Re: The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
On 30 May 2013, at 21:04, meekerdb wrote: On 5/30/2013 2:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 May 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote: On 5/29/2013 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension. All- or-nothing would be a function that is either 1 or 0. The point is more that it is 0, or 0. If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount). That is about consciousness' content. Not on being or not conscious. In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions. I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans. Most plausibly. But this again is about the content, and the character of consciousness, not the existence or not on some consciousness. You seem to regard consciousness as a kind of magic vessel which exists even when it is empty. I think John Mikes is right when he says it is a process. When a process isn't doing anything it doesn't exist. To be sure, I don't use this in the usual reasoning, but I have to say that I am more and more open that there is something like that, indeed. But I agree that consciousness is related to a process, in part (if not comp would be meaningless). It just appears that such a process is very basic, that it is emulated by (many) arithmetical relations, and that it is also related to arithmetical truth (which is not emulable by any machine, but machine are confronted to it). Consciousness per se is not just a process: it is a first person mental state relating some process with truth. What I say is that such process can be kept very minimal. I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack. Sure. Bats have plausibly some richer qualia associated to sound than humans. But what we discuss is that consciousness is either present or not. Then it can take many different shapes, and even intensity, up to the altered state of consciousness. Cotard syndrom is also interesting. People having it believe that they are dead, and some argue that they are not conscious, but in fact what happen is that they lack the ability to put any meaning on their consciousness. Put meaning on consciousness? That makes no sense to me. They are obviously conscious of some things. If they were unconscious they couldn't respond. There is a possibility that we can access a state where we are conscious only of one thing, that we are conscious. It *is* part of the unbelievable (G* minus G). You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you sometimes use Bp to mean proves p and sometimes believes p Hmm... you might read the Plotinus paper, or the second part of sane04, or my old posts, or my recent post on Russell's FOAR. I will tell you the whole thing. 1) I adopt Dennett' intentional stances. I will say that a machine believes p if and only if the machine asserts p. 2) Being a bit tried listening to machine saying basically anything, I limit myself to machine which believes in few things (but not so few), that is, they believe in the classical tautologies, and some arithmetical things like 0, successors, the addition and multiplication laws. (I think I so share those beliefs). I assume that they are rational, so if they believe p and if they believe p - q, they can or will believe q. In that case 'belief' can be shown to be defined in arithmetic by Gödel's beweisbar Sigma_1 complete (Turing universal) predicate. If the machine believes in enough induction axiom, she can proves (believe) in its sigma_1 completeness, and she becomes Löbian, meaning that its mathematics of self-reference is governed by the logic G, which has the Löb formula as its main axiom: B(Bp-p)-Bp. (Solovay 1976 first theorem) From this you can see immediately that the machine cannot believe that she is correct, that Bp - p is always believable. Indeed she can show that this entails B(Bp - p), by necessitation, and then Bp, by Löb, and then p, and then she can proves all sentences (with p = f, she is already inconsistent). So Bp - p is not always believable, despite being true for the kind of machine I am considering, and thus, although Bp and Bp p are equivalent (we know the machine is correct), she cannot know that. So, thanks to incompleteness, or Löb, we can define a new abstract modality []p = Bp p, and this modality behaves like knowledge, and gives the explanation why the machine cannot define it. She can of course bet on comp, and define it in an abstract theory, like we did, but the definition will refer, or
Re: The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
On 5/31/2013 8:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 30 May 2013, at 21:04, meekerdb wrote: On 5/30/2013 2:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 May 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote: On 5/29/2013 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension. All-or-nothing would be a function that is either 1 or 0. The point is more that it is 0, or 0. If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount). That is about consciousness' content. Not on being or not conscious. In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions. I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans. Most plausibly. But this again is about the content, and the character of consciousness, not the existence or not on some consciousness. You seem to regard consciousness as a kind of magic vessel which exists even when it is empty. I think John Mikes is right when he says it is a process. When a process isn't doing anything it doesn't exist. To be sure, I don't use this in the usual reasoning, but I have to say that I am more and more open that there is something like that, indeed. But I agree that consciousness is related to a process, in part (if not comp would be meaningless). It just appears that such a process is very basic, that it is emulated by (many) arithmetical relations, and that it is also related to arithmetical truth (which is not emulable by any machine, but machine are confronted to it). Consciousness per se is not just a process: it is a first person mental state relating some process with truth. What I say is that such process can be kept very minimal. I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack. Sure. Bats have plausibly some richer qualia associated to sound than humans. But what we discuss is that consciousness is either present or not. Then it can take many different shapes, and even intensity, up to the altered state of consciousness. Cotard syndrom is also interesting. People having it believe that they are dead, and some argue that they are not conscious, but in fact what happen is that they lack the ability to put any meaning on their consciousness. Put meaning on consciousness? That makes no sense to me. They are obviously conscious of some things. If they were unconscious they couldn't respond. There is a possibility that we can access a state where we are conscious only of one thing, that we are conscious. It *is* part of the unbelievable (G* minus G). You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you sometimes use Bp to mean proves p and sometimes believes p Hmm... you might read the Plotinus paper, or the second part of sane04, or my old posts, or my recent post on Russell's FOAR. I will tell you the whole thing. 