Re: Sane2004 Step One

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Sep 2012, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/6/2012 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its  
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to  
time and space,


Even if it is not *in* spacetime, my consciousness seems to depend  
on some particular localized matter in spacetime.


Seeming can be wrong. Only the content of consciousness depends on the  
particular matter localized in space-time.








but that's particular content of an atemporal consciousness.


An atemporal consciousness sounds like a contradiction in terms.


I agree. I don't use that in the reasoning. It is a recent suggestion,  
corroborated by the salvia reports and experiences.  I was used to  
agree with Brouwer that consciousness and subjective time are not  
separable, like the 1p logic examplifies (S4Grz is both a temporal  
logic, and the machine's 1p logic), but I am open to change my mind on  
this. We can hallucinate being conscious in a completely atemporal  
mode. I would not have believed this without living it, as it seems  
indeed to be a contradiction from the usual mundane state of  
consciousness.
 But it makes sense in arithmetic, or for the consciousness of the  
universal non Löbian machine. Apparently, subjective time might be a  
result of self-consciousness, and not just consciousness. This makes  
consciousness a bit more primitive than I thought indeed.




 If we rely on our intuitive introspection to know what  
consciousness is (as you often say) we can't then just throw away  
that insight and say consciousness is something else.


Yes. That is why such an insight requires altered state of  
consciousness. I agree it is weird, but it makes sense if we agree to  
declare non Löbian machine already conscious.


I have no certainty at all in this matter. The experiences have just  
added one more doubt, on the link between subjective time and  
consciousness. I would have thought that by losing Löbianity, you  
loose consciousness, but it seems that is not the case. We need more  
data and reports to better figure out what happens.


Bruno

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



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Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:03, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?  What if  
reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth  
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of  
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences.  We try to avoid  
this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning.  So  
a *descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore  
useless) but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't be  
inconsistent because it's not assertions.


Right. A theory, or a set of beliefs, or a set of propositions can be  
inconsistent. To say that reality is inconsistent or that a model (in  
the logician's sense) is inconsistent does not make sense, unless you  
build a theory in which reality is itself only a set of beliefs close  
for some logic.
Now, with comp the reality we can take is arithmetical truth, and even  
if seen as a set of sentences, I doubt this can be inconsistent.
But if you start with a set ontology, then indeed, I can imagine  
inconsistencies, but that would not be an inconsistency in reality,  
but inconsistency in the idea that reality is the set theoretical  
assumption again, in that case.
Paraconsistent logics, which admit local inconsistencies, make sense  
for the study of natural languages, but if we agree that reality  
itself is an inconsistent set of of beliefs, I'm afraid the entire  
idea of science would be jeopardized. Any refutation of any theory  
could be accounted by a statement like let us admit we are  
inconsistent. Once, I refute (= found an inconsistency) in the  
argument of someone pretending to show me a flaw in UDA, and  
eventually he told me that he accept being inconsistent, but then why  
should he not apply this to UDA itself? That just don't make sense,  
but of course, sense is no more relevant once you accept inconsistency.


Bruno


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



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Re: Sane2004 Step One

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:25, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal  
wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge  
to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how  
far I will get this time, but here are my objections to the first  
step and the stipulated assumptions of comp. I understand that the  
point is to accept the given definition of comp, and in that  
respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished  
what he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp,  
and if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it  
anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the point,  
since the only point that matters is the actual truth of what  
consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to  
physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of  
our own survival, I think that implications for teleportation and  
AI simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather  
than thorough consideration of realism would be reckless to say  
the least.


Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed  
with ambient organic materials. If comp were true though, no  
organic materials or reconstructions would be necessary. The  
scanning into a universal machine would be sufficient.



That is step 6.

I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading In the figure the  
teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its  
annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow from  
1.




Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could  
be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers,  
talking to each other over cell phones. This activity would have  
to collectively result in the teleported person now being conjured  
as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The writing and  
erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where  
does the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by  
the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do  
with consciousness, except as a content of consciousness. Keeping  
comp here, we associate consciousness with the logical abstract  
computations.




So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the  
overall effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or  
does it gradually constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected  
effort-ness?


Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its  
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to  
time and space, but that's particular content of an atemporal  
consciousness. I would say (no need of this in UDA).


If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to?


The computational locality used in the local universal system.



In my example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and  
write down numbers that they get from each other and perform  
arithmetic functions on them (which in turn may inform them on how  
to process subsequent arithmetic instructions, etc). Ok. So where  
does the interpretation of these trillion events per second come in?  
What knows what all of the computations add up to be? At what point  
does the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even if it  
could, why should it do such a thing?


Because it concerns a machine looking at herself and its probable  
environment. Then the logic shows that it is unavoidable that the  
machine get non justifiable truth. You can see that informally with  
thought experiment, like in UDA, or formally in the logics of self- 
reference.














Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear  
what role this actually plays in the process, except to make it  
seem more like teleportation and less like what it actually would  
be, which is duplication. If I scan an original document and email  
the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported the original.


Right. Classical teleportation = duplication + annihilation of the  
original. That's step 5, precisely.


You understand the reasoning very well, but we know that the  
problem for you is in the assumption.


Yes, the assumption seems to presume physicality to disprove  
physicality


At some place, yes. In a reductio ad absurdum.




and presume consciousness to explain consciousness.


Yes. Like we presume (at some metalevel) anything we want to explain  
(from some other realm). It is not a lott, but science works that  
way. We don't know the public truth. We can only make clear our  
hypothesis and reason, and propose tests.


Why not just recognize it 

Re: Sane2004 Step One

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 07 Sep 2012, at 04:20, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/6/2012 1:44 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

snip




What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary  
number of classical computations, all at the same time. The CC  
can only barely compute the emulation of a single QC.


You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material  
computers with finite resources.  Once you've assumed material  
resources you've lost any non-circular possibility of explaining  
them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real  
resources. Only when we ignore this fact we can get away with  
floating castles in midair.


Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource.
What do you mean by real computations? Do you mean physical  
computations? Why would they lack resources?


Bruno


Dear Bruno,

I am talking about physical systems that have the capacity of  
carrying out in their dynamics the functions that implement the  
abstract computations that you are considering. The very thing that  
you claim is unnecessary.



But you claim that too, as matter is not primitive. or you lost me  
again.
I need matter to communicate with you, but that matter is explained in  
comp as a a persistent relational entity, so I don't see the problem.  
It is necessary in the sense that it is implied by the comp  
hypothesis, even constructively (making comp testable). It is even  
more stable and solid than anything we might extrapolate from  
observation, as we might be dreaming. Indeed it comes from the  
atemporal ultra-stable relations between numbers, that you recently  
mention as not created by man (I am very glad :).


Bruno




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Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 06 Sep 2012, at 16:28, Brian Tenneson wrote:

All numbers can be defined in terms of sets.  The question becomes  
this:
do sets have ontological primacy relative to mankind or are sets  
invented or created by mankind?


I would say invented, as many different notion of sets can exist.
You can take sets for the ontology, but it makes everything more  
complex, and possibly confusing.
With comp the cardinal ontology is undecidable, and I think it is  
simpler to limit to the finite things. If you want set, with comp a  
good choice would be the hereditarily finite sets, but it is  
equivalent (for the computability and provability) with PA.
A set seems to me to be a typical construction of the mind. Like  
physics, analysis, etc.
But comp is consistent with set theory, a priori, so no real problems  
here.


Bruno





On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net  
wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King


Yes, of course, but I wanted a more obvious, dramatic example.
The philosophy of mathematics says something like the numbers
belong to a static or eternal world, change itself  is a property of  
geometry.

Numbers and geometry thus belong to the platonic world,
which is forbidden or at least not consistent with the philosophy
of materialism, IMHO.

If numbers are platonic, I wonder what the  presumably materialist
Steven Hawkings has to say about their origin in his recent
book on numbers.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content -
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-06, 07:53:18
Subject: Re: Could we have invented the prime numbers ?

Dear Roger,

Could the mere possibility of being a number (without the  
specificity of which one) be considered to be there from the  
beginning?


On 9/6/2012 7:47 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stathis Papaioannou

If the prime numbers were there from the beginning, before man,
then  I think they were mind-created (platonic) not brain-created  
(human creations).


Are the prime numbers an invention by man or one of man's  
discoveries ?


I believe that the prime numbers are not a human invention,
they were there from the beginning. Humans can discover
them by brute calculation, but there is a pattern to them
(except for 1, 3 and 5, spaced  6 apart, plus or minus one)

Thus 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 etc.


for n5, they can be placed +-1 on a grid with a spacing of 6

That spacing seems to me at least to be a priori, out of man's  
control.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content -
From: Stathis Papaioannou
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-06, 01:24:31
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg  
whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


 But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your  
brain
 responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs  
from
 the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel  
nothing,

 but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.



 That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a  
machine

 which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three
 dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces  
nothing but
 neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an  
individual set of
 human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it  
defines the

 form of many conscious relations.

But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what
chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing
without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or
ligand concentration. We've talked about this before and it just  
isn't

consistent with any scientific evidence. You interpret the existence
spontaneous neural activity as meaning that something magical like
this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.


--
Stathis Papaioannou


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Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Why the Church-Turing thesis?

2012-09-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


On 28 Aug 2012, at 21:57, benjayk wrote:



It seems that the Church-Turing thesis, that states that an  
universal turing
machine can compute everything that is intuitively computable, has  
near

universal acceptance among computer scientists.


Yes indeed. I think there are two strong arguments for this.

The empirical one: all attempts to define the set of computable  
functions have led to the same class of functions, and this despite  
the quite independent path leading to the definitions (from Church  
lambda terms, Post production systems, von Neumann machine, billiard  
ball, combinators, cellular automata ... up to modular functor,  
quantum topologies, quantum computers, etc.).


The conceptual one: the class of computable functions is closed for  
the most transcendental operation in math: diagonalization. This is  
not the case for the notions of definability, provability,  
cardinality, etc.






I really wonder why this is so, given that there are simple cases  
where we
can compute something that an abitrary turing machine can not  
compute using
a notion of computation that is not extraordinary at all (and quite  
relevant

in reality).
For example, given you have a universal turing machine A that uses the
alphabet {1,0} and a universal turing machine B that uses the alphabet
{-1,0,1}.
Now it is quite clear that the machine A cannot directly answer any
questions that relates to -1. For example it cannot directly compute
-1*-1=1. Machine A can only be used to use an encoded input value and
encoded description of machine B, and give an output that is correct  
given

the right decoding scheme.
But for me this already makes clear that machine A is less  
computationally

powerful than machine B.


Church thesis concerns only the class of computable functions. The  
alphabet used by the Turing machine, having 1, 2, or enumerable  
alphabet does not change the class. If you dovetail on the works of 1  
letter Turing machine, you will unavoidably emulate all Turing  
machines on all finite and enumerable letters alphabets. This can be  
proved. Nor does the number of tapes, and/or  parallelism change that  
class.
Of course, some machine can be very inefficient, but this, by  
definition, does not concern Church thesis.


