus (indeed cognition apparatus are defined, with comp, by relation between numbers, like in Artificial Intelligence, or in comp cognitive science. Bruno There exist infinite prime numbers in Plato's heaven and 1000 of them can dance on the point of a pin. I am sure you have something better thn that! John Feynman discovered quantum computation by asking himself how many bits can be handled for a period of time on the point of a pin. Engineers would appreciate to know how many primes numbers we could encode on a pin. This is not a silly question, although out of topic in our fundamental quest, I guess. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Tom Caylor wrote: I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function TOE. As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the observer. That's the strangest thign I've read ina long time. BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your view ? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. A counterfactual is somethingthat could have happened, but didn't. A static, immaterial systems can only handle counterfactuals by turning them into factuals -- everything that can happen does happen. It can fully capture the *conditional* structure of a programme, (unlike a recording) at the expense of not being a process. A programme is not the same thing as a process. Computationalism refers to real, physical processes running on material computers. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. No-one would believe that a brain-scan, however detailed, is conscious, so not computationalist, however ardent, is required to believe that a progamme on a disk, gathering dust on a shelf, is sentient, however good a piece of AI code it may be! Another route is record the actual behaviour, under some circumstances of a process, into a stream of data (ultimately, a string of numbers, and therefore soemthing already in Plato's heaven). This route loses the conditonal structure, the counterfactuals that are vital to computer programmes and therefore to computationalism. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in general not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Since a recording is not computation as such, the computationalist need not attribute mentality to it -- it need not have a mind of its own, any more than the characters in a movie. (Another way of looking at this is via the Turing Test; a mere recording would never pass a TT since it has no condiitonal/counterfactual behaviour and therfore cannot answer unexpected questions). That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Multiverse theories seek to turn the 3rd-person X could have happened but didn't into the 1st-person X could have been observed by me, but wasn't. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, A quantum multiverse is sitll only a tiny corner of Platonia. Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple of one that many mathematical possibilities do not exist physically). For instance, even if their are two informationally identical me's in different branches of a phsycial universe, it is not inevitable that any sharing or corss-over of consicousness would occur, because in a phsyical universe, cosnciousness would have something other than informational structures to supervene on. Thus me might well be able to tell that we are in a quantum multiverse rather than Platonia, on the basis that we just do not observe enough weirdness. Too broad: If I am just a mathematical structure, I should have a much wider range of experience than I do. There is a mathemtical structure corresponding to myself with all my experiences up to time T. There is a vast array of mathematical structures corresponding to other versions of me with having a huge range of experiences -- ordinary ones, like continuing to type, extraordinary ones like seeing my computer sudenly turn into bowl of petunias. All these versions of me share the memories of the me who is writing this, so they all identify themselves as me. Remember, that for mathematical monism it is only necessary that a possible experience has a mathematical description. This
Re: Are First Person prime?
Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) Regards, Quentin Le mardi 22 août 2006 13:45, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. A counterfactual is somethingthat could have happened, but didn't. A static, immaterial systems can only handle counterfactuals by turning them into factuals -- everything that can happen does happen. It can fully capture the *conditional* structure of a programme, (unlike a recording) at the expense of not being a process. A programme is not the same thing as a process. Computationalism refers to real, physical processes running on material computers. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. No-one would believe that a brain-scan, however detailed, is conscious, so not computationalist, however ardent, is required to believe that a progamme on a disk, gathering dust on a shelf, is sentient, however good a piece of AI code it may be! Another route is record the actual behaviour, under some circumstances of a process, into a stream of data (ultimately, a string of numbers, and therefore soemthing already in Plato's heaven). This route loses the conditonal structure, the counterfactuals that are vital to computer programmes and therefore to computationalism. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in general not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Since a recording is not computation as such, the computationalist need not attribute mentality to it -- it need not have a mind of its own, any more than the characters in a movie. (Another way of looking at this is via the Turing Test; a mere recording would never pass a TT since it has no condiitonal/counterfactual behaviour and therfore cannot answer unexpected questions). That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Multiverse theories seek to turn the 3rd-person X could have happened but didn't into the 1st-person X could have been observed by me, but wasn't. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, A quantum multiverse is sitll only a tiny corner of Platonia. Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple of one that many mathematical possibilities do not exist physically). For instance, even if their are two informationally identical me's in different branches of a phsycial universe, it is not inevitable that any sharing or corss-over of consicousness would occur, because in a phsyical universe, cosnciousness would have something other than informational structures to supervene on. Thus me might well be able to tell that we are in a quantum multiverse rather than Platonia, on the basis that we just do not observe enough weirdness. Too broad: If I am just a mathematical structure, I should have a much wider range of experience than I do. There is a
Re: Are First Person prime?
