Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

You didn't read anything from what I wrote to you about meaning, purpose, 
free will, intelligence, learning, memory, etc, have you ? Because 
otherwise, you would have understood that AIs don't see any colors. And 
there is no brain.

On Saturday, 20 April 2019 02:25:04 UTC+3, Brent wrote:
>
>
> Of course if you built an AI to identify the color of objects the full 
> visual scene would have exactly the same "influence", except you would be 
> able to trace it back to a normalization of the colors in the AI...an 
> entirely causal process, and one that no doubt happens in the brain.
>
> Brent
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 4/19/2019 2:19 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
I like the questions. While I might not be able to give satisfactory 
answers to them, here's how I view the issues raised:


On Friday, 19 April 2019 23:41:40 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote:

Hey Cosmin,

What is the mechanism by which consciousness acts in a top down
manner on and influences electrons and presumably other particles?
How does that causal link manifest?

Notice that I specifically use the word "influence" and not 
"causation". This is because I believe there is no causation. Let's 
not talk about electrons, because electrons don't exist, they are just 
ideas in consciousness. Let's just talk about qualia. The idea is that 
when I see an image for example, I just see it. But that image comes 
with a whole emergent structure built into it: objects, shapes, 
colors, shades-of-gray, black-and-white. So in a way there is a 
top-down influence in levels from the level of the image to all its 
constituent levels. But it is not causation, because colors don't 
cause shades-of-gray, but influence them such as to conform with the 
highest level. Take the colored cube image:





The reason the squares are yellow and blue is because there is a 
top-down influence in levels from the level of the full visual scene 
to the level of colors. But there is no causation. Is just influence, 
and the influence is in the direction of the parts to contribute to 
the whole in a meaningful way.


Of course if you built an AI to identify the color of objects the full 
visual scene would have exactly the same "influence", except you would 
be able to trace it back to a normalization of the colors in the AI...an 
entirely causal process, and one that no doubt happens in the brain.


Brent



The same must happen when we move our body. Whatever is behind the 
appearances of "electrons", it acts as parts and take part in the 
greater holistic meaning of moving the body. But again, is not 
causation, is parts contributing to the whole in a meaningful way.


You can read the full account that I'm giving to how influence works, 
in the section "The idealist ontology" on Part II of my The Emergent 
Structure of Consciousness paper. (or in the book)


Some other questions:

Given that electrons don't really exist by your account, what
stops the seemingly inevitably slide into solipsism? Why does our
world seem constrained?

Is not solipsism because I think it is a good assumption to allow the 
existence of other consciousnesses in the world. The world seem 
constrained because of the interactions between consciousnesses, each 
consciousness wanting to be in power, and you get an evolutionary game 
in which all consciousnesses adapt to all the other consciousnesses.


Put another way, what is the principle that makes sense of your
account of consciousness such that it can influence some things,
but not others?


I think this is because of evolution. Certain connections were 
established between certain consciousnesses in order to help them 
survive. It's similar to why we have the qualia that we have and not 
others: because they helped us at some point in our evolutionary history.

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Terren Suydam]

1) I'm not sure I can make sense of the term 'influence' without causation.
In every instance I can think of, to influence something means to exert
some kind of force on it such that it behaves differently then it otherwise
would have. It *causes* it to change.

2) I'm not following your evolutionary account of competing
consciousnesses, and how that leads to constraints that I cannot influence.
What evolutionary dynamic is responsible for gravity?  I'd sure like to
flap my arms and fly. Why can't I?

3) How do you account for death in your worldview?  If there are no such
things as electrons or brains, then what about the ultimate constraint?
Why do people die?

Terren

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 5:19 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I like the questions. While I might not be able to give satisfactory
> answers to them, here's how I view the issues raised:
>
> On Friday, 19 April 2019 23:41:40 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote:
>>
>> Hey Cosmin,
>>
>> What is the mechanism by which consciousness acts in a top down manner on
>> and influences electrons and presumably other particles? How does that
>> causal link manifest?
>>
>> Notice that I specifically use the word "influence" and not "causation".
> This is because I believe there is no causation. Let's not talk about
> electrons, because electrons don't exist, they are just ideas in
> consciousness. Let's just talk about qualia. The idea is that when I see an
> image for example, I just see it. But that image comes with a whole
> emergent structure built into it: objects, shapes, colors, shades-of-gray,
> black-and-white. So in a way there is a top-down influence in levels from
> the level of the image to all its constituent levels. But it is not
> causation, because colors don't cause shades-of-gray, but influence them
> such as to conform with the highest level. Take the colored cube image:
>
>
> 
>
> The reason the squares are yellow and blue is because there is a top-down
> influence in levels from the level of the full visual scene to the level of
> colors. But there is no causation. Is just influence, and the influence is
> in the direction of the parts to contribute to the whole in a meaningful
> way.
>
> The same must happen when we move our body. Whatever is behind the
> appearances of "electrons", it acts as parts and take part in the greater
> holistic meaning of moving the body. But again, is not causation, is parts
> contributing to the whole in a meaningful way.
>
> You can read the full account that I'm giving to how influence works, in
> the section "The idealist ontology" on Part II of my The Emergent Structure
> of Consciousness paper. (or in the book)
>
>
>
>> Some other questions:
>>
>> Given that electrons don't really exist by your account, what stops the
>> seemingly inevitably slide into solipsism? Why does our world seem
>> constrained?
>>
>> Is not solipsism because I think it is a good assumption to allow the
> existence of other consciousnesses in the world. The world seem constrained
> because of the interactions between consciousnesses, each consciousness
> wanting to be in power, and you get an evolutionary game in which all
> consciousnesses adapt to all the other consciousnesses.
>
>
>
>> Put another way, what is the principle that makes sense of your account
>> of consciousness such that it can influence some things, but not others?
>>
>>
> I think this is because of evolution. Certain connections were established
> between certain consciousnesses in order to help them survive. It's similar
> to why we have the qualia that we have and not others: because they helped
> us at some point in our evolutionary history.
>
> --
> 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.
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>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

I like the questions. While I might not be able to give satisfactory 
answers to them, here's how I view the issues raised:

On Friday, 19 April 2019 23:41:40 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote:
>
> Hey Cosmin, 
>
> What is the mechanism by which consciousness acts in a top down manner on 
> and influences electrons and presumably other particles? How does that 
> causal link manifest?
>
> Notice that I specifically use the word "influence" and not "causation". 
This is because I believe there is no causation. Let's not talk about 
electrons, because electrons don't exist, they are just ideas in 
consciousness. Let's just talk about qualia. The idea is that when I see an 
image for example, I just see it. But that image comes with a whole 
emergent structure built into it: objects, shapes, colors, shades-of-gray, 
black-and-white. So in a way there is a top-down influence in levels from 
the level of the image to all its constituent levels. But it is not 
causation, because colors don't cause shades-of-gray, but influence them 
such as to conform with the highest level. Take the colored cube image:



The reason the squares are yellow and blue is because there is a top-down 
influence in levels from the level of the full visual scene to the level of 
colors. But there is no causation. Is just influence, and the influence is 
in the direction of the parts to contribute to the whole in a meaningful 
way. 

The same must happen when we move our body. Whatever is behind the 
appearances of "electrons", it acts as parts and take part in the greater 
holistic meaning of moving the body. But again, is not causation, is parts 
contributing to the whole in a meaningful way.

You can read the full account that I'm giving to how influence works, in 
the section "The idealist ontology" on Part II of my The Emergent Structure 
of Consciousness paper. (or in the book)

 

> Some other questions: 
>
> Given that electrons don't really exist by your account, what stops the 
> seemingly inevitably slide into solipsism? Why does our world seem 
> constrained? 
>
> Is not solipsism because I think it is a good assumption to allow the 
existence of other consciousnesses in the world. The world seem constrained 
because of the interactions between consciousnesses, each consciousness 
wanting to be in power, and you get an evolutionary game in which all 
consciousnesses adapt to all the other consciousnesses.