There was a thesis, often attributed to Cook (but I met him and he  
claims it is not his thesis), that all Turing machine can emulate  
themselves in polynomial time. This will plausibly be refuted by the  
existence of quantum computers (unless P = NP, or things like that).  
It is an open problem, but most scientists believe that in general a  
classical computer cannot emulate an arbitrary quantum computer in  
polynomial time. But I insist, quantum computer have not violated the  
Church Turing Post Markov thesis.






Its input and output when emulating B do only make
sense with respect to what the machine B does if we already know what
machine B does, and if it is known how we chose to reflect this in  
the input
of machine A (and the interpretation of its output). Otherwise we  
have no
way of even saying whether it emulates something, or whether it is  
just

doing a particular computation on the alphabet {1,0}.
I realize that it all comes down to the notion of computation. But  
why do
most choose to use such a weak notion of computation? How does  
machine B not

compute something that A doesn't by any reasonable standard?
Saying that A can compute what B computes is like saying that  
orange can
express the same as the word apple, because we can encode the word  
apple
as orange. It is true in a very limited sense, but it seems mad to  
treat
it as the foundation of what it means for words to express something  
(and

the same goes for computation).
If we use such trivial notions of computation, why not say that the  
program
return input emulates all turing-machines because given the right  
input it

gives the right output (we just give it the solution as input).
I get that we can simply use the Church-turing as the definition of
computation means. But why is it (mostly) treated as being the one  
and only
correct notion of computation (especially in a computer science  
context)?
The only explanation I have is that it is dogma. To question it  
would change
to much and would be too complicated and uncomfortable. It would  
make
computation an irreducibly complex and relative notion or - heaven  
forbid -
even an inherently subjective notion (computation from which  
perspective?).


That was what everybody believed before the rise of the universal  
machine and lambda calculus. Gödel called the closure of the  
computable functions for diagonalization a miracle, and he took time  
before assessing it. See:


DAVIS M., 1982, Why Gödel Didn't Have Church's Thesis, Information and  
Control

54,.pp. 3-24.


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



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Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:

On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?  What if
reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to avoid
this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning.  So a
*descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore useless)
but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't be inconsistent because
it's not assertions.

Brent



This could work provided we could separate the world into mental and 
physical states. The question remains though if under physicalism one 
says that mental states are actually physical states. Then I do not know 
how to employ such a consideration in this case.


Evgenii

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Re: Why the Church-Turing thesis?

2012-09-07 Thread benjayk


Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 
 On 28 Aug 2012, at 21:57, benjayk wrote:
 

 It seems that the Church-Turing thesis, that states that an  
 universal turing
 machine can compute everything that is intuitively computable, has  
 near
 universal acceptance among computer scientists.
 
 Yes indeed. I think there are two strong arguments for this.
 
 The empirical one: all attempts to define the set of computable  
 functions have led to the same class of functions, and this despite  
 the quite independent path leading to the definitions (from Church  
 lambda terms, Post production systems, von Neumann machine, billiard  
 ball, combinators, cellular automata ... up to modular functor,  
 quantum topologies, quantum computers, etc.).
 
OK, now I understand it better. Apparently if we express a computation in
terms of a computable function we can always arrive at the same computable
function using a different computation of an abitrary turing universal
machine. That seems right to me.
 
But in this case I don't get why it is often claimed that CT thesis claims
that all computations can be done by a universal turing machine, not merely
that they lead to the same class of computable functions (if converted
appriopiately).
The latter is a far weaker statement, since computable functions abstract
from many relevant things about the machine.

And even this weaker statement doesn't seem true with regards to more
powerful models like super-recursive functions, as computable functions just
give finite results, while super-recursive machine can give
infinite/unlimited results.

 

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 The conceptual one: the class of computable functions is closed for  
 the most transcendental operation in math: diagonalization. This is  
 not the case for the notions of definability, provability,  
 cardinality, etc.
I don't really know what this means. Do you mean that there are just
countable many computations? If yes, what has this do with whether all
universal turing machines are equivalent?



Bruno Marchal wrote:
 

 I really wonder why this is so, given that there are simple cases  
 where we
 can compute something that an abitrary turing machine can not  
 compute using
 a notion of computation that is not extraordinary at all (and quite  
 relevant
 in reality).
 For example, given you have a universal turing machine A that uses the
 alphabet {1,0} and a universal turing machine B that uses the alphabet
 {-1,0,1}.
 Now it is quite clear that the machine A cannot directly answer any
 questions that relates to -1. For example it cannot directly compute
 -1*-1=1. Machine A can only be used to use an encoded input value and
 encoded description of machine B, and give an output that is correct  
 given
 the right decoding scheme.
 But for me this already makes clear that machine A is less  
 computationally
 powerful than machine B.
 
 Church thesis concerns only the class of computable functions.
Hm, maybe the wikipedia article is a bad one, since it mentioned computable
functions just as means of explaining it, not as part of its definition.


Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
  The  alphabet used by the Turing machine, having 1, 2, or enumerable  
 alphabet does not change the class. If you dovetail on the works of 1  
 letter Turing machine, you will unavoidably emulate all Turing  
 machines on all finite and enumerable letters alphabets. This can be  
 proved. Nor does the number of tapes, and/or  parallelism change that  
 class.
 Of course, some machine can be very inefficient, but this, by  
 definition, does not concern Church thesis.
Even so, CT thesis makes a claim about the equivalence of machines, not of
emulability.
Why are two machines that can be used to emlate each other regarded to be
equivalent?
In my view, there is a big difference between computing the same and being
able to emulate each other. Most importantly, emulation only makes sense
relative to another machine that is being emulated, and a correct
interpretation.

benjayk

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The physical and the mental

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Evgenii Rudnyi 

Leibniz divides the world into physical and mental states,
each a reflection of the other. The mental is mental and
the physical is not an illusion. You canstill stub your toe 
on a rock. This philosophy is called Idealism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Evgenii Rudnyi 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-07, 04:11:03
Subject: Re: The All


On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:
 On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:


 A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



 What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic? What if
 reality is sometimes inconsistent?

 This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
 preservation in declarative sentences. Not 'obeying the laws of
 logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to avoid
 this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning. So a
 *descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore useless)
 but reality is just whatever it is. It can't be inconsistent because
 it's not assertions.

 Brent


This could work provided we could separate the world into mental and 
physical states. The question remains though if under physicalism one 
says that mental states are actually physical states. Then I do not know 
how to employ such a consideration in this case.

Evgenii

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A leibnizian argument that necessary truths would seem to be a priori

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Brian Tenneson 

Whether or not sets were there (true) a priori is a subject of debate.
You might want to see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics

My own (uninformed) view is based on Leibnizian thinking.
He lists two kinds oif logic, necessary or rational logic,
which is always either true or false, and contingent logic,
which can be true in some cases and no0t uin other ones.

To this way of thinking, all neccessary (rational) truths
since tyhey must always be either true or false, if true
were always true and therefore necessary truths must
be a priori.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Brian Tenneson 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 11:31:35
Subject: Re: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?


Sure you can have sets without numbers.

The popular set theory's development known as ZFC is not based on numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory

Numbers are defined in terms of sets.  What that means is that all numbers are 
sets but not all sets are numbers.

I do agree that numbers are not created by man but neither are sets.


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

Hi Brian Tenneson 
 
I'm just to establish the fact that numbers are a priori
and so not created by man. Given that, it doesn't matter if sets are
a priori or not. Presumably (I am not a mathematician)  you cannot 
have sets without numbers, so the numbers rule.
 
 
 
 
 
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Brian Tenneson 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 10:28:51
Subject: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?


All numbers can be defined in terms of sets. The question becomes this:
do sets have ontological primacy relative to mankind or are sets invented or 
created by mankind?


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King 
Yes, of course, but I wanted a more obvious, dramatic?xample.
The philosophy of mathematics says something like the numbers 
belong to a static or eternal world, change?tself ?s a property of geometry.
Numbers and geometry thus belong to the platonic world,
which is forbidden or at least not consistent with the philosophy
of materialism, IMHO.
If numbers are platonic,? wonder what the presumably materialist 
Steven Hawkings has to say about their origin in his recent
book on numbers.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 07:53:18
Subject: Re: Could we have invented the prime numbers ?


Dear Roger,

? Could the mere possibility of being a number (without the specificity of 
which one) be considered to be there from the beginning?


On 9/6/2012 7:47 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stathis Papaioannou
If the prime numbers were there from the beginning, before man,
then I think they were mind-created (platonic) not brain-created (human 
creations).
Are the prime numbers an invention by man or one of man's discoveries ? 
I believe that the prime numbers are not a human invention,
they were there from the beginning. Humans can discover
them by brute calculation, but there is a pattern to them
(except for 1, 3 and 5, spaced 6 apart, plus or minus one)
Thus 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 etc.
for n5, they can be placed +-1 on a grid with a spacing of 6
That spacing seems to me at least to be a priori, out of man's control.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 01:24:31
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
 responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
 the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
 but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.



 That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine
 which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three
 dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but
 neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set of
 human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines the
 form of many conscious relations.

But you believe that the neurochemicals do 

Rational vs experiential religion

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

The rational view of God can be discussed logically and publicly,
such as in the philosophy of religion. But according to Christian  
(especially Lutheran) tradition, that is only a description of God.
There is also a Living God (also called the Word, or the Christ)
that can only be experienced , this being a gift that only God
can give one, through the gift of faith or trust.

Here again we have the world split up into rational thought
vs experience, which is not only true of religion, but of
all man's life and understanding.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 13:21:12
Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence


Hi Roger,


I know, Roger. I was addressing John Clark, who confirmed my feeling that 
atheists are the number one defender of the Christian's conception of God. 
Your's is obviously closer to Plato and the general machine's theology. 
It is bit sad you don't listen to what the machines already can tell us.
You can interpret the work of G?el, L?, ... Solovay, as a initial interview of 
the ideally correct self-referential machine. The modal logics G and G* 
axiomatize the propositional logics of such discourses.  G* includes the 
machine's silence, which are rather important for the 'mystical' part of the 
universal machine.


I will be direct. In your post you defend truth and vocabulary, where I prefer 
hypothesis, reasoning and testing. Especially in theology.



Bruno




On 05 Sep 2012, at 18:07, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal 

I've been defending cosmic intelligence (CI)
or Cosmic Mind,  of Life , not the christian God, not 
the whole shebang, the Trinity.  
But actually I think they're probably all the same.


CI was there before the world was created-- for sure,  
else the world could not have
been  created. But since CI created time and space 
the argument is irrevant.  And I don't know
what God can think, that much is Christian. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 09:51:40
Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence




On 04 Sep 2012, at 18:42, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Sep 4, 2012  Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:



 God created the human race.

And when God asks Himself the question Why have I always existed, why haven't 
I always not existed? what answer in his omniscience does He come up with?





The neoplatonist conception of God does not allow It to ask such a question. 


Nor does Arithmetical Truth. 