1) I adopt Dennett' intentional stances. I will say that a machine believes p if and only if the machine asserts p. 2) Being a bit tried listening to machine saying basically anything, I limit myself to machine which believes in few things (but not so few), that is, they believe in the classical tautologies, and some arithmetical things like 0, successors, the addition and multiplication laws. (I think I so share those beliefs). I assume that they are rational, so if they believe p and if they believe p - q, they can or will believe q. In that case 'belief' can be shown to be defined in arithmetic by Gödel's beweisbar Sigma_1 complete (Turing universal) predicate. If the machine believes in enough induction axiom, she can proves (believe) in its sigma_1 completeness, and she becomes Löbian, meaning that its mathematics of self-reference is governed by the logic G, which has the Löb formula as its main axiom: B(Bp-p)-Bp. (Solovay 1976 first theorem) From this you can see immediately that the machine cannot believe that she is correct, that Bp - p is always believable. But this is where you seem to make a pun on B. You start by saying B means proves and then for a logic machine proves and asserts and believes are all the same (extensionally) and so you let B stand for both proves and believes. But then you note that the machine cannot prove she is correct and you substitute believe for prove and conclude she cannot believe she is correct. But logic is supposed to be a formalization of informal reasoning. You informally reasoned to the conclusion that proves = believes for the formal machine. But this is contrary to informal reasoning where believes means willing to act on and is very different from proves. So I get the feeling that you have just incorrectly formalized
Re: Belief vs Truth
On 31 May 2013, at 01:19, meekerdb wrote: On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you sometimes use Bp to mean proves p and sometimes believes p To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing. Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you believed the axioms and rules of inference. What mathematicians generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e. that the conclusion follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out. I believe in this theorem because I can prove it. If I can't prove it, then I don't believe it - it is merely a conjecture. In modal logic, the operator B captures both proof and supposedly belief. Obviously it captures a mathematician's notion of belief - whether that extends to a scientists notion of belief, or a Christian's notion is another matter entirely. I don't think scientists, doing science, *believe* anything. They believe that they publish papers, and usually share the consensual believes, like in rain, taxes, and death (of others). All humans have many beliefs. A genuine scientist just know that those are beliefs, and not knowledge (even if they hope their belief to be true). So they will provides axioms/theories and derive from that, and compare with facts, in case the theory is applied in some concrete domain. Of course they believe things in the common sense that they are willing to act/bet on something (at some odds). Yes. For example most believe that there is no biggest prime numbers. The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the religious person must always act as if the religious dogma is true (at any odds). This precludes doubting or questioning the dogma. Very often, alas. But the israelites and the taoists encourage the comments and the discussion of texts. So there are degrees of dogmatic thinking. When it comes to Bp p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge. Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a proposition that is true and is based on evidence but, because the evidence is not causally connected to the proposition should not count as knowledge. http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html It is equivalent with the dream argument made by someone who believes he knows that he is awake. Gettier is right, but he begs the question. But the theaetetus' idea works in arithlmetic, thank to incompleteness, and that's is deemed to be called, imo, a (verifiable) fact. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Belief vs Truth
On 5/31/2013 10:35 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 31 May 2013, at 01:19, meekerdb wrote: On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you sometimes use Bp to mean proves p and sometimes believes p To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing. Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you believed the axioms and rules of inference. What mathematicians generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e. that the conclusion follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out. I believe in this theorem because I can prove it. If I can't prove it, then I don't believe it - it is merely a conjecture. In modal logic, the operator B captures both proof and supposedly belief. Obviously it captures a mathematician's notion of belief - whether that extends to a scientists notion of belief, or a Christian's notion is another matter entirely. I don't think scientists, doing science, *believe* anything. They believe that they publish papers, and usually share the consensual believes, like in rain, taxes, and death (of others). All humans have many beliefs. A genuine scientist just know that those are beliefs, and not knowledge (even if they hope their belief to be true). So they will provides axioms/theories and derive from that, and compare with facts, in case the theory is applied in some concrete domain. But those are not beliefs in the mathematicians sense, they are beliefs in the common sense. They don't just believe the axioms and that the theorems follow from them. Scientists usually call them hypotheses or models to emphasize that they are ideas that are held provisionally and are to be tested empirically. Of course they believe things in the common sense that they are willing to act/bet on something (at some odds). Yes. For example most believe that there is no biggest prime numbers. The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the religious person must always act as if the religious dogma is true (at any odds). This precludes doubting or questioning the dogma. Very often, alas. But the israelites and the taoists encourage the comments and the discussion of texts. So there are degrees of dogmatic thinking. When it comes to Bp p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge. Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a proposition that is true and is based on evidence but, because the evidence is not causally connected to the proposition should not count as knowledge. http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html It is equivalent with the dream argument made by someone who believes he knows that he is awake. Gettier is right, but he begs the question. What question is that? But the theaetetus' idea works in arithlmetic, thank to incompleteness, and that's is deemed to be called, imo, a (verifiable) fact. But does it work outside arithmetic? Brent Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Belief vs Truth
On 01/06/2013, at 3:35 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: All humans have many beliefs. A genuine scientist just know that those are beliefs, and not knowledge (even if they hope their belief to be true). So they will provides axioms/theories and derive from that, and compare with facts, in case the theory is applied in some concrete domain. Beliefs relate directly to needs. This is seperate to the issue already largely explored here as to whether belief and knowledge are the same. In general, all humans have needs. These needs range from the obvious (fuel ie food/drink, shelter etc) to less obvious things like respect, admiration from some other human or humans, a mission in life and a sense of achievement in relation to that mission. If our deep needs are not satisfied at least partially, we wither and dry-up like any plant. Possibly because these less-obvious needs are such deep motivators of human activities on just about every level, it is rather boring (or sometimes frankly embarrassing) to talk about them or indeed to own-up to the fact. Freud's great achievement was that he got humans to fess-up to their needs and to stop bullshitting each about them. Even Einstein the Great was able to say I don't have any special talent. I'm just insatiably curious. Or words to that effect. Thus, his whole life was about satisfying his *personal need* to know stuff. That's fine; we all benefitted from his attending to his own needs in that regard. Beethoven wrote great music. Not because it was an expectation of others put on him that he tried to live up to, but because he perceived entities existing in a realm that can only be experienced in the mind via musical compositions. In fact he was exploring Platonia - as you do when you write great music or do great science. Please don't get out the Thor's Hammer of reductionism to clout me with because this is not reductionism. This is HONESTY. In Edward de Bono's framework for Parallel Thinking The Six Thinking Hats the Red Hat is donned for the expression of feelings, hunches and intuitions. In other words, with the Red Hat on, everybody gets a chance to spruik their beliefs about something. There is no requirement that these be rational or even logical. You can spit the dummy if you want to, or, out a gut-feeling about the issue under consideration. No one can be criticised for having a bit of a rave or a rant under the Red Hat because that's the essence of Parallel Thinking: everyone wears the same-coloured hat at the same time and the result is that the neurotransmitters for that mental operation (beliefs, needs, emotions etc) are optimised. Later on, we take off the Red Hat and put on the Yellow Hat which is about everyone in the room optimising the neurotransmitters associated with positive thinking. If you cannot see anything positive or beneficial about an idea or an issue, (like John Clark in relation to Bruno's comp theory) then you are merely advertising the fact that you are an excellent Red Hat thinker but a lousy Yellow Hat thinker. There are benefits to everything. The trick is, to be able to see them. Then there is of course the Black Hat, which is the Logical Negative. Don't confuse the Red and Black Hats. The Red Hat has everything to do with needs and beliefs and nothing at all to do with logic. The Black Hat has everything to do with logic. Under the Black Hat, you must judge an idea as unworthy for the following logically-demonstrable reasons: a) - b) - c) etc. Indeed, you may BELIEVE and FEEL that an idea is just fine, but the logical operation of isolating and identifying faults and systemic errors may trump belief. In fact, it usually does. The existence of the Red Hat is an acknowledgement of Freud's primary insight: that the core of the human self is a set of needs that will not go away and which it is absurd to try and rationalise as something else somehow (usually by some fancy logical discourse). The default mode of human thinking (so often observed on this and related lists) is to smuggle back in one's needs-based beliefs under the disguise of reason and evidence as Bruno is clearly saying in the quote, above. If you believe an idea will not work, or is dangerous in some regard, you may well be right, but then you may well be wrong. We cannot yet know. You can however, now be respected for having that belief because clearly you have a deep-seated emotional need to believe that. Only a fool would assert that their beliefs are purely rational and based only on reasoned evidence. As Camus said: which of the sun or the earth turns around the other is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The only philosophical question worth considering is whether life is worth living. This was an attempt (in Le Mythe de Sisyphe) to understand the supreme logic of suicide. Cheers, Kim Jones Kim Jones B.Mus.GDTL Email:
