Re: MGA 3
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:39:34AM +, Michael Rosefield wrote: This distinction between physicalism and materialism, with materialism allowing for features to emerge, it sounds to me like a join-the-dots puzzle - the physical substrate provides the dots, but the supervening system also contains lines - abstract structures implied by but not contained within the system implementing it. But does that not mean that this also implies further possible layers to the underlying reality? That no matter how many turtles you go down, there's always more turtles to come? I don't think it implies it, but it is certainly possible. Emergence is possible with just two incommensurate levels. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Lost and not lost 1 (Plan)
On 11/12/2008, at 4:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10/12/2008, at 4:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Here, below, is the plan of my heroic attempt (indeed) to explain why I think that: IF we assume that we are machine, Never understood what people meant by a machine. Actually I was thinking digital machine or digitalizable machine. Like Mechanism will always mean digital mechanism. I will explain this later. To define the notion of machine in general is not easy. With the usual physical theories most things are machine and are even digital or analog but still digitalizable machine. I prefer not working with precise definitions, and instead illustrate the concept through the reasoning. Yes, entendu - with the condition, perhaps, that wherever possible, we reify somehow I want to bring this whole thing down to 'street level' a bit more I can quickly grasp something if it is presented to me as an experience; qualia play a role early on - I have to be able to 'sense' it On the other hand: I understand intellectually many things that I have never experienced - these things leave me cold. Your reasoning does not - so it already seems less than abstract to me which is good. So: I am usually happiest if the output of the reasoning is an experience or its description - not an abstraction Mechanism is already a good reification - not just an object but a process The main idea is that a machine or a mechanism is something that is a finite combination of a finite number of elementary parts (or locally finite, since it could grow). In all circumstances, it's behaviour can be explained or reduced to the predictible local behavior of the elementary parts. When the elementary parts are many, this leads to differential equations. When not so many, it gives rise to difference equations or recursive processes. = fractalism (point of view)? This may mean the simplest machines that exist are probably fractal in nature, already self-referential. That already evokes consciousness, doesn't it? Fractals are extremely self- referential highly arresting patterns. Consciousness may only require recursion to emerge (assuming MAT) It seems to me that 'consciousness' is deeply embedded in the very idea of what a machine is - not Descartian dualism for me - just the result of recursive patterning reaching a critical simplicity The very idea of explanation often implicitly or explicitly relies on mechanism, or on a mechanism. An explanation is then, something with logical connections that is itself in some ways machine? Does not an explanation usually also *specify* a description of the thing explained? A description is always the result of a certain perspective. Is the perspective of the description able to be formalised? I've always thought I was a machine. This is not obvious. Except to he who believes it or feels it to be right Is the system Earth-Moon really a machine? Already with the rough definition given above, we could doubt it, if only because the Moon-Earth system is usually described byinfinite real variable functions. The real functions operate on the real numbers, the points of the line, which are infinite objects. With quantum mechanics the apparent real things get digital, but if you keep the collapse of the wave, it is hard to even describe you as either a physical thing still less a machine. Well, yes. This is what is usually referred to as splitting (wave collapse) which always sounded to me like magic Decoherence kind of explains it With the many world, the usual mechanist explanation of the observer is preserved, except for the classical mechanics behind. (Albeit only logicians, to be sure, have provided, computable or mechanist function on the reals with non computable derivatives). Mr Spock pointy ears are growing on you right now - wear them with pride And what about the believers? Jacques Arsac, a french computer scientist wrote a book beginning by I am a Catholic so I cannot believe in Artificial Intelligence, and its point is that we are not machine. Is this a case where the Catholics are maybe right on something? I'm also happy to 'not be a machine' if Professor Father Arsac has God's authority over it Renault, the car firm, made an advertising based on the idea that you are not a machine Did they sell more or less cars as a result of this? But the real trouble with the mechanist idea is its apparent elimination of the subject, it explains consciousness away. So I'm happy with that too already. We aren't here. The universe is a joke Not only does mechanism not solve the mind body problem, but when mechanism and materialism are combined, as is usually still done, you get nihilism. This is really my point. I was just anticipating. You mean that there is no future in nihilism? Can't we find a role for meaninglessness in all of this? Would we be
KIM 1 (was: Lost and not lost 1)