 

> Put another way, what is the principle that makes sense of your account of 
> consciousness such that it can influence some things, but not others?
>
>
I think this is because of evolution. Certain connections were established 
between certain consciousnesses in order to help them survive. It's similar 
to why we have the qualia that we have and not others: because they helped 
us at some point in our evolutionary history.

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Terren Suydam]

Hey Cosmin,

What is the mechanism by which consciousness acts in a top down manner on
and influences electrons and presumably other particles? How does that
causal link manifest?

Some other questions:

Given that electrons don't really exist by your account, what stops the
seemingly inevitably slide into solipsism? Why does our world seem
constrained?

Put another way, what is the principle that makes sense of your account of
consciousness such that it can influence some things, but not others?

Terren

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 3:35 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> 1) You raise an interesting point. Can you give another example in that
> direction beside the qualia of good and bad ? Because you made me think
> about the case that you mentioned, and it seems to me that it only works
> for cases of good and bad. A similar example to yours would be: blue and
> green emerge on top of shades-of-gray, but I like blue and I don't like
> green, so where does the good and bad appear in my final experience of a
> quale ? So it might be the case that aesthetic components might be
> something special. That's why I would like to hear if you can come up with
> a similar example besides aesthetic components, to pinpoint more precisely
> where there might be a problem with my ideas about emergence.
>
> 2) This is interesting again. And I thought about it before writing my
> paper about emergence. And indeed I think that your proposal that it might
> just be something related to brain functioning cannot be discarded. The
> reason why I prefer to see it as something related directly to
> consciousness is simply because it can give me the possibility to further
> pursue the issue. If it is something related to brain, then it might be
> contingent, and I cannot see how the phenomenon can be understood any
> further. If it is something related to consciousness, then it is
> interesting because then it is related to fundamental problems regarding
> the nature of meaning and how meaning is generated, so deep thinking in
> these directions can further help us understand consciousness.
>
> 3) There is no ontological/epistemological confusion here. I state that
> even if you are to take into account the entire history that you mention,
> the electron would still not follow the same laws as in simple systems,
> because in the brain it will receive top-down influence from a higher
> consciousness. And the more complex the system, the more the consciousness
> is evolved and its intentions are beyond comprehension, so the ability to
> describe the movement of electrons using coherent laws vanishes. The
> electron will simply appear to not follow any law, because the intentions
> of consciousness would be more and more complex and diverse.
>
> Btw, you can find my ideas also published for free in papers:
> https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan So if you want to get more
> details about my ideas regarding emergence and self-reference, you can as
> well read the papers.
>
> On Friday, 19 April 2019 15:09:54 UTC+3, telmo wrote:
>>
>>
>> 1)
>>
>> There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, you
>> say that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, such as
>> "sweet". Can you really justify this hierarchical relation without
>> implicitly alluding to the quanti side? Consider the qualias of eating a
>> piece of chocolate, a spoonful of sugar and french fries. You can feel that
>> the first two have something in common that distinguishes them from the
>> third, and you can give it the label "sweet". At the same time, you could
>> say that the chocolate and french fries are pleasant to eat, while the
>> spoonful of sugar not so much. You can also label this abstraction with
>> some word. Without empirical grounding, nothing makes one distinction more
>> meaningful than another.
>>
>> What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know
>> about sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the four(five?)
>> basic flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this knowledge into
>> the pure qualia world. Without it, there is no preferable hierarchical
>> relation and emergence becomes nonsensical again. There's just a field of
>> qualia.
>>
>>
>>
> 2)
>>
>
>>
> I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by
>> repetition, like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I to
>> find this interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For example,
>> that our brain requires a certain amount of variety in its inputs,
>> otherwise it tends to a simpler state were apprehension of meaning is no
>> longer possible. In other words, I am proposing a plumber-style
>> explanation, and asking you why/if you think it can be discarded?
>>
>>
>> 3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down
>> influence in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical
>> experiments ha

Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 4/19/2019 5:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:



On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at 09:09, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
1) The qualia of black-and-white is not on the same level with the 
qualia of colors. The qualia of colors include the qualia of 
black-and-white. You cannot see a color if that color is not emergent 
upon black-and-white (or more specifically shades-of-gray). You 
cannot experience music if music is not emergent upon sounds. You 
cannot taste chocolate if chocolate is not emergent upon sweet. You 
cannot understand Pythagoras Theorem if the understanding of 
Pythagoras Theorem doesn't emerge upon the understandings of 
triangles, angles, lengths, etc. And this is real emergence, because 
you really get new existent entities that never existed before in the 
history of existence. God himself never experienced these qualia.


Ok, I think I understand your presentation better now. You make an 
interesting point, I don't think I ever considered emergence purely on 
the side of qualia as you describe.


There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, 
you say that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, 
such as "sweet". Can you really justify this hierarchical relation 
without implicitly alluding to the quanti side? Consider the qualias 
of eating a piece of chocolate, a spoonful of sugar and french fries. 
You can feel that the first two have something in common that 
distinguishes them from the third, and you can give it the label 
"sweet". At the same time, you could say that the chocolate and french 
fries are pleasant to eat, while the spoonful of sugar not so much. 
You can also label this abstraction with some word. Without empirical 
grounding, nothing makes one distinction more meaningful than another.


What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know 
about sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the 
four(five?) basic flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this 
knowledge into the pure qualia world. Without it, there is no 
preferable hierarchical relation and emergence becomes nonsensical 
again. There's just a field of qualia.




I don't understand your second part of the question regarding our 
"cognitive processes". Are you referring to our specific form of 
human consciousness ? I don't think this is only restricted to our 
human consciousness, for the reason that it happens to all qualia 
that we have. All qualia domains are structured in an emergent way.


I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by 
repetition, like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I 
to find this interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For 
example, that our brain requires a certain amount of variety in its 
inputs, otherwise it tends to a simpler state were apprehension of 
meaning is no longer possible. In other words, I am proposing a 
plumber-style explanation, and asking you why/if you think it can be 
discarded?




2) The main ideas in my book are the emergent structure of 
consciousness and the self-reference which gives birth to the 
emergent structure. The ideas about self-reference that I have are 
rooted in phenomenology. First I observe that consciousness is 
structured in an emergent way, and then I conclude that the reason it 
is like this is because there is an entity called "self-reference" 
that looks-back-at-itself and in this process includes the previously 
existing self and brings a new transcendent self into existence, like 
in the case of colors emerging on top of black-and-white.


I have the problem above with the first part of what you say, but I 
like the second part.




3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down 
influence in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in 
physical experiments have little input from any top level, so they 
behaving according to their own level and display certain laws. But 
when they are part of a greater holistic system, like in the brain 
(which is just an appearance of internal workings in consciousness) 
they receive top-down influence from the intentions in consciousness, 
and so they behave according to the will of consciousness. Is the 
same phenomenon when we speak, that I also gave in my presentation. 
When we speak, we act from the level of intending to transmit certain 
ideas. And this level exercises top-down influence in levels and the 
sentences, words and letters are coming out in accordance with the 
intention from the higher level.


Here I think you are making the ontological/epistemological confusion. 
Another way to describe what you are alluding to above is this: the 
more complex a system, the higher the amount of branching in the trees 
of causation that extend into the past. To describe the movement of an 
election in the ideal conditions of some laboratory experiment, you 
might just require a couple of equations and variables. To describe 
the movem

Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

1) You raise an interesting point. Can you give another example in that 
direction beside the qualia of good and bad ? Because you made me think 
about the case that you mentioned, and it seems to me that it only works 
for cases of good and bad. A similar example to yours would be: blue and 
green emerge on top of shades-of-gray, but I like blue and I don't like 
green, so where does the good and bad appear in my final experience of a 
quale ? So it might be the case that aesthetic components might be 
something special. That's why I would like to hear if you can come up with 
a similar example besides aesthetic components, to pinpoint more precisely 
where there might be a problem with my ideas about emergence.

2) This is interesting again. And I thought about it before writing my 
paper about emergence. And indeed I think that your proposal that it might 
just be something related to brain functioning cannot be discarded. The 
reason why I prefer to see it as something related directly to 
consciousness is simply because it can give me the possibility to further 
pursue the issue. If it is something related to brain, then it might be 
contingent, and I cannot see how the phenomenon can be understood any 
further. If it is something related to consciousness, then it is 
interesting because then it is related to fundamental problems regarding 
the nature of meaning and how meaning is generated, so deep thinking in 
these directions can further help us understand consciousness.

3) There is no ontological/epistemological confusion here. I state that 
even if you are to take into account the entire history that you mention, 
the electron would still not follow the same laws as in simple systems, 
because in the brain it will receive top-down influence from a higher 
consciousness. And the more complex the system, the more the consciousness 
is evolved and its intentions are beyond comprehension, so the ability to 
describe the movement of electrons using coherent laws vanishes. The 
electron will simply appear to not follow any law, because the intentions 
of consciousness would be more and more complex and diverse.

Btw, you can find my ideas also published for free in papers: 
https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan So if you want to get more 
details about my ideas regarding emergence and self-reference, you can as 
well read the papers.

On Friday, 19 April 2019 15:09:54 UTC+3, telmo wrote:
>
>
> 1)
>
> There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, you 
> say that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, such as 
> "sweet". Can you really justify this hierarchical relation without 
> implicitly alluding to the quanti side? Consider the qualias of eating a 
> piece of chocolate, a spoonful of sugar and french fries. You can feel that 
> the first two have something in common that distinguishes them from the 
> third, and you can give it the label "sweet". At the same time, you could 
> say that the chocolate and french fries are pleasant to eat, while the 
> spoonful of sugar not so much. You can also label this abstraction with 
> some word. Without empirical grounding, nothing makes one distinction more 
> meaningful than another.
>
> What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know 
> about sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the four(five?) 
> basic flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this knowledge into 
> the pure qualia world. Without it, there is no preferable hierarchical 
> relation and emergence becomes nonsensical again. There's just a field of 
> qualia.
>
>  
>
2) 
>
 
>
I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by repetition, 
> like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I to find this 
> interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For example, that our 
> brain requires a certain amount of variety in its inputs, otherwise it 
> tends to a simpler state were apprehension of meaning is no longer 
> possible. In other words, I am proposing a plumber-style explanation, and 
> asking you why/if you think it can be discarded?
>
>
> 3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down 
> influence in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical 
> experiments have little input from any top level, so they behaving 
> according to their own level and display certain laws. But when they are 
> part of a greater holistic system, like in the brain (which is just an 
> appearance of internal workings in consciousness) they receive top-down 
> influence from the intentions in consciousness, and so they behave 
> according to the will of consciousness. Is the same phenomenon when we 
> speak, that I also gave in my presentation. When we speak, we act from the 
> level of intending to transmit certain ideas. And this level exercises 
> top-down influence in levels and the sentences, words and letters are 
> coming out in accordance with 

Re: Universal numbers and Game of Thrones

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 11:23:40 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 19 Apr 2019, at 14:37, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 3:18:14 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 18 Apr 2019, at 21:10, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>
> SNIP
>>
>
>
>
> The whole point of the fundamental research consists in finding a theory 
>> which account for all theories. The goal is to unify the different 
>> knowledge/belief, without dismissing data (like physics do with respect to 
>> consciousness and qualia).
>>
>> The laws of nature are reduce to a statistics of number dream, where a 
>> dream is a computation supporting one, or a collection of Löbian machine(s).
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
> That is sort of a set-up for the the argument of Philip Goff's book.
>
>
>
> *Galileo's Error*
> *Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness*
> Philip Goff
>
> https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117019/galileo-s-error/9781846046018.html
>
>
> If we want a science of consciousness, we will have to rethink what 
> 'science' is.
>
>
>
> I am not sure that makes sense. Unless you are pointing on some 
> misconception of science, like the common belief that “science has opted 
> for materialism, when the filed of 
> theology/metaphysics/philosophy-mind/matter has been artificially separated 
> from science for (bad) political purpose, (like genetic has been in the 
> URSS for awhile).
>
> I don’t believe in the separation of science and religion. 
>
> Science is just modesty, never claiming truth, proposing precise enough 
> theory and means of testing them.
>
> Science does not really exist. What exists is human having a scientific 
> attitude, and this does not depend on any domain investigated, be it 
> gardening or metaphysics, or theology.
>
> The lasting boring debate “God/Not-God” is almost like a trick to make us 
> forget that the original question of the greek was about the reality of the 
> nature: is reality what we see/observe/measure, or is that observable 
> reality only the border, the projection of a deeper and simpler reality. 
> Mathematics/music was conceived as the concurrent reality of physics, in 
> part to the refutation of the earlier Pythagorean conception of numbers 
> (the arithmetical reality kicks back).
>
> Science is a fuzzy terms. In the theology of the universal machine, 
> theology itself extends science, but it does it in a justifiable way from a 
> general notion of Truth, itself definable mathematically, when assuming the 
> Mechanist hypothesis, and understanding the need of the act of faith, when 
> saying “yes” to the doctor. The modesty comes from there, notably, and the 
> ethic of mechanism is the right to say “no” to the (digitalist) doctor.
>
>
>
>
>
> Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great 
> scientific challenges of our age.
>
>
>
> The mechanist solution is that there is no brain, but a web of 
> computations (which provably exist in the arithmetical reality, or any 
> “Turing-complete” reality).
>
> Then the appearance of brain is explained by the relative state 
> interpretation of arithmetic, on which all self-referential correct machine 
> can be shown to converge (constructively so at the propositional level, but 
> the general theory is highly undecidable, as we could expect).
>
>
>
>
>
> Some philosophers argue that the mystery is so deep it will never be 
> solved. 
>
>
> With Mechanism, this becomes a (meta) theorem, if by “solve” you mean 
> rationally justify. 
> When a (Löbian) universal machine introspect itself deep enough, it can 
> only blow its mind, it is bigger than the transfinite. 
>
> When the machine pushes reason far away, she discover that, necessarily if 
> she feel to be sound, there has to be a corona of surrational truth, in 
> between the truth which are rationally justifiable (with or without Oracle) 
> and those which are false (irrational). 
>
> The machine can understand by reason that there is something above reason, 
> and which is also lawful. If we keep modestly the fact that we need some 
> faith, (yes doctor), then from that we can derive a large portion of the 
> true but non rationally derivable truth. Machines have a negative theology, 
> with non communicable parts except by referring to the non rational 
> character of the hypothesis itself. That is why, actually, it *is* a 
> theology, and after all, it is a form of belief in some type of 
> reincarnation (the digital brain/body).
>
>
>
>
> Others believe our standard scientific methods for investigating the brain 
> will eventually produce an answer.
>
>
>
> I can explain why, in the Digital Mechanist frame, we get an answer with 
> the standart scientific method, even if a large part of that answer is that 
> the soul, god, and all that, are only justifiable through the 
> meta-assumption of mechanism, but the level can be as low as we want, to 
> get the consequences.
>
> It is just that the stander scientific method ap

Re: Universal numbers and Game of Thrones

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 19 Apr 2019, at 14:37, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 3:18:14 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 18 Apr 2019, at 21:10, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 


> SNIP



> The whole point of the fundamental research consists in finding a theory 
> which account for all theories. The goal is to unify the different 
> knowledge/belief, without dismissing data (like physics do with respect to 
> consciousness and qualia).
> 
> The laws of nature are reduce to a statistics of number dream, where a dream 
> is a computation supporting one, or a collection of Löbian machine(s).
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> That is sort of a set-up for the the argument of Philip Goff's book.
> 
> 
> 
> Galileo's Error
> Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness
> Philip Goff
> https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117019/galileo-s-error/9781846046018.html
> 
> 
> If we want a science of consciousness, we will have to rethink what 'science' 
> is.


I am not sure that makes sense. Unless you are pointing on some misconception 
of science, like the common belief that “science has opted for materialism, 
when the filed of theology/metaphysics/philosophy-mind/matter has been 
artificially separated from science for (bad) political purpose, (like genetic 
has been in the URSS for awhile).

I don’t believe in the separation of science and religion. 

Science is just modesty, never claiming truth, proposing precise enough theory 
and means of testing them.

Science does not really exist. What exists is human having a scientific 
attitude, and this does not depend on any domain investigated, be it gardening 
or metaphysics, or theology.

The lasting boring debate “God/Not-God” is almost like a trick to make us 
forget that the original question of the greek was about the reality of the 
nature: is reality what we see/observe/measure, or is that observable reality 
only the border, the projection of a deeper and simpler reality. 
Mathematics/music was conceived as the concurrent reality of physics, in part 
to the refutation of the earlier Pythagorean conception of numbers (the 
arithmetical reality kicks back).

Science is a fuzzy terms. In the theology of the universal machine, theology 
itself extends science, but it does it in a justifiable way from a general 
notion of Truth, itself definable mathematically, when assuming the Mechanist 
hypothesis, and understanding the need of the act of faith, when saying “yes” 
to the doctor. The modesty comes from there, notably, and the ethic of 
mechanism is the right to say “no” to the (digitalist) doctor.




> 
> Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific 
> challenges of our age.


The mechanist solution is that there is no brain, but a web of computations 
(which provably exist in the arithmetical reality, or any “Turing-complete” 
reality).

Then the appearance of brain is explained by the relative state interpretation 
of arithmetic, on which all self-referential correct machine can be shown to 
converge (constructively so at the propositional level, but the general theory 
is highly undecidable, as we could expect).





> Some philosophers argue that the mystery is so deep it will never be solved.

With Mechanism, this becomes a (meta) theorem, if by “solve” you mean 
rationally justify. 
When a (Löbian) universal machine introspect itself deep enough, it can only 
blow its mind, it is bigger than the transfinite. 

When the machine pushes reason far away, she discover that, necessarily if she 
feel to be sound, there has to be a corona of surrational truth, in between the 
truth which are rationally justifiable (with or without Oracle) and those which 
are false (irrational). 

The machine can understand by reason that there is something above reason, and 
which is also lawful. If we keep modestly the fact that we need some faith, 
(yes doctor), then from that we can derive a large portion of the true but non 
rationally derivable truth. Machines have a negative theology, with non 
communicable parts except by referring to the non rational character of the 
hypothesis itself. That is why, actually, it *is* a theology, and after all, it 
is a form of belief in some type of reincarnation (the digital brain/body).




> Others believe our standard scientific methods for investigating the brain 
> will eventually produce an answer.


I can explain why, in the Digital Mechanist frame, we get an answer with the 
standart scientific method, even if a large part of that answer is that the 
soul, god, and all that, are only justifiable through the meta-assumption of 
mechanism, but the level can be as low as we want, to get the consequences.

It is just that the stander scientific method apply to mechanism makes the 
hypothesis of materialism/physicalism testable, and without QM, I would say 
that Mechanism would be rightly considered refuted. 



> 
> In Galileo's Error, Professor Philip Goff proposes a third way, arguing 

Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Philip Thrift]

With (panpsychic-experiential) materialism:

 - the self is not eternal  :(   [ of course you could be frozen in the 
hope for some future technology ])
 - it is an independent consciousness (pretty much so, introducing outside 
chemicals aside)

- pt


On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 4:21:25 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
>
> No, this cannot be done. The Self is eternal and it exists necessarily by 
> the fact that it self-refers itself. All you can do is to give the Self 
> different experiences and make him believe he is an individual 
> consciousness. This is happening for example in biological reproduction. 
> What biological reproduction is doing is to make the unique Self to believe 
> he is an independent consciousness. But in order to make him believe that, 
> you need to follow specific conditions as they are realized in biology. As 
> of today, we have no idea what those conditions are that biology satisfy in 
> order to make the Self believe he is an independent consciousness.
>
> On Friday, 19 April 2019 11:09:36 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>> Of course (as you know) I say one could bring a "bunch of atoms together" 
>> to get something that is a conscious self.
>>
>

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Re: Universal numbers and Game of Thrones

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 3:18:14 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 18 Apr 2019, at 21:10, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 8:56:54 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 18 Apr 2019, at 12:17, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 4:53:36 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 16 Apr 2019, at 15:06, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 6:39:28 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 15 Apr 2019, at 11:04, Philip Thrift  wrote:


 If our physics is in a number, is Game of Thrones physics

 *The physics of Game of Thrones*

 https://winteriscoming.net/2017/09/29/neil-degrasse-tyson-cant-stop-talking-physics-game-thrones/



 That would be the mistake of Dgital Physics/Physicalism.

 It is like saying that some program u generate the physical universe. 
 That is not entirely excluded from the mechanist hypothesis, but even if 
 that is the case, such an u (and of course all the u’ such that phi_u = 
 phi_u’ extensionally) must be derived from elementary arithmetic, if 
 mechanism is correct. 

 But that can be shown to be not quite plausible, as this would make our 
 substitution level so low that the only “artificial brain” possible would 
 be the entire physical universe. In that case, most of our biology and 
 physics would be false. It is such a weakening of Mechanism, that it would 
 make Mechanism wrong FAPP, contradicting all the evidences that we have 
 for 
 Mechanism, like evolution, molecular biology or quantum physics.





 in another number?

 Or: Is there a a GoT reality?


 Sure there is, but not a fundamental one, capable of explaining 
 (every)thing.

 Bruno



>>> Assume "our physics" is the Standard Model.
>>>
>>>
>>> I can’t. If that “model” (theory) is the correct fundamental physics, 
>>> then it has to be deduced from arithmetic (and Mechanism).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  Here it is in a few hundred characters (Lagrangian_{SM}):
>>>  
>>>  
>>> https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-what-the-standard-model-of-physics-actually-looks-like
>>>
>>> How does one "derive" this Lagrangian_{SM} from the logic of elementary 
>>> arithmetic (Logic_{EA}) -- even given the translation of the language of 
>>> Lagrangians into the language of Logic_{EA}. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, formalising a theory is not the same as deriving it.
>>>
>>> How, to derive it? By studying the “material modes of self-reference, 
>>> that the mode of the first person self, or the first person plural self. 
>>> How, and why is explained in most of my papers.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Why should our SM be the one, and not an alternative SM?
>>>
>>>
>>> Because the sum on all computations is unique. 
>>>
>>> That is the nice thing with Mechanism. It justifies why there is an 
>>> apparent physical universe, having the same law for any universal numbers. 
>>> It justify the existence of physics, and its unicity, even if it take the 
>>> shape of a mutilverse, or even some multi-multiverses.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If every SM equation is possible (not just the one equation above), what 
>>> is "explained”?
>>>
>>>
>>> Only one SM equation can be possible (assuming mechanism of course, 
>>> which I do all along).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It makes more sense that Lagrangian_{SM} and Logic_{EA} are completely 
>>> contingent hypotheses written in languages created by us humans to model 
>>> reality.
>>>
>>>
>>> That would identify physics and geography, but with mechanism, we know 
>>> already that geography is contingent, where the physical reality is lawful. 
>>> Would all material mode of self-reference have collapsed into propositional 
>>> calculus, there would be no physical laws, only geographical laws.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> The puzzle is that if one looks at the literal SM formula shown here:
>>
>>
>> https://www.sciencealert.com/images/Screen_Shot_2016-08-03_at_3.20.12_pm.png
>>
>>
>> It is somehow justified by the data, and some theoretical ideas, in the 
>> book by Alain Connes and Matilde Marcolli: Non Commutative Geometry, 
>> Quantum Filed and Motives. That is page 167 of that book, and I am not up 
>> there. 
>> Yet, the main ideas are rather well explained in the more readable book 
>> by Vic. Stenger.
>>
>> But both Alain Connes and Vic Stenger are doing physics, and so they 
>> assumes much more than what is permitted when we assume computationalism, 
>> where even the starting ideas of Vic Stenger have to be derived from 
>> arithmetic (using also the mechanist principle of the invariance of 
>> consciousness for some digital functional substitution made at some level).
>>
>> Now, having said that, it is clear that Alain Connes suspect that 
>> equation to be related at least to the arithmetical reality of the prime 
>> num

Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Telmo Menezes]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at 09:09, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> 1) The qualia of black-and-white is not on the same level with the qualia of 
> colors. The qualia of colors include the qualia of black-and-white. You 
> cannot see a color if that color is not emergent upon black-and-white (or 
> more specifically shades-of-gray). You cannot experience music if music is 
> not emergent upon sounds. You cannot taste chocolate if chocolate is not 
> emergent upon sweet. You cannot understand Pythagoras Theorem if the 
> understanding of Pythagoras Theorem doesn't emerge upon the understandings of 
> triangles, angles, lengths, etc. And this is real emergence, because you 
> really get new existent entities that never existed before in the history of 
> existence. God himself never experienced these qualia. 