Quentin Anciaux wrote: Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) We don't know what the BB emerged out of. It might have had more than enough ontological resources to generate time. It did not have time as we know it , but for all we know time as we know it is a mere privation or degenerate case of some funky hyper-time. But we do know what the resources of Platonia are. It is a very wide, but very flat country; it contains every possible static eternal structure, but only static, eternal structures. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. Consider the following two programs: (a) input: x if x=1 print hello if x=0 print goodbye data: 1 and (b) print hello As written, program (a) will print hello just as consistently as program (b). It looks like program (a) has a conditional in that if the 4th line were data: 0 it would print goodbye. However, program (b) would also print goodbye if that string were substituted for hello. Both programs do the same thing, and both would do something else if the programmer intervened and changed them. In (a) the code is separated into program and data but as you pointed out recently there is no real difference between these. Subroutines within a larger program could be intelligent entities interacting with a virtual environment with no input from outside the program in the same way as intelligent entities within the real universe interact with the environment with no input from outside the universe. It's worth standing back at this point and looking at what a computer + program + data really is: a collection of plastic, metal, and semiconductors assembled in a specified way which has no choice but to follow the laws of physics. The if-then statements amount to a particular physical configuration such that stimulus x will make the computer behave one way while stimulus y will make it behave in a different way. This is not fundamentally different to saying that, for example, a car is configured so that it will turn left or right depending on which way the steering wheel is turned. In both situations, dumb matter blindly follows the laws of physics. The difference is in the details, complexity and intended purpose of each device; it is not that the computer interacts with its environment and handles counterfactuals while the car does not. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 01:32:14PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: The other sticking point is, given computationalism is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have been arguments that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, Searle, Moravec) and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal). OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like me) that we have: NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE That sentence summarises the problem pretty well. We have to agree that there is this dichotomy before proceeding further, and I don't think most computationalists do. To be sure, this is not how I interpret Maudlin or the movie-graph argument. I interpret it as NOT COMP or NOT PHYS SUP or NOT SINGLE_UNIVERSE. In a multiple universe (eg Everett style MWI), all counterfactuals are instantiated as well, so physical supervenience (over all branches) is compatible to COMP, and not equivalent to a recording. That is an interesting point. However, a computation would have to be associated with all related branches in order to bring all the counterfactuals (or rather conditionals) into a single computation. (IOW treating branches individually would fall back into the problems of the Movie approach) If a computation is associated with all branches, consciousness will also be according to computationalism. That will bring on a White Rabbit problem with a vengeance. However, it is not that computation cannot be associated with counterfactuals in single-universe theories -- in the form of unrealised possibilities, dispositions and so on. If consciousness supervenes on computation , then it supervenes on such counterfactuals too; this amounts to the response to Maudlin's argument in wich the physicalist abandons the claim that consciousness supervenes on activity. Of ocurse, unactualised possibilities in a sinlge universe are never going to lead to any White Rabbit!. 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) Mathematics 0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Platonism vs Realism WAS: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Brent meeker writes (quoting Peter Jones, Quentin Anciaux and SP): Hi, Le Dimanche 20 Août 2006 05:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Peter Jones writes (quoting SP): What about an inputless computer program, running deterministically like a recording. Would that count as a program at all, It would be a trivial case. Trivial does not mean false. It seems to me that the set of inputless programs contains the set of programs which have inputs. Because a program which have inputs could be written as the following inputless program : |HARDCODED INPUT||CODE| The resulting program is input less but the substructure denominated CODE here is not inputless, it takes the hardcoded input. So in any case I don't see why inputless program should be trivial case. Regards, Quentin I thought the question was not about computation, but whether a program was intelligent or conscious. I think that intelligence means being able to respond to a variety of differenet inputs. So above |CODE| might be intelligent but not the overall inputless program. OK, I suppose you could say I'm intelligent but not I + my environment are intelligent. That still allows that an inputless program might contain intelligent beings, and you are left with the problem of how to decide whether a physical system is implementing such a program given that you can't talk to it. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 22-août-06, à 14:36, 1Z a écrit : Quentin Anciaux wrote: Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) We don't know what the BB emerged out of. It might have had more than enough ontological resources to generate time. It did not have time as we know it , but for all we know time as we know it is a mere privation or degenerate case of some funky hyper-time. But we do know what the resources of Platonia are. What do you mean by resources of Platonia ? It is a very wide, but very flat country; it contains every possible static eternal structure, but only static, eternal structures. No physical block universe then. But that confirms what Quentin Anciaux said, it all boils down to the question of a primitive time or not. Obviously, comp makes time (and space and all physicalities) form of stable illusion from inside. (But I dislike the word illusion). Many physicist, like Sanders for example, and many philosophers defend the indexical version of time (which is also defended by Deutsch). Peter, be patient for a comment to your long post of today, I am trying to finish a comment on another long post by David. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Platonism vs Realism WAS: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Le 22-août-06, à 15:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : OK, I suppose you could say I'm intelligent but not I + my environment are intelligent. That still allows that an inputless program might contain intelligent beings, and you are left with the problem of how to decide whether a physical system is implementing such a program given that you can't talk to it. People who believes that inputs (being either absolute-material or relative-platonical) are needed for consciousness should not believe that we can be conscious in a dream, given the evidence that the brain is almost completely cut out from the environment during rem sleep. I guess they have no problem with comatose people either. Of course they cannot be even just troubled by the UD, which is a program without inputs and without outputs. Now, without digging in the movie-graph, I would still be interested if someone accepting standard comp (Peter's expression) could explain how a digital machine could correctly decide that her environment is real-physical. If such machine and reasoning exist, it will be done in Platonia, and, worst, assuming comp, it will be done as correctly as the real machine argument. This would lead to the fact that in Platonia, there are (many) immaterial machines proving *correctly* that they are immaterial. Contradiction. Remark: the key idea which is used here is that not only programs belong to Platonia, but their relative computations also. It is important to keep the distinction between (static) programs and their dynamical computations. I will write Fi, as the function computed by the ith programs in some universal enumeration of partial recursive functions (like an infinite list of fortran programs, say). I will write Fi(x) for the value of that function with input x, if that value exists. I will write sFi(x) the s-trace of that program (with input x), where the trace stops after the sth steps in the relative run of Fi(x). The trace is computer scientist name for a description of the computational steps---it can be shown that such computational steps can always be defined for the Fi and Wi. I will define a (3-PERSON) computation of Fi(x) as being the sequence 1Fi(x), 2Fi(x), 3Fi(x), etc ... This is well defined relatively to some universal number or code. In this sense, computations belong to Platonia. The reason why I feel myself here and now can then be reduced to the relative 1-person comp indeterminacy a-la Washington/Moscow. Note that the adjective relative is capital here. Without it, the indexical conception of time (and space) would not work. 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-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Le 21-août-06, à 04:14, David Nyman a écrit : Bruno (BTW please delete any previous version of this posted in error.) I'm absolutely sincere in what I've said about approaching comp in 'as if' mode. All right. I thought so. Let us try to see if and where we differ. But at the same time I've hoped from the beginning that we could make explicit the choices that motivate our different ontic starting assumptions. Are there perhaps irreconcilable issues of style or preference, or are there fundamental logical, philosophical, or even semantic errors entailed in one or other position? Well, let me continue in the effort by trying to clarify my position on some of your recent points. So, either you put in AR something which is not there (like peter D Jones who want me doing Aristotle error on the numbers (like if I was reifying some concreteness about them), or you should have a powerful argument against AR, but then you should elaborate. To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in your long anti-roadmap post. Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis + Arithmetical Realism). OK. I've already agreed to accept AR in 'as if' mode. So that implies I'm staying on the comp road in the same 'as if' spirit to see where it leads. It's very interesting! Also I genuinely think that AR is not 'false' from any of the *logical* perspectives from which you defend it. OK. My problem - outside 'as if' mode (and this goes back to the 'primacy' issue) - is with adopting *any* essentially 'non-indexical' (or in Colin's usage 'non-situated') postulate as 'ontic ground zero'. My view - and I'm still not clear whether you think it unjustified, or that you simply *prefer* to start elsewhere - is that we go wrong the moment we fail to treat reflexive indexical necessity with maximal - *extreme* - seriousness. My most basic claim is that to make *any* non-indexical assumption primary - even one as apparently 'modest' as AR - is to try to 'sneak past' this, and thereby to fail *the* crucial test of ontic realism. Because comp makes it possible to postulate a simple theory where everything is communicable in a third person way. By making the first person primitive, you loose the ability to explain it (or to get some best possible third person explanation). I agree with Peter (1Z) when he criticize you by saying that a person is something complex, and I agree with Dennett when he says that something complex must be explained by something easier. Now comp shows the ultimate fundamental role of the first person, and that is why I appreciate your seriousness here, and in principle you still could try to formalize it in a third person way, but your last attempt led to some explosion of more complicated concepts. The same remark works when you are making indexical primitive, although indexical can be translated in purely third person way (that is exactly what Post, Turing, Godel ... Kleene have proved). The case of platonist or classical machine gives rise to the indexical but purely arithmetical provability predicate B, and this one is quasi-primitive in the sense that all others notions of persons (the hypostases) are variant of B. So yes, there is just a tiny difference between us. I just doubt you can axiomatize your first person indexical seriousness in a simple third person way. If comp is correct, you can't, I think, and eventually this gives a protection of the first person against normative theories. To sum up, the notion of first person is too complex to be be primitive, especially when you see that comp explains why the first person is correct when thinking it is primitive (but false by trying to put this in a third person discourse. And the, unlike Peter, I consider that the notion of matter is also complex, and assuming it also thhrows away any hope foir explanation, and then comp forbid that move anyway by the UDA. We could call this position maximal personal, or indexical, seriousness, but what's in a name? It frustrates me almost beyond endurance that this isn't simply 'obvious' (though error, especially one's own, is subtle). As a first person discourse, comp tells that you are correct. As a third person discourse you are on the verge of inconsistency. But it seems as though we're somehow 'tricked' out of seeing it because all 'personal' interaction (including that with the 'self') is relational, and 3rd-person is the characteristic mode of relational interaction. So all natural language just assumes it. Consequently when you say: What you say is exactly what the lobian *first person* will feel. I hope you will see this eventually. I think I do 'see' it. I understand that the lobian first person *emerging* from your non-indexical AR postulate could indeed be decribed as 'possessing' such a view. I can indeed 'see' how you can invoke a '1st-person David analog' in
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Bruno:
I read you. I wanted to make a 'link' to
"heaven". Feynman had a humorous mind (as most intelligent people). He
also referred to the medieval silliness of realizing angels (in any
discussion).
Now back to numbers:
I always considered the "world" of (pure) math
[numbers?] a separate one on its own. This is why I differentiated between
"Math" (cap. introduced by Robert Rosen) from "math", the applied
quantizing in the (reductionist) sciences.
The ("other?") world is what makes sense
(sensible non-number meanings).
I still cannot see a bridge
between the (theoretical) churning of numbers (by whatever symbolics) and the
ideational (other?) world, to assign sensible meaning (content?) as equivalent
to number-monsters, or mental events in the 'sensible' world as referring to
'number-manipulations'.
(I call mental events also those that are
reflected as 'events of material world')
The only 'comp' that does that is a - not
binary, not decimal, but 26-ary device (in English, meaning letters as symbols)
the churning of which DOES represent 'meaning' (called words in semantics). The
rules of such math are translatable into 'sensible' meaning from their 26ary
comp (not by illiterates).
The binary (present embryonic-level comp)
reaches such result by the system of transforming the 26ary into binary and
applying additional binary rules into the 26ary meaning.
This is not new, my 1928 Underwood typewriter
did the trick (without binary).
The program was in the typists' brain and
fingers.
So where is the "key" to translate
number-monsters into "thought-monsters"?
Regards
John
- Original Message -
From:
Bruno Marchal
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 6:10
AM
Subject: Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet
really...
