Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I
write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the
keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision?
How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a
zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream
Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made
distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question
becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear
also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come
to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular
way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should
perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating
transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action.
And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further
that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still
remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself
and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within
it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a
moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on
an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails
to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising.
But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the
bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole
seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream
and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final
burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter
can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation
between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this
point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory
that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard'

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[David Nyman]

On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of
you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations
(i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer
to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble
point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.


OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful in
penetrating the mathematical structure of matter, the less like any naive
version of 

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:


On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman > wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded
MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated
to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How
does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument
as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also
to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it
does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains
of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and
the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no
longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory
- adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position
on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then
be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the 

Re: Equivalence Principle and Einstein Field Equations

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/22/2017 3:43 AM, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:



On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 7:45:42 AM UTC, Brent wrote:



On 12/21/2017 11:06 PM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:



On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 4:46:10 AM UTC, Brent wrote:



On 12/21/2017 4:22 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 11:03:53 PM UTC, Brent wrote:



On 12/21/2017 2:04 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



On Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 8:51:51 PM UTC, Brent
wrote:



On 12/18/2017 11:44 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:


Invariants are always the important things in
physics because they are what we can have
intersubjective agreement on.

Brent


*IIUC, the field equations are covariant, which
means coordinate system independent. *


Right.  Covariant means that something that changes
in such a way that invariant things remain the
same.  So vectors components transform covariantly
so that they keep the vector physically the same.


*Isn't Newton's Law of Gravitation also coordinate
independent? That is, if we use Newton to
calculate the planetary orbits, won't we get the
same results in different coordinate systems? *

Right.

*
If Newton's Law of Gravitation is covariant -- that is,
coordinate frame independent -- I'd expect it to to be
invariant between inertial frames, but I don't believe
it is. That is, I don't think a LT between inertial
frames will leave the form of the law unchanged. How do
you resolve this problem? TIA, AG
*


Don't use a Lorentz transform between frames in a
Galilean invariant theory.


*OK, So why didn't Einstein do what he did for classical
mechanics which is not Lorentz invariant, and directly
modify Newton's Law of Gravitation? AG*


(a) I don't read minds, and especially not Einstein's  and
(b) I don't know what "directly modify" means.

Brent


*He changed (= directly modified) the laws of mechanics to make
them Lorentz invariant. So why can't that be done for Newton's
Law of Gravitation? Does that law work for any inertial frame? AG*


Newton's gravity is a field theory.  It implies an infinite speed
of changes in the gravitational field.  That wasn't consistent
with relativity.  What you're calling "directly modified" was just
local mechanics, not fields.

Brent


*When you think about it, it's apriori highly improbable that 
Newtonian gravity would work as well as it does, say for planetary 
orbits, given the substantial light times between the Sun and the 
planets, and between the planets. AG

*


It's an interesting point that if you just take Newton's theory and 
allow for the finite travel time of gravitational fields, so each body 
is attracted toward the point another body was in past, the theory 
doesn't work at all.


Brent


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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[David Nyman]

On 22 Dec 2017 19:57, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>>> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
 brain and tell you what you were thinking?

>>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>>>
>>
>> Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I
>> then
>> ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected,
>> is
>> consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why
>> do
>> we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.
>>
> Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
> that we are both inclined to believe that:
>
> "Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
> consciousness, and it must be so."
>
> Yes?
>
> The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
> scientific question, I would say.
>

Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might be or
how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with someone who has a
naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of questions like
"Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are there only two electric
charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?"   At the fundamental level
science doesn't answer "why" questions, because an answer would have to
invoke a more basic level (hence my virtuous circle model of explanation).
Of course you can never know that you're at the fundamental level.



The point I'm gently trying to make is that the "hard problem of
consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it above, and scientific
progress is made by answering "how" questions.


Gently? OK buster, that's enough. Who are you and why are you pretending
to be Brent Meeker?


It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard problem" are
asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we explain gravity and
metabolism and atoms.  I'm saying we can - it's just that all those
explanations are how explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations
of consciousness - the engineering approach.


Well, whoever you are, that just sounds too bloody reasonable to disagree
with.

David


Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they
mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which,
with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed
phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and
precisely that it is expected to work.
--—John von Neumann


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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why do
we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might be 
or how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with someone who 
has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of 
questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are there 
only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?"   At the 
fundamental level science doesn't answer "why" questions, because an 
answer would have to invoke a more basic level (hence my virtuous circle 
model of explanation).  Of course you can never know that you're at the 
fundamental level.   The point I'm gently trying to make is that the 
"hard problem of consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it 
above, and scientific progress is made by answering "how" questions.


It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard problem" 
are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we explain gravity 
and metabolism and atoms.  I'm saying we can - it's just that all those 
explanations are how explanations and so let's get some "how" 
explanations of consciousness - the engineering approach.


Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, 
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct 
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes 
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct 
is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

    --—John von Neumann

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Re: Consistency of Postulates of QM

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Wednesday, December 20, 2017 at 6:36:39 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 19 Dec 2017, at 20:08, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 4:48:48 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 18 Dec 2017, at 00:34, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> That makes things worst. Toy will make physical outcomes directly 
> dependent of the consciousness/knowledge of the observer.
>
>
> Why do you and Clark persist in this error? Collapse, if it occurs, does 
> NOT depend on human consciousness. 
>
>
> OK but what you said made it depending of consciousness.  There is no 
> collapse possible with the SWE, so what is the collapse? All theories 
> introducing a collapse in between the consciousness of the observer and the 
> observed objects seem highly speculative to me.
>
>
Measurement is just a specific instance of decoherence. There have been 
"effective measurements" for billions of years. Chert or flint carry cosmic 
ray tracks, which indicate particles (likely muons) had their wave 
functions reduced with the interaction of the rock material many millions 
of years ago. I have a hard time thinking that a geologist looking at this 
has performed a quantum measurement that reduces the wave function then and 
there. It does not do much to invoke life either, for I doubt that an 
unusually smart trilobite or cockroach in the Paleozoic epoch would perform 
a measurement with some conscious idea of QM. 

The measurement apparatus is a large number of quantum states which 
interact with a quantum system in some prepared state. This then results in 
the outcome of the needle or needle state. Ultimately I see this as a 
process whereby a set of qubits, thought of as quantum symbol strings or 
sets, encode quantum numbers. This then leads to an axiomatic 
incompleteness of QM, or the Schrodinger wave equation. We then have a 
breakdown of the quantum postulates as a sort of incompleteness of physical 
axioms to predict an actual outcome. One does not need to invoke 
consciousness to understand this.

Consciousness may however be some aspect of this self-reference. It then 
could be possible that in some subtle way consciousness plays some role in 
the physical universe. It might be in making measurements of physics in the 
earliest universe. This might serve to reduce quantum states appropriate 
for conscious life. Think of this as a sort of cosmic Wheeler Delayed 
Choice Experiment. There may be some ergodic principle at work as well, 
where an ensemble of IGUS/ET beings make measurements and the physical 
outcome is an mean of their measured outcomes. 

LC

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[David Nyman]

On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of
you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations
(i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer
to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble
point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.


OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful in
penetrating the mathematical structure of matter, the less like any naive
version of an external 'world' it appears to be. The culmination of this is
the realisation that the entirety of what we 

Re: Equivalence Principle and Einstein Field Equations

[agrayson2000]

On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 7:45:42 AM UTC, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/21/2017 11:06 PM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, December 22, 2017 at 4:46:10 AM UTC, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/21/2017 4:22 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 11:03:53 PM UTC, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/21/2017 2:04 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 8:51:51 PM UTC, Brent wrote: 



 On 12/18/2017 11:44 PM, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

 Invariants are always the important things in physics because they are 
> what we can have intersubjective agreement on.
>
> Brent
>

 *IIUC, the field equations are covariant, which means coordinate system 
 independent. *


 Right.  Covariant means that something that changes in such a way that 
 invariant things remain the same.  So vectors components transform 
 covariantly so that they keep the vector physically the same.

 *Isn't Newton's Law of Gravitation also coordinate independent? That 
 is, if we use Newton to calculate the planetary orbits, won't we get the 
 same results in different coordinate systems? *

 Right.

>>>
>>>
>>> * If Newton's Law of Gravitation is covariant -- that is, coordinate 
>>> frame independent -- I'd expect it to to be invariant between inertial 
>>> frames, but I don't believe it is. That is, I don't think a LT between 
>>> inertial frames will leave the form of the law unchanged. How do you 
>>> resolve this problem? TIA, AG *
>>>
>>>
>>> Don't use a Lorentz transform between frames in a Galilean invariant 
>>> theory.
>>>
>>
>> *OK, So why didn't Einstein do what he did for classical mechanics which 
>> is not Lorentz invariant, and directly modify Newton's Law of Gravitation? 
>> AG*
>>
>>
>> (a) I don't read minds, and especially not Einstein's  and (b) I don't 
>> know what "directly modify" means.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
> *He changed (= directly modified) the laws of mechanics to make them 
> Lorentz invariant. So why can't that be done for Newton's Law of 
> Gravitation?  Does that law work for any inertial frame? AG*
>
>
> Newton's gravity is a field theory.  It implies an infinite speed of 
> changes in the gravitational field.  That wasn't consistent with 
> relativity.  What you're calling "directly modified" was just local 
> mechanics, not fields.
>
> Brent
>

*When you think about it, it's apriori highly improbable that Newtonian 
gravity would work as well as it does, say for planetary orbits, given the 
substantial light times between the Sun and the planets, and between the 
planets. AG *

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Re: Consistency of Postulates of QM

[agrayson2000]

On Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 3:43:21 PM UTC, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> If the measurement problem were solved in the sense being able to predict 
> exact outcomes, thus making QM a deterministic theory, would that imply an 
> INCONSISTENCY in the postulates of QM? TIA.
>

Does the Heisenberg or Feynman formulation of QM (Matrix Mechanics and Path 
Integral respectively) have any issues analogous to the collapse problem of 
Standard QM (aka the Copenhagen Interpretation)? TIA

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[Telmo Menezes]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter. We inhabit this reality, and the matter somehow generates the
minds that dream the dream. The hard problem becomes hard because the
dream takes a secondary role, and the hypothesized model is taken as
the "hard truth". This model is very useful: it is a good way of
thinking when one is trying to build rockets or computers. However, it
should be treated as a tool and not more than that, until further
notice. To tackle the "hard problem", a different tool is more
appropriate. 

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

[Telmo Menezes]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>
>>> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
>>> brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I then
> ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected, is
> consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why do
> we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.

Telmo.

> Brent
>
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