Hi Kim, I recall the plan, the definition of machine, and then I comment your last post. I do this for preventing we get lost (or not lost) in a fractal conversation, which could be nice, but which is infinite, and we have to not abuse of Wei Dai hospitality. Right? The plan is:-- A) UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument) 1) I explain that if you are a machine, you are already immaterial. 2) Mechanism entails the existence of a subjective or first person indeterminacy or uncertainty. 3) The Universal Machine, the Universal Dovetailer and the reversal physics/bio-psycho-theo-whatever-logy. B) AUDA (Arithmetical or Abstract Universal Dovetailer Argument). 1) Ontology: Robinson Arithmetic 2) Epistemology: Peano Arithmetic 3) Arithmetical Interpretation of Plotinus (including Plotinus theory of Matter). - The definition of machine is (from my preceding post). The main idea is that a machine or a mechanism is something which is a finite combination of a finite number of elementary parts (or locally finite, it could grow) and which behavior in all circumstances can be explained or reduced to the predictible local behavior of the elementary parts). -- Si I will begin by explaining to you why, IF you are a machine, THEN you are (already) immaterial. (The 1) of the plan). (Note in passing that a machine cannot be a fractal, somehow a machine is a finite entity when fractals are essentially infinite, but this will not contradict your post, see below). Machines are finite combination of elementary parts. What is typical with machines is that we can fix them. Usually they get broken when some elementary parts or some sub-combinations are broken, and we can, in that situation, repair the machine by substituting the broken parts by some new equivalent one, which are supposed to be equivalent with respect to the role they have in the mechanism and context. For example, we can accept the idea that a heart is mainly a blood pump, and we expect to survive if our heart is replaced by a mechanical artificial heart. This is something which is already done every years. Artificial heart have progressed a lot those last years. The mechanist hypothesis is the hypothesis that we are machine so that, in principle, any part of us can be replaced. There is no special organ or part of us which should not be replaceable by an equivalent (artificial or natural) part. All right? Now, there is a natural an objection which we can hear from times to times. If my heart is broken, I can survive with the heart of Mister X, who died accidentally in a car crash. But if my brain is broken or is threatening to break, can I really expect to survive with Mister X's brain? If we accept the lesson of neurophysiology it looks more like the fact that Mister X survives, with its own memory and brain, and with my body. OK. In order for me to survive with Mister X brain, we will have to clean its memories from his brain, and to reconfigure Mister X's brain with the data collected in my own brain. The situation is the same with a computer. We can exchange the keyboard, but we have to be cautious not exchanging too rapidly the hard disk. If we exchange the hard disk, we have to make a backup of my computer before, then we have to be sure we got a new clean hard disk on which we can load the backup. All right? So if you are a machine, it means you can survive with an artificial brain, or with an entire artificial body. We have just to be cautious of retaining the right configuration of the elementary parts, at some level of description. In the case of the brain, this is a tremendous work, but we will need only the idea that Mechanism makes such thing possible in principle, at some level. All right? So, now, let me offer you, for your unbirthday feast, a new brain. Oh! You don't seem to happy. You already got six artificial brains! And you already have six artificial bodies. My gift is not so much original, sorry. Yet, now, each morning you can choose which body you will hang on (and have a different body for each day of the week now!). Of course in the evening you make a backup of the entire plan of the whole machinery which constitutes yourself, and in the morning (after having made the plan running on your big home computer for the delight of dreaming, for example) you have the ability to choose which body and which brain suits better for the day, a bit like you can choose which clothes suit you better. All right? But if you can choose which body (including the brain) you can use, this means you are NOT your body. Your body is much more like a vehicle, like a car. You can also dispose your seven different bodies in seven different planets, and use the internet as a locomotion
Re: MGA 3
On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 09:43:47AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. In what sense are they emergent? They emerge from what? They emerge from the underlying physics (or chemistry, or whatever the syntactic layer is). Supervenience is AFAICT nothing other than the concept of emergence applied to consciousness. In many respects it could be considered to be synonymous. This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I don't see why. When I state the supervenience thesis, I explain that the type of supervenience does not play any role, be it a causal relation or an epiphenomenon. In your Lille thesis (sorry I still haven't read your Brussels thesis) you say at the end of section 4.4.1 that SUP-PHYS supposes at minimum a concrete physical world. I don't see how this follows at all from the concept of supervenience, but I accept that it is necessary for (naive) physicalism. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). I don' really understand. If such argument is correct, how could classical logic not be quantum like. The problem of the white rabbits is that they are consistent. Sorry, to be clear - the white rabbits themselves are consistent, and also also quite rare (ie improbable). However they also tend to come in equal and opposite (ie contradictory) forms so when combined contribute to the measure of a non-magical world. That is information destructve phenomena. As for logic, each individual observer sees a world according to classical logic. Only by quantifying over multiple observers does quantum logic come into play. This is a key point I make on page 219 of my book. I'm sorry I haven't found the best way to express the argument yet - it really is quite subtle. I know Youness had difficulties with this aspect as well. I apologise - I have been speaking in coded sentences which require a deal of unpacking if you are unfamiliar with the concepts. But I'm in good company here... -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