God has no self-reference power at all, as this would make it inconsistent.


Still defending the Christian God, aren't you?


Bruno








 God is the uncreated infinite intelligence 

There was once a patent issued for a combination rat trap and potato peeler and 
people laugh about that, but using the exact same organ for both excretory and 
reproductive purposes does not seem very intelligent to me either, much less 
infinitely intelligent. And putting the blood vessels and nerves for the retina 
of the eye in front not in the back so the light must pass through them to get 
to the light sensitive cells also does not seem very smart; no engineer in his 
right mind would place the gears to move the film in a camera so that the light 
must pass through the gears before hitting the film. That's not the sort of 
thing you'd expect God to do, but it's exactly what you'd expect Evolution to 
do.

 John K Clark




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Can experiences be teleported ?

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

Eventually you will have to answer the question of what is teleportable.
I have no doubt that someday matter can be transported, even information.
Even energy.

But the more important question to me is whether or not experiences
(the stuff of life or consciousness) can be transported.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 13:44:55
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On 05 Sep 2012, at 08:38, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/5/2012 2:03 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 10:07 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
On 9/5/2012 12:38 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/4/2012 8:59 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: 
Notice that both the duplication and the teleportation, as discussed, 
assume that the information content is exactly copyable. 

Not exactly. Only sufficiently accurately to maintain your consciousness.


If the copy is not exact then functional equivalence is not exact either 
and this is fatal for the model.


Then you should mourn the Stephen P. King of and hour ago.  He's been fatally 
changed.


Never, I am not the impermanent image on the world stage. I am the fire 
that casts the images.








This is not qubits that are involved... The point here is that this comp model 
assume that Reality is, at is ground level, classical. 

It doesn't assume that.  A fully quantum computation can be performed on a 
classical, i.e. Turing, computer.  Bruno would just say it just takes a lower 
level of substitution.


Yes, a classical computer can emulate a finite quantum computation given 
sufficient resources. This is not the same thing as the EPR effect that I am 
considering. The idea that I am considering is more like this: 

Consider the visible physical universe. We know from observation that not only 
is it open on one end and that it's expansion is accelerating. People want to 
put this off on some Dark Energy. I think that it is something else, driving 
it. Consider a classical computer that needs to emulate a quantum computation. 
It has to have even increasing resources to keep up with the QC if the QC is 
modeling an expanding universe. It we take Bruno's AR literally, where are 
these resources coming from?


They are computations.  They exist in Platonia. He's trying to explain matter, 
so he can't very well assume material resources.  The world is made out of 
arithmetic, an infinite resource.


Sure, but the explanation of the idea requires matter to be communicated. A 
slight oversight perhaps.



But there is matter, in the comp theory. That is all what UDA explains, and 
what the Z and X logics axiomatizes. 










Let's turn the tables and make Reality Quantum in its essence. The 
classical computation may just be something that the QC is running. 

There's not difference as computations.

You are correct but only in the absence of considerations of inputs and 
outputs and their concurrency. Abstract theory leaves out the obvious, but when 
it pretends to toss out the obvious, that is going to far.



Matter is not obvious. 








 


What is most interesting is that the QC can run an arbitrary number of 
classical computations, all at the same time. The CC can only barely compute 
the emulation of a single QC. 

You are talking about QC and CC as though they were material computers with 
finite resources.  Once you've assumed material resources you've lost any 
non-circular possibility of explaining them.


No, I am pointing out that real computations require real resources. Only 
when we ignore this fact we can get away with floating castles in midair.



Brent just point out that arithmetic contains infinite resource. 
What do you mean by real computations? Do you mean physical computations? 
Why would they lack resources?


Bruno






What if we have an infinite and eternal QC running infinitely many finite CCs 
and each of these CC's is trying to emulate a single QC. Map this idea out and 
look at the nice self-referential loop that this defines!


You're confused.


Maybe. I can handle being wrong. I learn from mistakes.



Brent
--



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Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Re: Why the Church-Turing thesis?

2012-09-07 Thread benjayk


Jason Resch-2 wrote:
 
 On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:47 PM, benjayk
 benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote:
 


 Jason Resch-2 wrote:
 
  On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 2:57 PM, benjayk
  benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote:
 
 
  It seems that the Church-Turing thesis, that states that an universal
  turing
  machine can compute everything that is intuitively computable, has
 near
  universal acceptance among computer scientists.
 
  I really wonder why this is so, given that there are simple cases
 where
  we
  can compute something that an abitrary turing machine can not compute
  using
  a notion of computation that is not extraordinary at all (and quite
  relevant
  in reality).
  For example, given you have a universal turing machine A that uses the
  alphabet {1,0} and a universal turing machine B that uses the alphabet
  {-1,0,1}.
  Now it is quite clear that the machine A cannot directly answer any
  questions that relates to -1.

 
 I see this at all being the case at all.  What is the symbol for -1
 supposed to look like?  Do you agree that a turing machine that used A, B,
 and C as symbols could work the same as one that used -1, 0, and 1?
Well, the symbol for -1 could be -1?
To answer your latter question, no, not necessarily. I don't take the
symbols not to be mere symbols, but to contain meaning (which they do), and
so it matters what symbols the machine use, because that changes the meaning
of its computation. Often times the meaning of the symbols also constrain
the possible relations (for example -1 * -1 normally needs to be 1, while A
* A could be A, B or C).

CT thesis wants to abstract from things like meaning, but I don't really see
the great value in acting like this is necessarily the correct theoretical
way of thinking about computations. It is only valuable as one possible,
very strongly abstracted, limited and representational model of computation
with respect to emulability.


Jason Resch-2 wrote:
 
 Everything is a representation, but what is important is that the Turing
 machine preserves the relationships.  E.g., if ABBBABAA is greater than
 AAABBAAB then 01110100 is greater than 00011001, and all the other
 properties can hold, irrespective of what symbols are used.
The problem is that relationships don't make sense apart from symbols. We
can theoretically express the natural numbers using an infinite numbers of
unique symbols for both numbers and operations (like A or B or C or X for
10, ´ or ? or [ or ° for +), but in this case it won't be clear that we are
expresing natural numbers at all (without a lengthy explanation of what the
symbols mean).
Or if we are using binary numbers to express the natural numbers, it will
also be not very clear that we mean numbers, because often binary
expressions mean something entirely else. If we then add 1 to this number
it will not be clear that we actually added one, or if we just flipped a
bit.

I admit that for numbers this is not so relevant because number relations
can be quite clearly expressed using numerous symbols (they have very few
and simple relations), but it is much more relevant for more complex
relations.


Jason Resch-2 wrote:
 
 For example it cannot directly compute
  -1*-1=1. Machine A can only be used to use an encoded input value and
  encoded description of machine B, and give an output that is correct
  given
  the right decoding scheme.
 
 
  1's or 0's, X's or O's, what the symbols are don't have any bearing on
  what
  they can compute.
 
 That's just an assertion of the belief I am trying to question here.
 In reality, it *does* matter which symbols/things we use to compute. A
 computer that only uses one symbol (for example a computer that adds
 using
 marbles) would be pretty useless.
 It does matter in many different ways: Speed of computations, effciency
 of
 computation, amount of memory, efficiency of memory, ease of programming,
 size of programs, ease of interpreting the result, amount of layers of
 programming to interpret the result and to program efficiently, ease of
 introspecting into the state of a computer...

 
 Practically they might matter but not theoretically.
In the right theoretical model, it does matter. I am precisely doubting the
value of adhering to our simplistic theoretical model of computation as the
essence of what computation means.


Jason Resch-2 wrote:
 

 Why would we abstract from all that and then reduce computation to our
 one
 very abstract and imcomplete model of computation?
 If we do this we could as well abstract from the process of computation
 and
 say every string can be used to emulate any machine, because if you know
 what program it expresses, you know what it would compute (if correctly
 interpreted). There's no fundamental difference. Strings need to be
 interpreted to make sense as a program, and a turing machine without
 negative numbers needs to be interpreted to make sense as a program
 computing the result of an equation using negative numbers.

 
 I agree, 

Re: being conscious in a completely atemporal mode

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 2:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It is a recent suggestion, corroborated by the salvia reports and 
experiences.  I was used to agree with Brouwer that consciousness and 
subjective time are not separable, like the 1p logic examplifies 
(S4Grz is both a temporal logic, and the machine's 1p logic), but I am 
open to change my mind on this. We can hallucinate being conscious in 
a completely atemporal mode. I would not have believed this without 
living it, as it seems indeed to be a contradiction from the usual 
mundane state of consciousness.
 But it makes sense in arithmetic, or for the consciousness of the 
universal non Löbian machine. Apparently, subjective time might be a 
result of self-consciousness, and not just consciousness. This makes 
consciousness a bit more primitive than I thought indeed. 

Dear Bruno,

Could you explain a bit more what the experience of being 
conscious in a completely atemporal mode was like? Where you aware of 
any kind of change in your environment? Was one's internal narrative (of 
external events) silent?


I have always suspected that subjective time might be a result of 
self-consciousness but have not had any way of discussing the idea 
coherently. If we stipulate that subjective time is a form of noticing 
that one is noticing changes (a second order aspect) in one's 
environment, then this would fall into being a result of 
self-consciousness (which is obviously a second order effect at least to 
me). I have debated this idea before on this List with Russell Standish 
but we didn't seem to reach any definite conclusion.


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Life forces, intentions, goals and final ends as opposed to mechanics

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough

An intention is a desire in the form of thought,
so is nonphysical, as are all of the processes of mind. 
In Leibniz's philosophy, intentions are
essentially what L calls appetites in
monads. They are goal-directed, 
following what Aristotle called end causation,
which are potential, pulling forces,characteristic
of life, rather than the effective, acting or pushing forces
characteristic of mechanics.




Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 11:38:19
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On 9/5/2012 11:18 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
Intention is not magic and doesn't need hypothetical permission to exist. If 
your words are random ricochets of quantum radioactive decay or thermodynamic 
anomalies, then they are meaningless noise. You can't account for them because 
any accounting you can produce with your fingertips is only the random 
twitchings of your nervous system. Your view that denies the very reality of 
intention that you employ to state your denial. The fact that you deny that it 
does shows me that you are only capable of framing the question in the one way 
that it can never be answered. Your view is to say, I choose to deny my ability 
to choose.

No, that is a misconception.  Simply because there is some randomness at a 
molecular level doesn't make the whole process noise.  Or looked at another way 
the structure of you brain amplifies and shapes the noise and combines it with 
perception to produce your actions in a way that we recognize as constituting 
your consistent character.

Brent

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The rational must be a priori and the contingent (factual) must be a posteriori

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough


According to my argument below, all rational truths must be a priori  
and all contingent truths (facts) have to be a posteriori.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Roger Clough 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-07, 06:51:10
Subject: A leibnizian argument that necessary truths would seem to be a priori


Hi Brian Tenneson 

Whether or not sets were there (true) a priori is a subject of debate.
You might want to see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics

My own (uninformed) view is based on Leibnizian thinking.
He lists two kinds oif logic, necessary or rational logic,
which is always either true or false, and contingent logic,
which can be true in some cases and no0t uin other ones.

To this way of thinking, all neccessary (rational) truths
since tyhey must always be either true or false, if true
were always true and therefore necessary truths must
be a priori.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Brian Tenneson 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 11:31:35
Subject: Re: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?


Sure you can have sets without numbers.

The popular set theory's development known as ZFC is not based on numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory

Numbers are defined in terms of sets.  What that means is that all numbers are 
sets but not all sets are numbers.

I do agree that numbers are not created by man but neither are sets.


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

Hi Brian Tenneson 
 
I'm just to establish the fact that numbers are a priori
and so not created by man. Given that, it doesn't matter if sets are
a priori or not. Presumably (I am not a mathematician)  you cannot 
have sets without numbers, so the numbers rule.
 
 
 
 
 
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Brian Tenneson 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 10:28:51
Subject: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?


All numbers can be defined in terms of sets. The question becomes this:
do sets have ontological primacy relative to mankind or are sets invented or 
created by mankind?


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King 
Yes, of course, but I wanted a more obvious, dramatic?xample.
The philosophy of mathematics says something like the numbers 
belong to a static or eternal world, change?tself ?s a property of geometry.
Numbers and geometry thus belong to the platonic world,
which is forbidden or at least not consistent with the philosophy
of materialism, IMHO.
If numbers are platonic,? wonder what the presumably materialist 
Steven Hawkings has to say about their origin in his recent
book on numbers.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 07:53:18
Subject: Re: Could we have invented the prime numbers ?


Dear Roger,

? Could the mere possibility of being a number (without the specificity of 
which one) be considered to be there from the beginning? 


On 9/6/2012 7:47 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stathis Papaioannou
If the prime numbers were there from the beginning, before man,
then I think they were mind-created (platonic) not brain-created (human 
creations).
Are the prime numbers an invention by man or one of man's discoveries ? 
I believe that the prime numbers are not a human invention,
they were there from the beginning. Humans can discover
them by brute calculation, but there is a pattern to them
(except for 1, 3 and 5, spaced 6 apart, plus or minus one)
Thus 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 etc.
for n5, they can be placed +-1 on a grid with a spacing of 6
That spacing seems to me at least to be a priori, out of man's control.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 01:24:31
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
 responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
 the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
 but maintain the delusional belief that 

Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:

On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?  What if
reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to avoid
this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning. So a
*descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore useless)
but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't be inconsistent because
it's not assertions.

Brent



This could work provided we could separate the world into mental and 
physical states. The question remains though if under physicalism one 
says that mental states are actually physical states. Then I do not 
know how to employ such a consideration in this case.


Evgenii


Dear Evgenii,

What do you imagine would be the consequence of what may be a pair 
of sets of mental states and physical states for one entity does not 
match up exactly or even at all with a pair of mental and physical 
states for another?


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Re: The Unprivacy of Information

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Craig Weinberg 

Although I don't follow Dawking's views on life and God, 
I think his idea of semes, which are like genes but ideas instead,
is a very good one. If the logic follows through, then
man is the semes' way of propagating itself through society.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 13:39:10
Subject: The Unprivacy of Information


(reposting from my blog)

If I? right, then the slogan ?nformation wants to be free? is not just an 
intuition about social policy, but rather an insight into the ontological roots 
of information itself. To be more precise, it isn? that information wants to be 
free, it is that it can? want to be anything, and that ownership itself is 
predicated on want and familiarity. Information, by contrast, is the exact 
opposite of want and familiarity, it is the empty and generic syntax of 
strangers talking to strangers about anything.
I propose that information or data is inherently public such that it lacks the 
possibility of privacy. Information cannot be secret, it can only be kept a 
secret through voluntary participation in extra-informational social contracts. 
It is only the access to information that we can control - the i/o, we cannot 
become information or live in information or as information.*

Information spreads only as controlled changes in matter, not independently in 
space or non-space vacuum. Information is how stuff seems to other stuff. 
Computation exploits the universality of how many kinds of stuff make sense in 
the same basic ways. It is to make modular or ?igital? collections of 
objectified changes which can be inscribed on any sufficiently controllable 
substance. Not live hamsters or fog. They make terrible computers.
To copyright information or to encrypt it is to discourage unauthorized control 
of information access. This underscores the fact that information control 
supervenes on (requires) capacities of perception and intent rather than the 
capacities of information itself. We have to be shamed or frightened or tempted 
into agreeing to treat information as proprietary on behalf of the proprietor? 
interests.We can? train information not to talk to strangers.


The data itself doesn? care if you publish it to the world or take credit for 
writing Shakespeare? entire catalog. This is not merely a strange property of 
information, this is the defining property of information in direct 
contradistinction to both experience and matter. I maintain however, that this 
doesn? indicate that information is a neutral monism (singular ground of being 
from which matter, energy, and awareness emerge), but rather it is the neutral 
nihilism - the shadow, if you will, of sensorimotive participation divisible by 
spacetime. It? a protocol that bridges the gaps between participants (selves, 
monads, agents, experiences), but it is not itself a participant. This is 
important because if we don? understand this (and we are nowhere near 
understanding this yet), then we will proceed to exterminate our quality of 
life to a hybrid of Frankenstein neuro-materialism and HAL 
cyberfunction-idealism.

To understand why information is really not consciousness but the evacuated 
forms of consciousness, consider that matter is proprietary relative to the 
body and experience is proprietary relative to the self, but information is 
proprietary to nothing. Information, if it did exist, would be nothing but the 
essence of a-proprietary manifestation. It has no dimension of subjectivity 
(privacy, ownership, selfhood) at all. It is qualitatively flat. Information as 
a word is a mis-attribution of what is actually, ontologically, ?ormations to 
be interpreted? as code, to be unpacked, reconstituted, and reconstituted as a 
private experience.
*Who and what we are is sensorimotive matter (or materialized participation if 
you prefer?here are a lot of fancy ways to describe it: Meta-juxtaposing 
afferent-efferent phenomenal realism, or private algebraic/public-geometric 
phenomenal realism, orthogonally involuted experiential syzygy, etc.)
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Re: Why the Church-Turing thesis?

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 6:24 AM, benjayk wrote:

Why are two machines that can be used to emlate each other regarded to be
equivalent?
In my view, there is a big difference between computing the same and being
able to emulate each other. Most importantly, emulation only makes sense
relative to another machine that is being emulated, and a correct
interpretation.

Dear benjayk,

This is what is discussed under the header of Bisimilarity and 
bisimulation equivalence iff simulation = emulation.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisimulation

a bisimulation is a binary relation between state transition systems, 
associating systems which behave in the same way in the sense that one 
system simulates the other and vice-versa.


My own use of the term seeks a more generalized version that does 
not assume that the relation is necessarily binary nor strictly 
monotonic. The key is that a pair of machines can have an image of 
each other and that they are capable of acting on that image.


--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Leibniz's universes as perceived

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Stephen P. King 

There is only one physical world, but only the supreme 
monad (supremem in the mental world) sees all and sees 
all as it it is, clearly and wholly.

The individual point of view of the phjysical world 
that each monad indirectly perceives is called the 
phenomenological world.

We (as monads) all see the physical world and the mental world
indirectly (because they have no windows)  as perceptions.
Monads have no windows but their perceptions are constantly
and instantaneously  being updated by the supreme monad
according to their individual points of view and individual abilities.

All perceptions of the monads are at best somewhat distorted
and at least the world appears to physical bodies as if the
body is mostly sleep and drunk.

Animals and vegetables can also perceive distorted feelings.
Humans can perceive , in addition, intellectual portions of the rest of 
infinite set of monads, each partial and somewhat distorted.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-07, 07:43:42
Subject: Re: The All


On 9/7/2012 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
 On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:
 On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:


 A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



 What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic? What if
 reality is sometimes inconsistent?

 This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
 preservation in declarative sentences. Not 'obeying the laws of
 logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to avoid
 this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning. So a
 *descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore useless)
 but reality is just whatever it is. It can't be inconsistent because
 it's not assertions.

 Brent


 This could work provided we could separate the world into mental and 
 physical states. The question remains though if under physicalism one 
 says that mental states are actually physical states. Then I do not 
 know how to employ such a consideration in this case.

 Evgenii

Dear Evgenii,

 What do you imagine would be the consequence of what may be a pair 
of sets of mental states and physical states for one entity does not 
match up exactly or even at all with a pair of mental and physical 
states for another?

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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Re: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Stephen P. King 

I think of the brain as a running sensor of the static platonic world.
Sort of like looking out of the car window as you speed along.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 20:25:27
Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer


On 9/6/2012 7:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 6, 2012 7:37:38 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: 
On 9/5/2012 11:50 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 6:38:07 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: 
Hi Stephen P. King 
 
No, the stuff in our skulls  is alive, has intelligence, and a 1p.
Computers don't and can't. Big sdifference.
 
Hi Roger,

??? Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is 
indistinguishable from magic. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does 
not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. 

??? Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? 
I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize 
and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical 
physical methods. Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 
1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible 
abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and 
report on it would lead us to very different conclusions!

 
I think you are both right. Computers qua computers don't feel anything because 
they aren't anything. The physical material that you are using to execute 
computations on does however have experiences - just not experiences that we 
associated with our own. There is a concrete experience associated with the 
production of these pixels on your screen - many experiences on many levels, of 
molecules that make up the wires etc., but those experiences don't seem to lead 
to anything we would consider significant. It's pretty straightforward to me. A 
stuffed animal that looks like a bear is not a bear. A picture of a person is 
not a person, even if it is a fancy interactive picture.

Craig

-- 


Hi Craig,

I think that the difference that makes a difference here is the identity 
that emerges between matching of the experience *of* object and experience *by* 
object. Ranulph Glanville has, with others in the Cybernetics community, 
written masterfully on this in his Same is Different paper.



Hi Stephen,

How does the of/by distinction compare with map-territory and use-mention 
distinctions?

Craig 

Hi Craig,

Consider the difference/similarity of self-observation and 
other-observation. I will try to post more on this soon.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: Re: The universe as a collection of an infinite number of pointscalled monads

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Stephen P. King 

I solved this problem my own way by simply asssuming that the universe
from the beginning and  before, as well as now and forever,
exists as an infinite collection of points (monads).  So no problem
with the creation of new things. In principle they always were
and simply grow or unfold when the time calls for it, then
roll or fold up or whatever at the end of their useful lives.

In this veiw of reality, all of reality always consists in monadic space
as an overlapping infinite set of points.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 19:47:06
Subject: Re: The universe as a collection of an infinite number of pointscalled 
monads


On 9/5/2012 12:57 PM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

You raise an interesting point If all of the monads had to be
existing at the beginning of the universe, what if I build
a  new computer ? 