Ok, I think I understand your presentation better now. You make an interesting 
point, I don't think I ever considered emergence purely on the side of qualia 
as you describe.

There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, you say 
that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, such as "sweet". 
Can you really justify this hierarchical relation without implicitly alluding 
to the quanti side? Consider the qualias of eating a piece of chocolate, a 
spoonful of sugar and french fries. You can feel that the first two have 
something in common that distinguishes them from the third, and you can give it 
the label "sweet". At the same time, you could say that the chocolate and 
french fries are pleasant to eat, while the spoonful of sugar not so much. You 
can also label this abstraction with some word. Without empirical grounding, 
nothing makes one distinction more meaningful than another.

What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know about 
sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the four(five?) basic 
flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this knowledge into the pure 
qualia world. Without it, there is no preferable hierarchical relation and 
emergence becomes nonsensical again. There's just a field of qualia.

> 
> I don't understand your second part of the question regarding our "cognitive 
> processes". Are you referring to our specific form of human consciousness ? I 
> don't think this is only restricted to our human consciousness, for the 
> reason that it happens to all qualia that we have. All qualia domains are 
> structured in an emergent way.

I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by repetition, 
like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I to find this 
interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For example, that our 
brain requires a certain amount of variety in its inputs, otherwise it tends to 
a simpler state were apprehension of meaning is no longer possible. In other 
words, I am proposing a plumber-style explanation, and asking you why/if you 
think it can be discarded?

> 
> 2) The main ideas in my book are the emergent structure of consciousness and 
> the self-reference which gives birth to the emergent structure. The ideas 
> about self-reference that I have are rooted in phenomenology. First I observe 
> that consciousness is structured in an emergent way, and then I conclude that 
> the reason it is like this is because there is an entity called 
> "self-reference" that looks-back-at-itself and in this process includes the 
> previously existing self and brings a new transcendent self into existence, 
> like in the case of colors emerging on top of black-and-white.

I have the problem above with the first part of what you say, but I like the 
second part.

> 
> 3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down influence 
> in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical experiments 
> have little input from any top level, so they behaving according to their own 
> level and display certain laws. But when they are part of a greater holistic 
> system, like in the brain (which is just an appearance of internal workings 
> in consciousness) they receive top-down influence from the intentions in 
> consciousness, and so they behave according to the will of consciousness. Is 
> the same phenomenon when we speak, that I also gave in my presentation. When 
> we speak, we act from the level of intending to transmit certain ideas. And 
> this level exercises top-down influence in levels and the sentences, words 
> and letters are coming out in accordance with the intention from the higher 
> level.

Here I think you are making the ontological/epistemological confusion. Another 
way to describe what you are alluding to above is this: the more complex a 
system, the higher the amount of branching in the trees of causation that 
extend into the past. To describe the movement of an election in the ideal 
conditions of some laboratory experiment, you might just require a couple of 
equations and variables. To describ

Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 12:17, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> What does "self model" even mean ? Notice that any material attempt to 
> implement "self model" leads to infinite regress. Because let's say that a 
> machine has the parts A B C. To have a "self model" would mean to have 
> another part (A B C) which would contain the "self model". But this would be 
> an extra part of the "self" which would be needed to be included in the "self 
> model" in order to actually have a "self model", so you would need another 
> part (A B C (A B C)). But then again you would need to include this part as 
> well in the "self model". So you will get to infinite regress.

That infinite regress problem can be avoided.

See my answer to a post to Brent (sent today).

The idea is simple: if Dx gives xx, then DD gives DD.

In this case, DD will never stop, and that is the usual “first” recursion. But 
you can make a program stopping on its own code, by using special quotation, or 
some typical computer science construct, like the SMN theorem of Kleene. It is 
more like:

If D’x’ gives ‘x’x’’, then D’D’ gives ‘D’D’’.

That is the staring point of almost all of theoretical computer science, and 
the study of self-reeve,ce in arithmetical is very well developed.

Thismisses the first person self-reference, which typically does not admit any 
formalisation (provably so), but it is still can be shown to exist, making he 
point that the universal machine knows that they have a first person notion, 
and knows that they cannot define it. The machine are as much confused as us 
with Ramona Mahasrhi koan: “Who am I?”.





> Therefore, you need a special kind of entity to obtained the desired effect 
> without getting into infinite regress. And that's precisely why the 
> self-reference that I'm talking about in the book is unformalizable.


As I said, the machine already knows this. The universal machine (number, 
combinator, or physical) knows that they have a soul (immaterial, immortal, and 
responsible for the illusion of the physical universe and its lawfulness).



> And as you say, being unformalizable, allows for bootstrapping consciousness 
> into existence.

OK.



> You cannot simulate self-reference just by playing around with atoms. 
> Self-reference just is.

Not OK. You can simulate the self-reference with atoms, and that enacts the 
experience of the first person, which is distributed on the whole arithmetic, 
and can be shown to be non formalisable, nor even definable.



> It just is the source of the entire existence.

It is the source of the entire physical existence, but we have to assume the 
numbers, or the combinators.


> Is not up to anyone to simulate the source of existence.

Indeed.



> You can never obtain the properties of consciousness (meaning, purpose, free 
> will, memory, intelligence, learning, acting, etc.) just by playing around 
> with a bunch of atoms.

You cannot singularise them in some reality, and indeed atoms are immaterial 
constructs depending on intrinsic relation between all universal 
machine/number/combinators.




> All these properties of consciousness are having their source in the 
> unformalizable self-reference.

Yes, but still amenable to meta-formalisation, when we assume mechanism, which 
then explains in detail why the first person is not formalisable, and indeed 
independent of formalisation.

Bruno





> 
> On Thursday, 18 April 2019 04:00:31 UTC+3, Russell Standish wrote:
> each consciousness bootstraps its own 
> meaning from self-reference. Unless the mars rover has a self model in 
> its code (and I don't think it was constructed that way), then I would 
> extremely doubt it has any sort of consciousness.
> 
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 19 Apr 2019, at 09:16, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> It's still not clear to me what your concept of "machine" is. Is it just an 
> abstract theory or is it some actually existing entity ?

It is a machine in the sense of computer science. It is purely immaterial, and 
can be represented by numbers, or by combinators, of by set of quadruples 
(Turing).

My favorite definition of machine is true the combinator,. I could use to 
define a machine in this (recursive) way:

K is a machine
S is a machine

If x and y are machines, then (x y) is a machine.

So example of machine are K, S (K K) , (S, K), … ((K K) K), (K (K K)), …

We abbreviate ((K K) K) by KKK, and (K (K K)) by K(KK). We suppress

The functioning of the machine is given by the two reduction rule:

Kxy -> x
Sxyz -> xz(yz)

This can be shown Turing universal, so any other digital machine, and digital 
machine execution can be emulated faithfully by such machine.

See the (recent) combinator threads for more on this.

A simple example of a computation is SKSK -> KK(SK) -> K.



> If it is actually existing,

If you agree that x + 2 = 5 admits a solution, then it exist in that sense.  
All other sense of existence are derived for the existence in that sense. There 
are many.