Le 22-août-06, à 05:32, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit
:
- Original
Message -From:
Bruno
Marchal To:
everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent:
Monday, August 21, 2006 6:39 AMSubject:
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet
really...
skipI already told you that I
interpretThere exists a prime number "in plato
heaven",by"There exist a prime number" is true
independently of me, you, the universe ...comp does not need a
magical platonic realm in your sense. I don't introduce it for the notion
of matter and it would be a fatal damage for comp if we were needing such
a magic stuff for numbers.Comp needs just arithmetical realism AR. It
is just the idea that the truth value of arithmetical proposition,
including existential propositions, does not depend on me or of any
cognition apparatus (indeed "cognition apparatus" are defined, with comp,
by relation between numbers, like in Artificial Intelligence, or in comp
cognitive science. BrunoThere existinfinite
prime numbers in Plato's heaven and1000 of them can dance on the
point of a pin.I am sure you have something better thn
that!John Feynman
discovered quantum computation by asking himself how many bits can be handled
for a period of time on the point of a pin.Engineers would appreciate to
know how many primes numbers we could encode on a pin. This is not a silly
question, although out of topic in our fundamental quest, I
guess.Brunohttp://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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08/21/06
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
1Z wrote: That's the strangest thign I've read ina long time. !!! That's odd, because this's the stringest thagn I've road ina ling tome. David Tom Caylor wrote: I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function TOE. As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the observer. That's the strangest thign I've read ina long time. BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your view ? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Bruno Marchal wrote: I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory. All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy). --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
1Z wrote: Tom Caylor wrote: I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function TOE. As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the observer. That's the strangest thign I've read ina long time. Truth is stranger than fiction. Something strange may be just what is needed to break out of going around in circles. BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your view ? The way I see it, we define math in the first place as being whatever is independent of the observer (i.e. invariance). (This is why observer-dependent math seems absurd.) But then I think this search for invariance eventually brings us full circle to a self-referential paradox. Math is whatever we observe (to be true / to exist) independent of the observer. Is AR about truth or existence? Is the earth is flat about truth or existence? I believe only in a relative/local/apparent AR, but that really isn't AR. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Tom Caylor wrote: But then I think this search for invariance eventually brings us full circle to a self-referential paradox. Math is whatever we observe (to be true / to exist) independent of the observer. The fact that an observer can observe something doesn't make it dependent on the observer. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Platonism vs Realism WAS: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 22-août-06, à 15:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : OK, I suppose you could say I'm intelligent but not I + my environment are intelligent. That still allows that an inputless program might contain intelligent beings, and you are left with the problem of how to decide whether a physical system is implementing such a program given that you can't talk to it. People who believes that inputs (being either absolute-material or relative-platonical) are needed for consciousness should not believe that we can be conscious in a dream, given the evidence that the brain is almost completely cut out from the environment during rem sleep. The brain didn't evolve to dream. I guess they have no problem with comatose people either. Of course they cannot be even just troubled by the UD, which is a program without inputs and without outputs. Now, without digging in the movie-graph, I would still be interested if someone accepting standard comp (Peter's expression) could explain how a digital machine could correctly decide that her environment is real-physical. A *person* can decide their enviroment is *uncomputable*. If classical physics had been true, the environment would have been uncomputable. If such machine and reasoning exist, it will be done in Platonia, and, worst, assuming comp, it will be done as correctly as the real machine argument. This would lead to the fact that in Platonia, there are (many) immaterial machines proving *correctly* that they are immaterial. Contradiction. If the mind is a computation, its errors are computations as well. Platonia wil contain every mathematical possibility -- every combination of mind and environment. Competent minds correctly judging their environments are computable, competent minds correctly judging their environments are uncomputable, incompetent minds incorrectly judging their environments are uncomputable, incompetent minds incorrectly judging their environments are computable. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
Bruno Marchal wrote: Because comp makes it possible to postulate a simple theory where everything is communicable in a third person way. By making the first person primitive, you loose the ability to explain it (or to get some best possible third person explanation). I'm still not sure I've communicated this 'primitivity' correctly, but IMO comp (in 'pure' AR+CT+YD form) achieves what you claim at the cost of coherence about 'existence' (see below). (BTW, is it simply the case that 'existence' in the sense described below is not really your concern? When you said that grandma was 'very very close indeed', what else is needed for Achilles to get abreast of the tortoise, if I may thus egregiously mix my metaphors?) So yes, there is just a tiny difference between us. I just doubt you can axiomatize your first person indexical seriousness in a simple third person way. If comp is correct, you can't, I think, and eventually this gives a protection of the first person against normative theories. But this suggests to me that comp, in the 'instantiation-free' AR+CT+YD sense, *cannot* be correct, precisely because it makes 'existential' claims for the 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd-person way'. The key issue here is surely the distinction between 'existence' and 'truth' as Peter specifies in his post to me. Indexical seriousness is believing that whatever exists does so 'in the sense that I exist'. (The 'infinity' of this sense must be resolved within the infinity or otherwise of whatever exists.) 'Truth' is an abstraction from whatever exists, and there is no justification for hypothesising it to 'exist' in any other sense whatsoever. Truths are 'dispositions to believe' - highly organised metaphors, no more, just as 'I' am. What they are 'about' is other features of what exists, and this situation exists self-referentially solely 'in the sense that I exist'. AR, CT, etc. are functional instantiations of such metaphors within what exists. They are just one part of what exists modelling another. My view is that 'participation in what exists' exhausts what we can 'modestly' claim as 'axiomatic'. We agree, I think, that it is our unique source of knowledge of anything whatsoever. Consequently, it seems to me perverse to reject its brutely 'given' status in any schematisation of 'what exists'. I think you seek to overcome this by giving 'truth' primacy and then deriving 'what exists' from this. I know you believe that this is a 'modest' assumption, but IMO its modesty cannot compensate for its incoherence. I would challenge you to demonstrate any natural language specifiable meaning of truth that is not a mapping between putative features of 'what exists in the sense that I exist'. Mathematical truth is a special version of this, the 'putative features' here being metaphorised as highly abstracted/ highly structured 'mathematical objects'. Ditto logic. The fact that a logical or mathematical analysis can show what 3rd-person (i.e. logically) specifiable entities 'would believe' is epistemologically insightful but existentially neither here nor there, because the logic is the *model*, not the *referent*. And it's the referent that 'possesses' the belief, not the model. I agree with Peter (1Z) when he criticize you by saying that a person is something complex, and I agree with Dennett when he says that something complex must be explained by something easier. The 'sense in which I exist' is not dependent on my complexity. It's rather the *bare participation* of 'whatever-I-am' in what exists, not the specifics of this (as Peter points out, his formulation exists precisely to leave questions of detail open). Consequently, what I've been calling 'indexical' or '1st person' existence (and obviously these are bad terms because they lead to such misunderstanding) is *not* complex, and avoids Dennett's criticism, and also Peter's (because the same confusion had unfortunately arisen between us). Yes and that is normal. I reduce the mystery of here and now to the much simpler mysteries of the type: why am I in Washington and not in Moscow, or why am I in Moscow and not in Washington after a WM self-duplication experiment. Surely with comp you could figure out that those questions, although first person meaningful, are third person meaningless. NO? Yes, but I don't think these conclusions are dependent on comp. They are simply an aspect of point-of-view, or the localising effect of 'information horizons'. Identity is global, point-of-view is local. My criticism was not this, but rather against the invocation of 'global indexicality' as an artefact of 3rd person models. Metaphorically, 3rd person is 'over there', indexical necessity 'over here'. You can't make something appear 'over here', whatever you do 'over there', because what's 'over there' is just your *story* about what's going on 'over here'. So my point is that the story about 'indexicality' has to be understood as
Re: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
- Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 6:04 AM Subject: Re: ROADMAP (well, not yet really... (See below) Teach! - I have a difference against your mathematical definition! (ha ha) I thought if '1' is a proper divisor of a number, then the number itself is also. Upon your post I looked up Wikipedia: divisor (nice page) and copied from it: * For example, 7 is a divisor of 42 because 42/7 = 6. We also say 42 is divisible by 7 or 42 is a multiple of 7 or 7 divides 42 and we usually write 7 | 42. For example, the positive divisors of 42 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 21, 42. * I don't think 42 is so different from 6. If you abandon the number itself, you MUST abandon the 1 as well and in that case 6, indeed nothing is a perfect number. I really had that suspicion that 'numbers' are not so perfect! (metaphorically). (I have an idea why it is important to leave out the number proper: if '1' and the 'number' are included, there would be NO PRIME NUMBER at all. Would be a shame! Sorry for 37 indeed. Of course the definition of 'prime number' excludes 'the number itself and '1' - which, however, is not binding to the 'definition' of a divisor.) Pupil John == Le 19-août-06, à 21:13, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John M.) a écrit : BTW I have a problem with the perfect 6: ITS DIVISORS are 1,2,3,6, the sum of which is 12, not 6 and it looks that there is NO other perfect number in this sense either. I have define a number to be perfect when it is equal to the sum of its proper divisor. Six is not a proper divisor of six. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.4/424 - Release Date: 08/21/06 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. That's my point. Counterfactuals are defined relative to some environment/data/input which we suppose to be possibly different. It's not so much that it's not well defined, but that it's aribtrarily defined. So I think lz's point about intelligence requiring counterfactuals is the same as saying intelligence is relative to some environment - a view with which I agree. In the case of reproducing organisms the organism/environment distinction is clear. In a simulation it's not. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Platonism vs Realism WAS: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 22-août-06, à 15:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : OK, I suppose you could say I'm intelligent but not I + my environment are intelligent. That still allows that an inputless program might contain intelligent beings, and you are left with the problem of how to decide whether a physical system is implementing such a program given that you can't talk to it. People who believes that inputs (being either absolute-material or relative-platonical) are needed for consciousness should not believe that we can be conscious in a dream, given the evidence that the brain is almost completely cut out from the environment during rem sleep. Almost is not completely. In any case, I don't think consciousness is maintained indefinitely with no inputs. I think a brain-in-a-vat would go into an endless loop without external stimulus. I guess they have no problem with comatose people either. Comatose people are generally referred to as unconscious. Of course they cannot be even just troubled by the UD, which is a program without inputs and without outputs. As I understood the UD the program itself was not conscious, but rather that some parts are supposed to be, relative to a simulated environment. Now, without digging in the movie-graph, I would still be interested if someone accepting standard comp (Peter's expression) could explain how a digital machine could correctly decide that her environment is real-physical. Decide is ambiguous. She could very well form that hypothesis and find much confirming and no contrary evidence. What are you asking for? a proof from some axioms? Which axioms? If such machine and reasoning exist, it will be done in Platonia, and, worst, assuming comp, it will be done as correctly as the real machine argument. This would lead to the fact that in Platonia, there are (many) immaterial machines proving *correctly* that they are immaterial. Contradiction. Suppose a physical machine implements computation and proves relative to some axioms that physical machines don't exist. Contradiction? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 01:18:06PM -, 1Z wrote: That is an interesting point. However, a computation would have to be associated with all related branches in order to bring all the counterfactuals (or rather conditionals) into a single computation. (IOW treating branches individually would fall back into the problems of the Movie approach) If a computation is associated with all branches, consciousness will also be according to computationalism. That will bring on a White Rabbit problem with a vengeance. Not really, as conscious experience is only associated with one branch, but multiple branches are needed to have any conscious experience at all. The WR problem is solved by the robustness solution Alistair Malcolm and I worked out years ago. We have good evolutionary reasons to suppose robustness is an essential feature of consciousness. -- *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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Platonism vs Realism WAS: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Brent Meeker writes (quoting SP): You might say that a computer program has a two-way interaction with its environment while a recording does not, but it is easy to imagine a situation where this can be perfectly reproduced by a recording. In run no. 1, you start up the computer program and have a conversation with it. In run no. 2 you start up the computer program and play it the recording of your voice from run no. 1. As far as the program is aware, it receives exactly the same inputs and goes through exactly the same responses on both runs, but one is a recording and the other is not. Run no. 2 is exactly analogous to a film: a fixed input resulting in a fixed output, even though if the input had been different the output would also have been different. I don't see how you could say that the computer is conscious in run no. 1 but not in run no. 2. If the program is intelligent it'll be bored by 2. :-) You seem to mixing questions of discovering whether a program is intelligent, with what it means for it to be intelligent. No, it won't be bored because there is no way for it to know that it is going through the first or the second run. The point I was trying to make is that there is no real basis for distinguishing between a recording and a program, and hence no basis for saying that a program can be intelligent or conscious and a recording cannot. A corrolary to this is that there can be no real distinction between program and data, or computer and environment: they are just artificially segregated parts within a larger system. This means that in general it is not possible to say whether a physical system is or isn't implementing a computation, because the usual test of whether it handles counterfactuals will not necessarily work. This would be a trivial result *unless* we say that a computation can be conscious, in which case self-contained universes of conscious beings are hidden all around us. To avoid this conclusion you either have to drop computationalism or drop the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