Dear Roger,

The point is that the physical stuff is NOT ontologically primitive. It 
emerges from harmonies of agreement between the monads. These harmonies have 
labellings in terms of time and location but only as relata of the monads. The 
monads are eternal, but their perceptions are finite and contingent on each 
other. This idea rehabilitates the Pre-established Harmony by showing that the 
pre-established portion of the concept is both unnecessary and problematic. 
God's creative act is an eternal process, not a special event that occurs only 
once as we could think of it. It occurs only once for God, surely, but God has 
no time, nor space, nor any particular properties of its own. The monads *are* 
the agents of creation in the sense that they generate definiteness of 
properties.




I believe Leibniz's discussion of plants
and seeds would relate to that.  In the case of plants,
each has a monad that started out as a miniscule seed 
(all enwrapped in itself) that then opens up, develops and grows.
There are seeds within seeds within seeds etc. I will at this point claim 
with some uncertainty that computers are somehow like that, 
making up compound monads which when pulled apart and 
separated similarly have a monad.

These would be bare naked monads, with little intelligence 
or much awareness, but being half-asleep and as if drugged out.

I believe there are and infitie number of monads in the universe,
since these take up no space and each is a point representing
a piece of reality. So the universe to begin with and even now had to be
a collection of an inifinite number of discrete points or monads.

To continue, if the machine is attached to a monad, God can perceive it.
A machine however would only have a bare naked monad.

It seems I may h

   Could you complete your sentence?



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.



 



-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Stephen P. King 

No, machines, even computers, IMHO in practice have no intellectual or feeling
facilities, are no more than dumb rocks. So there is no more communication with 
God possible
than there would be with an abacus.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 19:39:10
Subject: Re: The All


On 9/5/2012 12:14 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Hi Roger, 


On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:23, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal 

No, the supreme Monad can see everything even
though the monads have no windows.

Also the closeness to God issue depends
on your clarity of vision and feeling. And perhaps appetites.
So everybody's different. 



I agree. But my point was that everybody includes possibly machines, and that 
we are not supposed to dictate God which creatures he can look through. 


Bruno

Hi Bruno,

I agree with you here 100%!

-- 
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Stephen

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Re: Re: Leibniz on heaven, hell, and zombies (?)

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Stathis Papaioannou 


Thanks for the correction.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 23:04:34
Subject: Re: Leibniz on heaven, hell, and zombies (?)


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:
 Hi Stathis Papaioannou

 A fun question. I assume that zombies are the dead brought back
 to life somehow. That monads cannot be created or destroyed
 Is a peculiar feature of Leibniz's metaphysics that would enable the
 resurrection of zombies.

 Leibniz believed that even when we die, our monad will
 still be attached to a dead and rotting corpse, since monads cannot be
 created
 or destroyed and must always be attached to bodies. Heaven then at first
 seems problematic, but that may be the reason for the Bible's doctrine of
 the resurrection of
 the dead, during which we will be given spiffy new (younger probably)
 bodies. Presumably those sent to hell would remain rotting bodies.

 It seems reasonable to assume that the witches or voodoo used to
 bring the zombies back from a dead state would have imperfect
 abilities so that the dead would then be brought back perhaps to a
 state reasembing a nightmare in which they are made to believe
 that they must eat human flesh So there you are.

 The zombies should be killable a second time like the first.

 To answer you second question, I don't believe we are
 zombies because our intellect seems not to be in a dream state and also
 that we don't crave human flesh.

A philosophical zombie is a being that acts as if it's conscious but
isn't really:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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This is a world only of facts.

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Brian Tenneson 

According to Leibniz, there are two kinds of logic, the logic of necessity
or rational logic, and the logic of contingency or of facts.

Reality is contingent, to use Leibniz's idea. Things may be
true sometimes and at some places, but
never everywhere, at all times. It's an a posteriori world,
a world of facts only.

Eternal or necessary or rational truths are always
either true or false. So they are a priori.

It's a world of a posteriori facts , not a priori eternal truths.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Brian Tenneson 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 14:52:44
Subject: Re: The All




A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.?





What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?? What if reality is 
sometimes inconsistent?


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Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

Any time I use the word God, I always mean IMHO God.

I am actually thinking instead of Cosmic Intelligence
or Cosmnic Mind.

I try not to use that  word (God) but sometimes forget. 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 14:06:49
Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence




On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:34, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal 

God also created time, and anyway eternity is timeless,
not sure if spacless.


I can accept this as a rough sum up of some theory (= hypothesis; + 
consequences), not as an explanation per se. As an explanation, it is 
equivalent with don't ask for more understanding, and you fall in the 
authoritative trap.


Bruno








Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 09:51:40
Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence




On 04 Sep 2012, at 18:42, John Clark wrote:


On Tue, Sep 4, 2012  Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:



 God created the human race.

And when God asks Himself the question Why have I always existed, why haven't 
I always not existed? what answer in his omniscience does He come up with?





The neoplatonist conception of God does not allow It to ask such a question. 


Nor does Arithmetical Truth. 


God has no self-reference power at all, as this would make it inconsistent.


Still defending the Christian God, aren't you?


Bruno








 God is the uncreated infinite intelligence 

There was once a patent issued for a combination rat trap and potato peeler and 
people laugh about that, but using the exact same organ for both excretory and 
reproductive purposes does not seem very intelligent to me either, much less 
infinitely intelligent. And putting the blood vessels and nerves for the retina 
of the eye in front not in the back so the light must pass through them to get 
to the light sensitive cells also does not seem very smart; no engineer in his 
right mind would place the gears to move the film in a camera so that the light 
must pass through the gears before hitting the film. That's not the sort of 
thing you'd expect God to do, but it's exactly what you'd expect Evolution to 
do.

 John K Clark




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








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

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Racism ? How's that implied ?

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

Racism ? How's that implied ?

But I do agree that perception and Cs are 
not understandable with materialistic concepts
at least as they are commonly used.
Instead they are what the mind can sense,
as a sixth sense.

The mind is similar to driving a car through
Platoville and watching the static events
in passing.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 14:12:37
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On 05 Sep 2012, at 18:12, Roger Clough wrote:



I don't think that life or mind or intelligence
can be teleported. Especially since nobody knows what
they are.

I also don't believe that you can download
the contents of somebody's brain.




This is just restating that you don't believe in comp. 


OK, develop your theory, and predict something testable, and we will better 
understand what you mean.
If not it looks just  like a form of racism based on magic.


Bruno






Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 11:04:53
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On 05 Sep 2012, at 06:14, meekerdb wrote:

 On 9/4/2012 7:19 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:48:58PM -0700, Craig Weinberg wrote:
 I have problems with all three of the comp assumptions:

 *yes, doctor*: This is really the sleight of hand that props up 
 the entire
 thought experiment. If you agree that you are nothing but your brain
 function and that your brain function can be replaced by the 
 functioning of
 non-brain devices, then you have already agreed that human 
 individuality is
 a universal commodity.
 Calling it a sleight of hand is a bit rough. It is the meat of the
 comp assumption, and spelling it out this way makes it very
 explicit. Either you agree you can be copied (without feeling a
 thing), or you don't. If you do, you must face up to the consequences
 of the argument, if you don't, then you do not accept
 computationalism, and the consequences of the UDA do not apply to 
 your
 worldview.

 I suppose I can be copied. But does it follow that I am just the 
 computations in my brain. It seems likely that I also require an 
 outside environment/world with which I interact in order to remain 
 conscious. Bruno passes this off by saying it's just a matter of 
 the level of substitution, perhaps your local environment or even 
 the whole galaxy must be replaced by a digital representation in 
 order to maintain your consciousness unchanged. But this bothers 
 me. Suppose it is the whole galaxy, or the whole observed 
 universe. Does it really mean anything then to say your brain has 
 been replaced ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE? It's just the assertion 
 that everything is computable.

That's a good argument for saying that the level of substitution is 
not that low. But the reasoning would still go through, and we would 
lead to a unique computable universe. That is the only way to make a 
digital physics consistent (as I forget to say sometimes). Then you 
get a more complex other mind problem, and something like David 
Nyman- Hoyle beam would be needed, and would need to be separate from 
the physical reality, making the big physical whole incomplete, etc. 
yes this bothers me too. Needless to say, I tend to believe that if 
comp is true, the level is much higher.





 *Church thesis*: Views computation in isolation, irrespective of 
 resources,
 supervenience on object-formed computing elements, etc. This is a
 theoretical theory of computation, completely divorced from 
 realism from
 the start. What is it that does the computing? How and why does 
 data enter
 or exit a computation?
 It is necessarily an abstract mathematical thesis. The latter two
 questions simply are relevant.

 *Arithmetical Realism*: The idea that truth values are self 
 justifying
 independently of subjectivity or physics is literally a shot in 
 the dark.
 Like yes, doctor, this is really swallowing the cow whole from the
 beginning and saying that the internal consistency of arithmetic
 constitutes universal supremacy without any real indication of
 that.
 AR is not just about internal consistency of mathematics, it is an
 ontological commitment about the natural numbers. Whatever primitive
 reality is, AR implies that the primitive reality models the natural
 numbers.

 ISTM that Bruno rejects any reality behind the natural numbers (or 
 other system of computation). If often argues that the natural 
 numbers exist, because they satisfy true propositions: There exists 
 a prime number between 1 and 3, therefore 2 exists. This assumes a 
 Platonist view of mathematical objects, which Peter D. Jones has 
 

Re: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

What is always either true or false cannot have been invented,
only discovered. Necessary or rational truths are such.
Contingent truths are not. 

Rational or necessary truths are therefore a prioi and can only be discovered.

Contingent truths or facts are therefore a posteriori and can only be invented.

I suppose that knowing which type is at hand is the crucial problem. 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-07, 03:21:21
Subject: Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?




On 06 Sep 2012, at 16:28, Brian Tenneson wrote:


All numbers can be defined in terms of sets.  The question becomes this:
do sets have ontological primacy relative to mankind or are sets invented or 
created by mankind?



I would say invented, as many different notion of sets can exist.
You can take sets for the ontology, but it makes everything more complex, and 
possibly confusing. 
With comp the cardinal ontology is undecidable, and I think it is simpler to 
limit to the finite things. If you want set, with comp a good choice would be 
the hereditarily finite sets, but it is equivalent (for the computability and 
provability) with PA.
A set seems to me to be a typical construction of the mind. Like physics, 
analysis, etc.
But comp is consistent with set theory, a priori, so no real problems here.


Bruno








On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King 


Yes, of course, but I wanted a more obvious, dramatic example.
The philosophy of mathematics says something like the numbers 
belong to a static or eternal world, change itself  is a property of geometry.
Numbers and geometry thus belong to the platonic world,
which is forbidden or at least not consistent with the philosophy
of materialism, IMHO.

If numbers are platonic, I wonder what the  presumably materialist 
Steven Hawkings has to say about their origin in his recent
book on numbers.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stephen P. King 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 07:53:18
Subject: Re: Could we have invented the prime numbers ?


Dear Roger,

Could the mere possibility of being a number (without the specificity of 
which one) be considered to be there from the beginning?

On 9/6/2012 7:47 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stathis Papaioannou

If the prime numbers were there from the beginning, before man,
then  I think they were mind-created (platonic) not brain-created (human 
creations).

Are the prime numbers an invention by man or one of man's discoveries ? 

I believe that the prime numbers are not a human invention,
they were there from the beginning. Humans can discover
them by brute calculation, but there is a pattern to them
(except for 1, 3 and 5, spaced  6 apart, plus or minus one)

Thus 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 etc.


for n5, they can be placed +-1 on a grid with a spacing of 6

That spacing seems to me at least to be a priori, out of man's control.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/6/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Stathis Papaioannou 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 01:24:31
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One


On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain
 responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from
 the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing,
 but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed.



 That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine
 which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three
 dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but
 neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set of
 human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines the
 form of many conscious relations.

But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what
chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing
without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or
ligand concentration. We've talked about this before and it just isn't
consistent with any scientific evidence. You interpret the existence
spontaneous neural activity as meaning that something magical like
this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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You received this 

Re: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough
Hi Bruno Marchal 

What is UD ?



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 15:56:55
Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence




On 06 Sep 2012, at 13:31, benjayk wrote:


Quantum effects beyond individual brains (suggested by psi) can't be
computed as well: No matter what I compute in my brain, this doesn't
entangle it with other brains since computation is classical.



The UD emulates all quantum computer, as they do not violate Church Thesis.





A computational description of the brain is just a relative, approximate
description, nothing more. It doesn't actually reflect what the brain is or
what it does.



The bet the computationalists do, is that nature has already build an emulator, 
through the brain, and that's why a computer might be able to emulate its 
programming, by nature, evolution, etc. And we can copy it without 
understanding, like a virus can copy a file without understanding of its 
content.


Molecular biology is already digital relatively to chemistry. Don't take this 
as argument for comp, but as showing your argument against is not valid.


Bruno






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

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Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 7:21 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
I believe that what is necessarily true (rationally true)
had to be always true and thus a priori.


Dear Roger,

But this is just a matter of definition. It remains to be explained 
how the necessity is achived and how it is so in the many possible worlds.





Man may think he
created numbers or whatever, but whatever was there
before man (to allow physics etc. to happen) something else
had to create.Man simply discovered numbers.


Certainly we can agree that we have a common concept of numbers 
but they are not concrete entities that we can locate in our space and 
time and do not have any other properties such as mass, charge, spin, 
duration. Therefore we have to not use the same terminology and common 
sense with numbers as we do with ordinary objects of the world. One of 
my motivations as a student of philosophy, is to explore multiple ways 
to bring the common sense in alignment with the requirements of 
abstractions, like numbers and to look forward from this alignment to 
see what might be indicated or predicted.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function.

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* Stephen P. King mailto:stephe...@charter.net
*Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Time:* 2012-09-06, 11:35:56
*Subject:* Re: Where do numbers and geometry come from ?

Dear Roger,

    Why is it that people persist in even suggesting that
numbers are created by man? Why the anthropocentric bias? Pink
Ponies might have actually crated them, or Polka-dotted Unicorns!
The idea is just silly! The point is that properties do not occur
at the whim of any one thing, never have and never will.




--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Brains and time, subjectivity vs objectivity

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough


Theres is some duplication in the propositions below which I have not bothered
to clear up, sorry.

1) Mind, being inextended, is outside of the brain, which is extended.
Mind (shared and the general, Platonia) is the subjective realm. 
Brain (personal, private, the particular, materialistic) is in the 
objective realm.

2) So Mind is beyond spacetime (Platonic) , but each brain is in spacetime
 (materialistic), and only brains can access the Platonic*.

3) Brains are in time, as are all materialistic things, including computers.
Mind is timeless*. 

4) Objective time is in spacetime, so can be measured.

5) Subjective time is outside of spacetime, so only sensible by the brain.


* So I think of our brains as racing through Mind in an auto
while looking at the passing landscape of Mind.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 15:25:14
Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a challenge to Bruno, 
just sharing my notes of why I disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, 
but here are my objections to the first step and the stipulated assumptions of 
comp. I understand that the point is to accept the given definition of comp, 
and in that respect, I have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what 
he sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and if he has not, I 
wouldn't be qualified to comment on it anyhow. From my perspective however, 
this is all beside the point, since the only point that matters is the actual 
truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's actual relation to 
physics and information. Given the fragile and precious nature of our own 
survival, I think that implications for teleportation and AI 
simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory rather than thorough 
consideration of realism would be reckless to say the least.


Step one talks about teleportation in terms of being reconstructed with ambient 
organic materials. If comp were true though, no organic materials or 
reconstructions would be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would 
be sufficient.
That is step 6.

I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading In the figure the teleported 
individual is represented by a black box. Its annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow from 1.
 





Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine could be a trillion 
people with notebooks, pencils, paper, and erasers, talking to each other over 
cell phones. This activity would have to collectively result in the teleported 
person now being conjured as if by incantation as a consequence of...what? The 
writing and erasing on paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where 
does the experience of the now disembodied person come in?
As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means used by the brain. 
Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has nothing to do with consciousness, 
except as a content of consciousness. Keeping comp here, we associate 
consciousness with the logical abstract computations.





So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the overall 
effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or does it gradually 
constellate from lesser fragments of disconnected effort-ness?



Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its local 
content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to time and space, 
but that's particular content of an atemporal consciousness. I would say (no 
need of this in UDA).

If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to? In my 
example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and write down 
numbers that they get from each other and perform arithmetic functions on them 
(which in turn may inform them on how to process subsequent arithmetic 
instructions, etc). Ok. So where does the interpretation of these trillion 
events per second come in? What knows what all of the computations add up to 
be? At what point does the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even if 
it could, why should it do such a thing?

 











Step one talks about annihilation as well, but it is not clear what role this 
actually plays in the process, except to make it seem more like teleportation 
and less like what it actually would be, which is duplication. If I scan an 
original document and email the scan, I have sent a duplicate, not teleported 
the original.
Right. Classical teleportation 

Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King
On 9/7/2012 8:26 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
 Hi Stephen P. King
 I think of the brain as a running sensor of the static platonic world.
 Sort of like looking out of the car window as you speed along.

Hi Roger,

How would this be different, from the point of view of the driver, if it
is the Car that is standing still and Platoville is being continuously
created around it? There is no detectable difference *unless* there are
second order changes. An example of the latter is the feeling you have
when you press the gas pedal hard and release the break pedal, Or
release the gas pedal and press the break pedal hard.
Platonia (or COsmic Intelligence) does not consider any kind of change
within it, not even zeroth order, thus cannot be considered as an
irreducible source of all things. It is a nice metaphor that simply
should never be taken literally unless doing so will never emit or imply
a contradiction.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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A Sherlock Holmes computer

2012-09-07 Thread Roger Clough


There is a quote by Sherlock Holmes that suggests a way to possibly filter out
solid truth from a comp (?)

List all of the possibilities or possible solutions. Then remove all from that 
list
that are impossible (now or ever, I would add).   Whatever is left over is the
(rational or necesssary) truth. 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012 
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function.
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-06, 19:59:11
Subject: Re: Why a bacterium has more intelligence than a computer




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 7:37:38 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/5/2012 11:50 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 6:38:07 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: 
Hi Stephen P. King 

No, the stuff in our skulls  is alive, has intelligence, and a 1p.
Computers don't and can't. Big sdifference.

Hi Roger,

??? Please leave magic out of this, as any sufficiently advanced technology is 
indistinguishable from magic. The trouble is that the stuff in our skulls does 
not appear to be that much different from a bunch of diodes and transistors. 

??? Our brains obey the very same physical laws! What makes the brain special? 
I suspect that the brain uses quantum entanglement effects to both synchronize 
and update sense content in ways that cannot obtain from purely classical 
physical methods. Our mechanical machines lack the ability to report on their 
1p content thus we are using their disability to argue against their possible 
abilities. A computer that could both generate an internal self-model and 
report on it would lead us to very different conclusions!


I think you are both right. Computers qua computers don't feel anything because 
they aren't anything. The physical material that you are using to execute 
computations on does however have experiences - just not experiences that we 
associated with our own. There is a concrete experience associated with the 
production of these pixels on your screen - many experiences on many levels, of 
molecules that make up the wires etc., but those experiences don't seem to lead 
to anything we would consider significant. It's pretty straightforward to me. A 
stuffed animal that looks like a bear is not a bear. A picture of a person is 
not a person, even if it is a fancy interactive picture.

Craig

-- 


Hi Craig,

I think that the difference that makes a difference here is the identity 
that emerges between matching of the experience *of* object and experience *by* 
object. Ranulph Glanville has, with others in the Cybernetics community, 
written masterfully on this in his Same is Different paper.



Hi Stephen,

How does the of/by distinction compare with map-territory and use-mention 
distinctions?

Craig
 

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Stephen

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 3:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Sep 2012, at 21:25, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:02:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:27, Craig Weinberg wrote:




On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:50:02 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal
wrote:


On 05 Sep 2012, at 03:48, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Taking another look at Sane2004. This isn't so much as a
challenge to Bruno, just sharing my notes of why I
disagree. Not sure how far I will get this time, but here
are my objections to the first step and the stipulated
assumptions of comp. I understand that the point is to
accept the given definition of comp, and in that respect, I
have no reason to doubt that Bruno has accomplished what he
sets out to as far as making a good theory within comp, and
if he has not, I wouldn't be qualified to comment on it
anyhow. From my perspective however, this is all beside the
point, since the only point that matters is the actual
truth of what consciousness actually is, and what is it's
actual relation to physics and information. Given the
fragile and precious nature of our own survival, I think
that implications for teleportation and AI
simulation/personhood which are derived from pure theory
rather than thorough consideration of realism would be
reckless to say the least.

*Step one* talks about teleportation in terms of being
reconstructed with ambient organic materials. If comp were
true though, no organic materials or reconstructions would
be necessary. The scanning into a universal machine would
be sufficient.


That is step 6.


I haven't even gotten to step 2 yet. I'm reading In the figure
the teleported individual is represented by a black box. Its
annihilation is
represented by a white box appearing at the left of the arrow
from 1.




Taking this to the China Brain level, the universal machine
could be a trillion people with notebooks, pencils, paper,
and erasers, talking to each other over cell phones. This
activity would have to collectively result in the
teleported person now being conjured as if by incantation
as a consequence of...what? The writing and erasing on
paper? The calling and speaking on cell phones? Where does
the experience of the now disembodied person come in?


As you illustrate here, plausibly not on the physical means
used by the brain. Step 8 shows that indeed the physical has
nothing to do with consciousness, except as a content of
consciousness. Keeping comp here, we associate consciousness
with the logical abstract computations.



So the person's consciousness arises spontaneously through the
overall effort-ness behind the writing, erasing, and calling, or
does it gradually constellate from lesser fragments of
disconnected effort-ness?


Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time.
Its local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can
refer to time and space, but that's particular content of an
atemporal consciousness. I would say (no need of this in UDA).


If you exclude space and time, what kind of locality do you refer to?


The computational locality used in the local universal system.


Dear Bruno,

Could you elaborate a bit more on this remark? How do you define a 
 local universal system? What is local for you?






In my example, a quintillion people call each other on the phone and 
write down numbers that they get from each other and perform 
arithmetic functions on them (which in turn may inform them on how to 
process subsequent arithmetic instructions, etc). Ok. So where does 
the interpretation of these trillion events per second come in? What 
knows what all of the computations add up to be? At what point does 
the 'local content' begin to itch and turn blue? Even if it could, 
why should it do such a thing?


Because it concerns a machine looking at herself and its probable 
environment.


As I think of it, a machine cannot literally look at herself; it 
can only look at an image of herself and that image could be subject 
to errors. This allows me to relate an image that a machine might have 
of itself with the image the machine might have of another machine and 
thus I found the concept of bisimulation. Additionally, we can define 
cases where the image and the machine itself are identical in every 
possible way and thus are one and the same thing (via principle of 
identity of indiscernibles).
It seems to me that most of our disagreements flow from your 
assumption that the image of a machine and the machine are strictly 
isomorphic, while I assume such only in certain special cases.


Then the logic shows that it is 

Re: The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread Roberto Szabo
Hi Roger,

Brains some years ago had no intellectual or feeling facilities too. It
came by evolution.

Roberto Szabo

2012/9/7 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net

  Hi Stephen P. King

 No, machines, even computers, IMHO in practice have no intellectual or
 feeling
 facilities, are no more than dumb rocks. So there is no more communication
 with God possible
 than there would be with an abacus.

 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
 9/7/2012
 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
 so that everything could function.

 - Receiving the following content -
 *From:* Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net
 *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
 *Time:* 2012-09-06, 19:39:10
 *Subject:* Re: The All

   On 9/5/2012 12:14 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Hi Roger,

  On 05 Sep 2012, at 17:23, Roger Clough wrote:

  Hi Bruno Marchal

 No, the supreme Monad can see everything even
 though the monads have no windows.

 Also the closeness to God issue depends
 on your clarity of vision and feeling. And perhaps appetites.
 So everybody's different.



 I agree. But my point was that everybody includes possibly machines, and
 that we are not supposed to dictate God which creatures he can look
 through.

 Bruno

 Hi Bruno,

 I agree with you here 100%!

 --
 Onward!

 Stephen
 http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

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Re: The universe as a collection of an infinite number of pointscalledmonads

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 10:43 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
As I see it, if there is an infinite collection of (monadic) points,
all future things foreseen (as in pre-established harmony)
then nothing new can ever be created or destroyed, things
(including thoughts and people)  just blossom like plants from
seeds and eventually die, but always in the same monad.


Hi Roger,

Here is the problem: a point has no extension therefore it cannot 
code anything other than its presence or non-presence by its absence. To 
think of all future things foreseen (as in pre-established harmony) 
there must be a capacity of each and every monad to have an image of 
some sort of things, future, past, present, distant, close, whatever. It 
must have the equivalent of potentially infinite memory. This cannot 
occur for a point. Therefore, a monad cannot be defined as a point, but 
it can be similar to a point in having no exterior extensions; it only 
has internal aspects. All considerations of things exterior to a monad 
are merely defined in terms of relations within, between and among its 
internal aspects.



Notice that the phrase pre-established harmony just popped
naturally into my mind when I visualized the points as overlaid.
Studying Leibniz is like that, it is so logical that it will allow you
to explore without a guide.


It seems likely that you are merely parroting words without fully 
comprehending their use or meaning.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
9/7/2012
Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function.

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* Stephen P. King mailto:stephe...@charter.net
*Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Time:* 2012-09-07, 10:22:37
*Subject:* Re: The universe as a collection of an infinite number
of pointscalledmonads

On 9/7/2012 8:32 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King
I solved this problem my own way by simply asssuming that the
universe
from the beginning and  before, as well as now and forever,
exists as an infinite collection of points (monads).


Hi Roger,

I agree with this.



So no problem
with the creation of new things.


No, novelty is not a priori definable, by its very definition
it cannot be considered to be given from the beginning! OTOH, we
could stipulate that novelty is a concept that only individual
monads that are not identical to each other can have, then novelty
and creation of new things in general can be seen in a logically
consistent  fashion as local transient aspects and not
pre-ordained  or essence.


In principle they always were
and simply grow or unfold when the time calls for it, then
roll or fold up or whatever at the end of their useful lives.


Surely!


In this veiw of reality, all of reality always consists in
monadic space
as an overlapping infinite set of points.


No, that is a contradiction of terms. Monads cannot be defined
as an overlapping infinite set of points because points by
definition have no extension and therefore can never overlap with
each other. There is no such thing as a monadic space which
might act as a container of multiple and distinct monads. Monads,
as L defined them, cannot act or exist in that manner. Frankly,
L's speculations about the exterior aspects of Monads, found
later on in his Monadology, papers, may be the consequence of
drinking too much wine as they are completely inconsistent with
his careful initial definitions of monads. We are all finite and
fallible, even geniuses like Leibniz. :-(

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Re: Sane2004 Step One

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 2:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 06 Sep 2012, at 20:44, meekerdb wrote:


On 9/6/2012 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Consciousness does not arise. It is not in space, nor in time. Its 
local content, obtained by differentiation, internally can refer to 
time and space,


Even if it is not *in* spacetime, my consciousness seems to depend on 
some particular localized matter in spacetime.


Seeming can be wrong. Only the content of consciousness depends on the 
particular matter localized in space-time.


Dear Bruno,

Only the content of consciousness depends on the particular matter 
localized in space-time.  AMAZING! Could you consider that this 
statement is exactly what I have been trying to get you to discuss with 
me all this time?



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Re: The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread John Clark
On Fri, Sep 7 2012, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

 machines, even computers, IMHO in practice have no intellectual or
 feeling facilities, are no more than dumb rocks.


Computers may or may not have feelings but that is of no concern to us, if
they don't it's their problem not ours; however those dumb rocks can and
do outsmart us on a regular basis and the list of things they are superior
at gets longer every day. The very title of this thread just screams
whistling past the graveyard.

  So there is no more communication with God possible than there would be
 with an abacus.


Now that I agree with 100%, computers are no better at talking to God than
a abacus is.

  John K Clark

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Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

On 07.09.2012 13:43 Stephen P. King said the following:

On 9/7/2012 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:

On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?  What
if reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to
avoid this because such utterances would have no determinate
meaning. So a *descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and
therefore useless) but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't
be inconsistent because it's not assertions.

Brent



This could work provided we could separate the world into mental
and physical states. The question remains though if under
physicalism one says that mental states are actually physical
states. Then I do not know how to employ such a consideration in
this case.

Evgenii


Dear Evgenii,

What do you imagine would be the consequence of what may be a pair of
sets of mental states and physical states for one entity does not
match up exactly or even at all with a pair of mental and physical
states for another?



This was a question. I have no idea how to answer it.

Evgenii

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Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread meekerdb

On 9/7/2012 1:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:

On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic?  What if
reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to avoid
this because such utterances would have no determinate meaning.  So a
*descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and therefore useless)
but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't be inconsistent because
it's not assertions.

Brent



This could work provided we could separate the world into mental and physical states. 
The question remains though if under physicalism one says that mental states are 
actually physical states. Then I do not know how to employ such a consideration in this 
case.


I don't see the problem?  Are you saying that two statements cannot be contradictory 
because they are both part of reality (which would not depend on them being physical)?


Brent

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Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect

2012-09-07 Thread John Mikes
Brent,

I believe there is a difference between (adj) 'fair' or 'unjust' and the
(noun) 'fairness', or 'consciousness'.
While the nouns (IMO) are not adequately identified the adverbs refer to
the applied system of correspondence.
E.g.: Fair to the unjust system. (I don't think we may use the opposite:
unjust to a 'fair' system in our discussion).
As I tried to explain in another post: the 'rich' consume MORE of the
country-supplied services than the not-so-rich and pay less taxes (unfair
and unjust). Certain big corporations also pay 'less' than the system would
require
(*in all fairness* - proverbially said) ordinarily.
Semantix, OOH!

John M

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:18 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 9/4/2012 1:12 PM, John Mikes wrote:


 **
 It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist
 attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a
 requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the
 not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections,
 financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their
 lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme.
 ...

 And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the
 word *FAIRNESS!*


 So is it OK if I use FAIR and unjust?

 Brent

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Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread John Clark
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 1:10 PM, William R. Buckley
bill.buck...@gmail.comwrote:

While at any moment the tape may be finite, that it can at need grow is the
 fundamental notion of infinite.


No, the fundamental notion of the infinite is that you can make a one to
one correspondence with a proper subset of itself.

 The net result of Turing’s specification is that the tape is  infinite


If the machine comes to a halt then a finite amount of tape is sufficient
to get its work done, if it does not halt then even a infinite amount of
tape would not be sufficient. Turing proved that there is no general way to
tell in advance one case from the other.

  John K Clark

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Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread John Clark
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 when God asks Himself the question Why have I always existed, why
 haven't I always not existed? what answer in his omniscience does He come
 up with?


  The neoplatonist conception of God does not allow It to ask such a
 question.


Interesting, so I was mistaken in thinking that God can do anything and in
fact the neoplatonists can order God around; but if God has been instructed
not to worry His little head over such questions then He really doesn't
have much to do. Apparently God (or rather the neoplatonist) have given
control of the Universe over to Physics; and having never had anything to
do I guess God just does what He always does and watches TV and eats potato
chips all day. God is a pretty dull unimportant fellow, I can't understand
why philosophers are so obsessed with such a nonentity.

 Still defending the Christian God, aren't you?


Yes absolutely, I'm defending the four year old kid's concept of Santa
Claus too because I think it might be useful if the words  God and Santa
Claus mean something, otherwise when I say I don't believe in either it
would not convey any information to anyone about what I believe or don't
believe.

  John K Clark

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Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread John Clark
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I was addressing John Clark, who confirmed my feeling that atheists are
 the number one defender of the Christian's conception of God.


OK I see the error of my ways and now believe that God exists.

Incidentally when I went out to my car today I found that I that a flat
God, so I jacked up the car, got a spare God out of my trunk and took the
punctured God off the axle and put on the spare God. I think the old God
has a nail in it so I'm going to take it to the God repair shop to see if
they can remove it and put a patch on the old God so I'll still have a
spare God.

 John K Clark

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Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 4:10 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 I was addressing John Clark, who confirmed my feeling that
atheists are the number one defender of the Christian's conception
of God.


OK I see the error of my ways and now believe that God exists.

Incidentally when I went out to my car today I found that I that a 
flat God, so I jacked up the car, got a spare God out of my trunk and 
took the punctured God off the axle and put on the spare God. I think 
the old God has a nail in it so I'm going to take it to the God repair 
shop to see if they can remove it and put a patch on the old God so 
I'll still have a spare God.


 John K Clark



Hi John,

It must be fun to be you! ;-) What would we do without your sharp 
wit, the world would be a boring place. :_(


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Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Stephen P. King

On 9/7/2012 2:03 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 07.09.2012 13:43 Stephen P. King said the following:

On 9/7/2012 4:11 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 06.09.2012 21:03 meekerdb said the following:

On 9/6/2012 11:52 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:



A too much powerful God leads to inconsistency.



What if reality does not always obey the laws of logic? What
if reality is sometimes inconsistent?


This is a confusion of levels. Logic is rules about truth
preservation in declarative sentences.  Not 'obeying the laws of
logic' just means declaring inconsistent sentences. We try to
avoid this because such utterances would have no determinate
meaning. So a *descriptions* of reality may be inconsistent (and
therefore useless) but reality is just whatever it is.  It can't
be inconsistent because it's not assertions.

Brent



This could work provided we could separate the world into mental
and physical states. The question remains though if under
physicalism one says that mental states are actually physical
states. Then I do not know how to employ such a consideration in
this case.

Evgenii


Dear Evgenii,

What do you imagine would be the consequence of what may be a pair of
sets of mental states and physical states for one entity does not
match up exactly or even at all with a pair of mental and physical
states for another?



This was a question. I have no idea how to answer it.

Evgenii


Hi Evgenii,

Consider the mental image that a person suffering from anorexia has 
of themselves. It is distorted and false. How does this happen? Consider 
the Placebo effect and its complement, the Nocebo effect. Are they not 
examples of mental states acting on physical states? How does this 
happen if the mental states are just illusions (ala materialism) or the 
physical states are just illusions (ala Immaterialism)? Somehow they 
must be correlated with each other in some way and which ever way that 
is it is one that is not always a one to one and onto map.


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Re: prime numbers etc

2012-09-07 Thread John Mikes
Touche.
But I don't believe (in?) it - I am agnostic. Nonbeliever.
(SONG: I lost my turf in San Francisco)
J

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:36 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote:

  On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 8:07 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:
  Stathis wrote (to Craig):
 
  But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what
  chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing
  without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or
  ligand concentration. We've talked about this before and it just isn't
  consistent with any scientific evidence. You interpret the existence
  spontaneous neural activity as meaning that something magical like
  this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all.
 
  Stathis, you know ... whatever we state as 'knowledge about mind etc.'
 is an
  explanation for the little we think we learned - with lots we have no
 idea
  about.
  Like: chemicals ... potentials ... scientific evidence ... even cause
  (meaning the
  part we alredy know about) and mauch much more.
  It is your turf, you must know about more we don't know only think we do.

 It's your turf too - you're a chemist.

 --
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Re: Re: The All

2012-09-07 Thread Jason Resch
On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

  Hi Bruno Marchal

 IMHO computers cannot think, although they can appear to think.
 If they could think, they should be able to



 b) construct a language that only another computer can understand.



In a sense, this is what happens every time your web browser talks to
another secure server.  The two computers, on the fly, invent an encoding
which only they can understand.  This is what makes the connection secure.
No one can pick your credit card numbers out on their way to amazon because
your computer is speaking a language that only one other computer in the
whole world (the one at amazon) is able to understand.

Jason

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Computing with water droplets

2012-09-07 Thread meekerdb

An amusing example of computation


--- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120907082027.htm

Towards Computing With Water Droplets: Superhydrophobic Droplet Logic ScienceDaily (Sep. 
7, 2012) ? Researchers in Aalto University have developed a new concept for computing, 
using water droplets as bits of digital information. This was enabled by the discovery 
that upon collision with each other on a highly water-repellent surface, two water 
droplets rebound like billiard balls.


 http://www.geekosystem.com/water-drop-computing/

[an ad-heavy page, but includes a decent video of a 1-bit counter]

Brent

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Re: The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread Jason Resch
On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 12:12 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Fri, Sep 7 2012, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

  machines, even computers, IMHO in practice have no intellectual or
 feeling facilities, are no more than dumb rocks.


 Computers may or may not have feelings but that is of no concern to us, if
 they don't it's their problem not ours; however those dumb rocks can and
 do outsmart us on a regular basis and the list of things they are superior
 at gets longer every day. The very title of this thread just screams
 whistling past the graveyard.

   So there is no more communication with God possible than there would
 be with an abacus.


 Now that I agree with 100%, computers are no better at talking to God than
 a abacus is.

   John K Clark



John,

Bruno makes a valid point, that you attack only the weakest, most ill
conceived, notion(s) of God.  Perhaps you have never bothered to
investigate deeply the true claims of various religions.  If you haven't
you might easily have missed some of the deeper meanings of God, which are
quite different than what you might believe listening only to the most
vocal (fundamentalist or literalist sects).  Many, perhaps even a majority,
of modern religions define God as the self-existent, self-sufficient,
immutable, infinite absolute truth, and the foremost reason and/or cause
for all of existence.  I included some examples below:

Judaism:
   God is an absolute one indivisible incomparable being who is the
ultimate cause of all existence.  The name YHWH literally means The
self-existent One
   (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Judaism )

   The first sentence of the book Genesis begins: The primary cause caused
to be.
   (from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_nihilo#History_of_the_idea_of_creatio_ex_nihilo)

Christianity:

   The book of John begins: In the beginning was the λόγος, and the λόγος
was with God, and the λόγος was God.
   λόγος or logos, is the root word from which we get logic, as well as the
-logy suffix as in biology, geology, etc.  It has
   connotations of reason, principles, logic, with no perfect translation
to English.  In Latin bibles it was translated verba, and when translated
to English became word.

   Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish of the first-century, taught that the
logos was both the agent of creation and the agent through which the human
mind can apprehend and comprehend God.

  To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything
that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.
-- Hilda Phoebe Hudson
  Geometry existed before the creation; is co-eternal with the mind of
God; is God himself -- Johannes Kepler

Islam:
  Among the names of God given in the Koran:
  Al-Haqq, meaning: The Truth, The Real
  Al-Wāhid, meaning: The One, The Unique
  As-Samad, meaning: The Eternal, The Absolute, The Self-Sufficient
  Al-Bāqīy, meaning: The Immutable, The Infinite, The Everlasting
  (from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Islam#List_of_99_Names_of_God_as_found_in_the_Qur.27an)

Sikhism:

  The root mantra in Sikhism reads: There is one creator, whose name is
truth, creative being, without fear, without hate, timeless whose spirit is
throughout the universe, beyond the cycle of death and rebirth,
self-existent, by the grace of the guru, God is made known to humanity.
  (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh_beliefs )

Hinduism:

   Brahman, the supreme God, is is seen as the infinite, self-existent,
omnipresent and transcendent reality which is the divine ground for all
that exists.
   In the Bhagavad Gita, “You are the Supreme Brahman, the ultimate abode,
the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental,
original Person, the unborn, the greatest.”
   In the Sri Brahma-samhita, “I worship Govinda, the foremost Lord, whose
radiance is the source of the singular Brahman mentioned in the Upanishads,
being distinct from the infinity of glories of the material universe
appears as the indivisible, infinite, limitless, truth.

“I would say with those who say ‘God is Love’, God is Love.  But deep down
in me I used to say that though God may be Love, God is Truth above all.
If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of
God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth.” He continued, “Then
there is another thing in Hindu philosophy, namely, God alone is and
nothing else exists, and the same truth you see emphasized and exemplified
in the kalma of Islam.  And there you find it clearly stated that God alone
is, and nothing else exists.  In fact, the Sanskrit word for truth is a
word which literally means that which exists, sat.  For these and many
other reasons, I have come to the conclusion that the definition – Truth is
God – gives me the greatest satisfaction. -- Mohandas Gandhi

Buddhism:

   There is the concept of the “All-Creating King”, who declares of
itself:  everything is Me, the All-Creating 

Re: The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread meekerdb

On 9/7/2012 8:43 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Platonism (or mathematical realism) is the majority viewpoint of modern mathematicians. 


In a survey of mathematicians I know it is an even division.  Of course they are all 
methodological Platonists, but not necessarily philosophical ones.


Computationalism (or functionalism) is the majority viewpoint of cognitive scientists 
and philosophers of mind.  Thus the scientific consensus is that infinite (mathematical) 
truth 


Except mathematical truth is just a marker, T, whose value is preserved by the rules of 
logic.  Whether a proposition that has T corresponds with any fact is another question.


is the self-existent cause and reason for our existence. 


That is very far from a scientific consensus.  I'd say majority the opinion among 
scientists who are philosophically inclined is that mathematics and logic are languages in 
which we create models that represent what we think about reality.  This explains why 
there can be contradictory mathematical models and even mutually inconsistent sets of 
axioms and rules of inference.


Few people today have realized that this is inevitable conclusion of these two commonly 
held beliefs.


Not only that a few people have rejected it.

Brent

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Re: The poverty of computers

2012-09-07 Thread Jason Resch
Brent,

Thanks for your reply.

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 11:19 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 9/7/2012 8:43 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

 Platonism (or mathematical realism) is the majority viewpoint of modern
 mathematicians.


 In a survey of mathematicians I know it is an even division.  Of course
 they are all methodological Platonists, but not necessarily philosophical
 ones.


That is interesting.  Among the non-platonists, what schools of thought did
you find most popular?



  Computationalism (or functionalism) is the majority viewpoint of
 cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind.  Thus the scientific
 consensus is that infinite (mathematical) truth


 Except mathematical truth is just a marker, T, whose value is preserved by
 the rules of logic.  Whether a proposition that has T corresponds with any
 fact is another question.


Functionalism maintains that so long as the same relations are preserved,
whether they be relations between neurons, silicon circuits, ping pong
balls, objects in other possible universes, objects in a mathematical
structure, or the integers themselves, the same brain state will result.
If one subscribes to Platonism, then there exist mathematical objects that
possess the same relations that exist in our brains, and if one subscribes
to functionalism, these platonic instances of our brains would not be
zombies but fully conscious.




  is the self-existent cause and reason for our existence.


 That is very far from a scientific consensus.


I agree, few realize it.  Not many mathematicians are also philosophers of
mind, but does it not follow from platonism+functionalism?


  I'd say majority the opinion among scientists who are philosophically
 inclined is that mathematics and logic are languages in which we create
 models that represent what we think about reality.


Perhaps, but this wouldn't be platonism,  Many scientists probably are
unaware that that formalism failed and that mathematical truth transcends
any description, which is why it is better to look at the consensus of
domain experts.  A biologist probably isn't the best person to ask about
whether there is one universe or many.


  This explains why there can be contradictory mathematical models and even
 mutually inconsistent sets of axioms and rules of inference.


This is no different than the existence of contradictory and inconsistent
physical theories.  We arrive at better axiomatic systems for explaining
truth about the numbers in the same way we arrive at better physical
theories for explaining truth of the natural world.  Some turn out to be
more powerful, explain more, etc, and we stick with them until a better one
comes along.




  Few people today have realized that this is inevitable conclusion of
 these two commonly held beliefs.


 Not only that a few people have rejected it.


Sure, many people reject Bruno's UDA, but has anyone shown the error in its
reasoning?

Jason

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