> is it made out of atoms ? Because if it is made out of atoms, where does its 
> free will come from ?


It is of course not made of physical atoms, but you can call “S” and “K” 
combinatoric atoms.

No problem fro free-will for the universal combinator, which of course exists, 
(as the combinator machinery is Turing universal), and universal machine 
(immaterial or material computer) have free-will.



> In the case of humans free will comes from the fact that we are not made out 
> of atoms, but we are consciousnesses, "atoms" being just ideas in us.

OK. But the derivation must explain why atoms have electrons, why orbitals, 
etc. But yes, the physical atoms are eventually reduce to dream made by us, (us 
= the combinator, not the humans which are very particular case of 
machine/number/combinators!).

You might bought some good introductory book on computer science. The original 
papers are the best, I think, so Martin Davis book at Dover are well suited to 
begin with. He use the Turing formalism, where a machine is defined by a set of 
quadruples like q_7 S_9 S_54 q_6, which means if I am in. State 7, in front of 
the symbol S_9, I overwrite the symbol S_54 and go to the state q_6. There are 
also instruction to move left or right on some locally finite, but 
extendendable register/tape. 

If we assume the Church-Turing thesis, any similar formalism will work. 


Bruno




> 
> On Thursday, 18 April 2019 17:04:15 UTC+3, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> They have as much free will as human (direct consequence of the Mechanist 
> assumption).
> 
> 
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 19 Apr 2019, at 01:24, Russell Standish  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 10:34:26AM -0700, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 4/18/2019 2:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>For
>>instance, without an observer to interpret a certain pile of atoms as
>>a machine, it is just a pile of atoms.
>> 
>>Are you saying that Mars Rover cannot interpret some of its data on Mars, 
>> when nobody observed it, or are you saying that Mars Rover has enough 
>> observation abilities?
>> 
>> 
>> What makes the Mars Rover a machine is that it can act and react to its
>> environment.  If it's an AI Rover it can learn and plan and reflect.  To 
>> invoke
>> an "observer" is just push the problem away to "What is an observer?"
> 
> To not recognise the observer is simply to put the problem under a
> rug. Without an interpretation that voltages in excess of 3V represent
> 1, and voltages less than 2V represent 0, the logic circuits are just
> analogue electrical circuits. Without such an interpretation (and
> ipso facto an observer), the rover is not processing data at all!
> 
> Note an observer need be nothing more than a mapping of physical space
> to semantic space. One possibility is to bootstrap the observer by
> self-reflection.

That is needed to just define the “physical space”. This one cannot be invoked 
through an ontological commitment, or mechanism is abandoned of course.

Bruno



> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
> Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> 
> 
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 19:56, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 4/18/2019 3:17 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
>> What does "self model" even mean ? Notice that any material attempt to 
>> implement "self model" leads to infinite regress.
> 
> No.  A "model" is not a complete description, it's a representation of some 
> specific aspects. 

Well, indeed. But that is the sense of “model” when used in physics. In logic, 
the model is the reality that we are doing the theory about.

We should avoid the term “model” and talk only on “theory” and reality”, or we 
will risk to bring confusion.

The theory is the (usually incomplete) representation, like a painting. The 
model/reality is what is supposed to being represented.

For example; the theory of arithmetic is

0 ≠ s(x)
s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))
x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)
x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

But the arithmetical reality is the highly non computable and non axiomatisable 
mathematical structure involving the infinite set N, with 0, +, * and s 
admitting the standard interpretation we are familiar with.



> Your "self-reference" cannot refer to everything about yourself...which 
> according to you is a stream of consciousness.
> 

Yes.



> Brent
> 
>> Because let's say that a machine has the parts A B C. To have a "self model" 
>> would mean to have another part (A B C) which would contain the "self 
>> model". But this would be an extra part of the "self" which would be needed 
>> to be included in the "self model" in order to actually have a "self model", 
>> so you would need another part (A B C (A B C)). But then again you would 
>> need to include this part as well in the "self model". So you will get to 
>> infinite regress.

I missed this (from Cosmin). Of course that is Driesch “proofs” that Descartes 
will never solve its self-reproduction problem, but that has been solved by the 
second theorem recursion of Kleene (or just Gödel self-referential sentence 
construction). Self-reference here is just obtained by the syntactical 
recursion:

If Dx gives x’x’, then D’D’ gives ‘D’D’’.

See my paper “Amoeba, Planaria and Dreaming machine” for more on this. I have 
used the recursion theorem to program a “planaria”. A program that you can cut 
in pieces, and each pieces regenerate the whole program, with its original 
functionality back.

Bruno



>> Therefore, you need a special kind of entity to obtained the desired effect 
>> without getting into infinite regress. And that's precisely why the 
>> self-reference that I'm talking about in the book is unformalizable. And as 
>> you say, being unformalizable, allows for bootstrapping consciousness into 
>> existence. You cannot simulate self-reference just by playing around with 
>> atoms. Self-reference just is. It just is the source of the entire 
>> existence. Is not up to anyone to simulate the source of existence. You can 
>> never obtain the properties of consciousness (meaning, purpose, free will, 
>> memory, intelligence, learning, acting, etc.) just by playing around with a 
>> bunch of atoms. All these properties of consciousness are having their 
>> source in the unformalizable self-reference.
>> 
>> On Thursday, 18 April 2019 04:00:31 UTC+3, Russell Standish wrote:
>> each consciousness bootstraps its own 
>> meaning from self-reference. Unless the mars rover has a self model in 
>> its code (and I don't think it was constructed that way), then I would 
>> extremely doubt it has any sort of consciousness.
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 19:34, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 4/18/2019 2:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> For
>>> instance, without an observer to interpret a certain pile of atoms as
>>> a machine, it is just a pile of atoms.
>> Are you saying that Mars Rover cannot interpret some of its data on Mars, 
>> when nobody observed it, or are you saying that Mars Rover has enough 
>> observation abilities?
>> 
> What makes the Mars Rover a machine is that it can act and react to its 
> environment. 

Yes. And thanks to the fact that it is implemented in the physical reality (the 
sum on all computation), its reaction will fit with its most probable 
environnement, which is (by definition here) the physical environment.
Just to be precise.




> If it's an AI Rover it can learn and plan and reflect. 

An get the right reaction, whatever is the environment, hopefully not departing 
too much form the physical one.

The “essence” of a computation is to be counterfactually correct. 




> To invoke an "observer" is just push the problem away to "What is an 
> observer?”


But to define the physical reality, we need to define the observer. With 
mechanism, the observer is just a number/machine, relative to some other 
numbers/machines. We can define an ideal observer by a sound Löbian machine. 
Its physical reality will be determined by the logic of observation (mainly []p 
& <>t).

Bruno




> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

And to add more regarding biology, take into account that reincarnation 
preserves memories from past lives. So biology is not merely "putting atoms 
in the right order". Is more than that. The conditions that biology 
satisfies in order to individuate the unique Self are going beyond mere 
arrangements of atoms.

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

No, this cannot be done. The Self is eternal and it exists necessarily by 
the fact that it self-refers itself. All you can do is to give the Self 
different experiences and make him believe he is an individual 
consciousness. This is happening for example in biological reproduction. 
What biological reproduction is doing is to make the unique Self to believe 
he is an independent consciousness. But in order to make him believe that, 
you need to follow specific conditions as they are realized in biology. As 
of today, we have no idea what those conditions are that biology satisfy in 
order to make the Self believe he is an independent consciousness.

On Friday, 19 April 2019 11:09:36 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
> Of course (as you know) I say one could bring a "bunch of atoms together" 
> to get something that is a conscious self.
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 15:36, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, at 18:45, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 17 Apr 2019, at 08:08, Telmo Menezes >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, at 05:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
 
 
 On 4/16/2019 6:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019, at 03:44, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>> You seem to make self-reference into something esoteric.   Every Mars 
>> Rover knows where it is, the state of its batteries, its instruments, 
>> its communications link, what time it is, what its mission plan is.
> 
> I don't agree that the Mars Rover checking "it's own" battery levels is 
> an example of what is meant by self-reference in this type of discussion. 
> The entity "Mars Rover" exists in your mind and mine, but there is no 
> "Mars Rover mind" where it also exists. The entity "Telmo" exists in your 
> mind and mine, and I happen to be an entity "Telmo" in whose mind the 
> entity "Telmo" also exists. This is real self-reference.
> 
> Or, allow me to invent a programming language where something like this 
> could me made more explicit. Let's say that, in this language, you can 
> define a program P like this:
> 
> program P:
> x = 1
> if x == 1:
> print('My variable x s holding the value 1')
> 
> The above is the weak form of self-reference that you allude to. It would 
> be like me measuring my arm and noting the result. Oh, my arm is x cm 
> long. But let me show what could me meant instead by real self-reference:
> 
> program P:
> if length(P) > 1000:
> print('I am a complicated program')
> else:
> print('I am a simple program')
> 
> Do you accept there is a fundamental difference here?
 
 I take your point.  But I think the difference is only one of degree.  In 
 my example the Rover knows where it is, lat and long and topology.   That 
 entails having a model of the world, admittedly simple, in which the Rover 
 is represented by itself. 
 
 I would also say that I think far too much importance is attached to 
 self-reference.  It's just a part of intelligence to run "simulations" in 
 trying to foresee the consequences of potential actions.  The simulation 
 must generally include the actor at some level.  It's not some mysterious 
 property raising up a ghost in the machine.
>>> 
>>> With self-reference comes also self-modification. The self-replicators of 
>>> nature that slowly adapt and complexify, the brain "rewiring itself"... 
>>> Things get both weird and generative. I suspect that it goes to the core of 
>>> what human intelligence is, and what computer intelligence is not (yet). 
>>> But if you say that self-reference has not magic property that explains 
>>> consciousness, I agree with you.
>> 
>> 
>> You need some magic, but the magic of the truth of  “2+3=5” is enough. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> On consciousness I have nothing interesting to say (no jokes about ever 
>>> having had, please :). I think that:
>>> 
>>> consciousness = existence
>> 
>> 
>> Hmm… That looks like God made it. Or like “it is”.
>> 
>> Are you OK with the ideas that from the point of view of a conscious entity, 
>> consciousness is something:
>> 
>> Immediately knowable, and indubitable, (in case the machine can reason)
>> Non definable, and non provable to any other machine.
> 
> I agree. Would this not also apply to the concept of "existance”?

I am not sure what you mean by “existence” when used alone. It might be a 
“professional deformation”, but to me existence is a logical quantifier, and is 
not a intrinsic property.

I think that may be consciousness is a fixed point of existence, in the sense 
that “existence of consciousness” is equivalent with “consciousness”.

If you are using “existence” is a more sophisticated sense, then this should be 
elaborated?

We cannot prove the existence of anything, without assuming the existence of 
something. With mechanism, we have to assume the existence of numbers (or to 
derive from something Turing equivalent, like I did with the combinators), so I 
doubt that existence is immediately knowable, etc. Unless again, you meant 
“existence of consciousness”, but then this cannot apply to define 
consciousness.

You might need to elaborate about what you mean by “existence”, when used alone.





> 
>> 
>> Then the mathematical theory of self-reference explains why machine will 
>> conclude that they are conscious, in that sense. They will know that they 
>> know something that they cannot doubt, yet cannot prove to us, or to anyone. 
>> And they can understand that they can test mechanism by observation.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Existence entails self-referential machines, self-referential evolutionary 
>

Re: Questions about the Equivalence Principle (EP) and GR

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 19 Apr 2019, at 04:08, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 6:53:33 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> Sorry, I don't remember what, if anything, I intended to text.
> 
> I'm not expert on how Einstein arrived at his famous field equations.  I know 
> that he insisted on them being tensor equations so that they would have the 
> same form in all coordinate systems.  That may sound like a mathematical 
> technicality, but it is really to ensure that the things in the equation, the 
> tensors, could have a physical interpretation.  He also limited himself to 
> second order differentials, probably as a matter of simplicity.  And he 
> excluded torsion, but I don't know why.  And of course he knew it had to 
> reproduce Newtonian gravity in the weak/slow limit.
> 
> Brent
> 
> Here's a link which might help;
> 
>  https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.05752.pdf 

Yes. That is helpful.

The following (long!) video can also help (well, it did help me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foRPKAKZWx8 



Bruno



> 
> AG
> 
> On 4/18/2019 7:59 AM, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 7:16:45 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>> I see no new text in this message. AG
>>  
>> Brent; if you have time, please reproduce the text you intended. 
>> 
>> I recall reading that before Einstein published his GR paper, he used a 
>> trial and error method to determine the final field equations (as he raced 
>> for the correct ones in competition with Hilbert, who may have arrived at 
>> them first).  So it's hard to imagine a mathematical methodology which 
>> produces them. If you have any articles that attempt to explain how the 
>> field equations are derived, I'd really like to explore this aspect of GR 
>> and get some "satisfaction". I can see how he arrived at some principles, 
>> such as geodesic motion, by applying the Least Action Principle, or how he 
>> might have intuited that matter/energy effects the geometry of spacetime, 
>> but from these principles it's baffling how he arrived at the field 
>> equations. 
>> 
>> AG
>> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 7:00:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 4/17/2019 5:20 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 5:11:55 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 4/17/2019 12:36 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
 
 
 On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 1:02:09 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
 
 
 On 4/17/2019 7:37 AM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 9:15:40 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 4/16/2019 6:14 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 6:39:11 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 6:10:16 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 4/16/2019 11:41 AM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Monday, April 15, 2019 at 9:26:59 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 4/15/2019 7:14 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
 
 
 On Friday, April 12, 2019 at 5:48:23 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 <>wrote:
 
 
 On Thursday, April 11, 2019 at 10:56:08 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
 
 
 On 4/11/2019 9:33 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thursday, April 11, 2019 at 7:12:17 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 4/11/2019 4:53 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Thursday, April 11, 2019 at 4:37:39 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 4/11/2019 1:58 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
 
 
 He might have been referring to a transformation to a tangent 
 space where the metric tensor is diagonalized and its derivative 
 at that point in spacetime is zero. Does this make any sense?
>>> 
>>> Sort of. 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yeah, that's what he's doing. He's assuming a given coordinate 
>>> system and some arbitrary point in a non-empty spacetime. So 
>>> spacetime has a non zero curvature and the derivative of the metric 
>>> tensor is generally non-zero at that arbitrary point, however small 
>>> we assume the region around that point. But applying the EEP, we 
>>> can transform to the tangent space at that point to diagonalize 
>>>   the metric 
>>> tensor and have its derivative as zero at that point. Does THIS 
>>> make sense? AG
>> 
>> Yep.  That's pretty much the defining characteristic of a Riemannian 
>> space.
>> 
>> Brent
>> 
>> But i

Re: Universal numbers and Game of Thrones

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 21:10, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 8:56:54 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 18 Apr 2019, at 12:17, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 4:53:36 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 16 Apr 2019, at 15:06, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 6:39:28 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
 On 15 Apr 2019, at 11:04, Philip Thrift > wrote:
 
 
 If our physics is in a number, is Game of Thrones physics
 
 The physics of Game of Thrones
 https://winteriscoming.net/2017/09/29/neil-degrasse-tyson-cant-stop-talking-physics-game-thrones/
  
 
>>> 
>>> That would be the mistake of Dgital Physics/Physicalism.
>>> 
>>> It is like saying that some program u generate the physical universe. That 
>>> is not entirely excluded from the mechanist hypothesis, but even if that is 
>>> the case, such an u (and of course all the u’ such that phi_u = phi_u’ 
>>> extensionally) must be derived from elementary arithmetic, if mechanism is 
>>> correct. 
>>> 
>>> But that can be shown to be not quite plausible, as this would make our 
>>> substitution level so low that the only “artificial brain” possible would 
>>> be the entire physical universe. In that case, most of our biology and 
>>> physics would be false. It is such a weakening of Mechanism, that it would 
>>> make Mechanism wrong FAPP, contradicting all the evidences that we have for 
>>> Mechanism, like evolution, molecular biology or quantum physics.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 
 in another number?
 
 Or: Is there a a GoT reality?
>>> 
>>> Sure there is, but not a fundamental one, capable of explaining 
>>> (every)thing.
>>> 
>>> Bruno
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Assume "our physics" is the Standard Model.
>> 
>> I can’t. If that “model” (theory) is the correct fundamental physics, then 
>> it has to be deduced from arithmetic (and Mechanism).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>>  Here it is in a few hundred characters (Lagrangian_{SM}):
>>>  
>>>  
>>> https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-what-the-standard-model-of-physics-actually-looks-like
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> How does one "derive" this Lagrangian_{SM} from the logic of elementary 
>>> arithmetic (Logic_{EA}) -- even given the translation of the language of 
>>> Lagrangians into the language of Logic_{EA}.
>> 
>> Yes, formalising a theory is not the same as deriving it.
>> 
>> How, to derive it? By studying the “material modes of self-reference, that 
>> the mode of the first person self, or the first person plural self. How, and 
>> why is explained in most of my papers.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Why should our SM be the one, and not an alternative SM?
>> 
>> Because the sum on all computations is unique. 
>> 
>> That is the nice thing with Mechanism. It justifies why there is an apparent 
>> physical universe, having the same law for any universal numbers. It justify 
>> the existence of physics, and its unicity, even if it take the shape of a 
>> mutilverse, or even some multi-multiverses.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> If every SM equation is possible (not just the one equation above), what is 
>>> "explained”?
>> 
>> Only one SM equation can be possible (assuming mechanism of course, which I 
>> do all along).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> It makes more sense that Lagrangian_{SM} and Logic_{EA} are completely 
>>> contingent hypotheses written in languages created by us humans to model 
>>> reality.
>> 
>> That would identify physics and geography, but with mechanism, we know 
>> already that geography is contingent, where the physical reality is lawful. 
>> Would all material mode of self-reference have collapsed into propositional 
>> calculus, there would be no physical laws, only geographical laws.
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The puzzle is that if one looks at the literal SM formula shown here:
>> 
>>
>> https://www.sciencealert.com/images/Screen_Shot_2016-08-03_at_3.20.12_pm.png 
>> 
>> 
> 
> It is somehow justified by the data, and some theoretical ideas, in the book 
> by Alain Connes and Matilde Marcolli: Non Commutative Geometry, Quantum Filed 
> and Motives. That is page 167 of that book, and I am not up there. 
> Yet, the main ideas are rather well explained in the more readable book by 
> Vic. Stenger.
> 
> But both Alain Connes and Vic Stenger are doing physics, and so they assumes 
> much more than what is permitted when we assume computationalism, where even 
> the starting ideas of Vic Stenger have to be derived from arithmetic (using 
> also the mechanist principle of the invariance of consciousness for some 
> digital functional substitution made at some level).
> 
> Now, having

Re: Universal numbers and Game of Thrones

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 18 Apr 2019, at 19:51, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 4/18/2019 2:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> That would be the mistake of Dgital Physics/Physicalism.
>> 
>> It is like saying that some program u generate the physical universe. That 
>> is not entirely excluded from the mechanist hypothesis, but even if that is 
>> the case, such an u (and of course all the u’ such that phi_u = phi_u’ 
>> extensionally) must be derived from elementary arithmetic, if mechanism is 
>> correct.
>> 
>> But that can be shown to be not quite plausible, as this would make our 
>> substitution level so low that the only “artificial brain” possible would be 
>> the entire physical universe. In that case, most of our biology and physics 
>> would be false. It is such a weakening of Mechanism, that it would make 
>> Mechanism wrong FAPP, contradicting all the evidences that we have for 
>> Mechanism, like evolution, molecular biology or quantum physics.
> 
> That is one of my reservations about your theory, that it requires the 
> substitution level to take into account the environment. Not the whole 
> universe, but representative local sample of the universe. 

Yes, but that is what makes “my” mechanist hypothesis weaker than all the 
others (meaning that what is prove for it will be true for all the other). 
Usually, mechanism assumes some high level, like the neuronal net, and nothing 
else. My reasoning, on the contrary, still functions, even if the level is 
string theory applied to the whole physical universe, with 10^(10^100) correct 
decimals, as those approximations are all implemented in the arithmetical 
reality.




> It wouldn't make our biology and physics false, but it might make them what 
> we call "effective theories" in physics, i.e. not fundamental in the 
> metaphysical sense but approximations to an unknown fundamental theory that 
> is effective in the domain where we can test it.

Yes, that was the goal. Biology is still reducible to physics, but physics 
becomes explained by a more fundamental theory given by any Turing 
universal/complete theory.

So here is a theory of everything, explaining both consciousness and the 
appearance of matter:

Classical logic +

0 ≠ s(x)
s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))
x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)
x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

Here is another:

1) If A = B and A = C, then B = C
2) If A = B then AC = BC
3) If A = B then CA = CB
4) KAB = A
5) SABC = AC(BC)

And here is one, on which Number theory might some day provide analytical 
(complex) tools to proceed. It is a Turing Universal system of Diophantine 
equation (worked out by Matiyasevitch and Jones). All the variables are 
integers:

Nu = ((ZUY)^2 + U)^2 + Y 

ELG^2 + Al = (B - XY)Q^2

Qu = B^(5^60)

La + Qu^4 = 1 + LaB^5

Th +  2Z = B^5

L = U + TTh

E = Y + MTh

N = Q^16

R = [G + EQ^3 + LQ^5 + (2(E - ZLa)(1 + XB^5 + G)^4 + LaB^5 + + 
LaB^5Q^4)Q^4](N^2 -N)
 + [Q^3 -BL + L + ThLaQ^3 + (B^5 - 2)Q^5] (N^2 - 1)

P = 2W(S^2)(R^2)N^2

(P^2)K^2 - K^2 + 1 = Ta^2

4(c - KSN^2)^2 + Et = K^2

K = R + 1 + HP - H

A = (WN^2 + 1)RSN^2

C = 2R + 1 Ph

D = BW + CA -2C + 4AGa -5Ga

D^2 = (A^2 - 1)C^2 + 1

F^2 = (A^2 - 1)(I^2)C^4 + 1

(D + OF)^2 = ((A + F^2(D^2 - A^2))^2 - 1)(2R + 1 + JC)^2 + 1


Any such theory will do. The theology (including physics) that is extracted 
from them is the same. Theology, and thus physics is machine-independent, or 
phi_i-independent.

> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Philip Thrift]

Of course (as you know) I say one could bring a "bunch of atoms together" 
to get something that is a conscious self.

*First 3D Engineered Vascularized Human Heart Is Bioprinted*
https://www.genengnews.com/news/first-3d-engineered-vascularized-human-heart-is-bioprinted/

In the future: a Brain?

The problem is not appreciating *experience* !== information*.

* Experience  (Experientiality) as an ultimate property of matter.

- pt

On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 2:52:03 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
>
> Exactly. This is the whole point. In order to have self-reference, you 
> need to have a self. And you don't just get a self by arranging atoms in 
> certain positions. You don't get a self by bringing a bunch of atoms 
> together and calling them "a robot", because calling them "a robot" is just 
> something that you yourself do in your own consciousness. Only because you 
> call that bunch of atoms "a robot" it doesn't mean that all of a sudden 
> magic happens and that bunch of atoms really become "a robot", or a self. 
> So you don't just get selves. Self is a rather specific entity. Self is 
> exactly that entity that is included by default in the very notion of 
> "self-reference". Self is that ontological entity that has as its very 
> property the property of referring-back-to-itself. And automatically that 
> kind of entity is unformalizable.
>
> On Friday, 19 April 2019 10:44:39 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>> The problematic part of "self-reference" is "self".
>>
>>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

Exactly. This is the whole point. In order to have self-reference, you need 
to have a self. And you don't just get a self by arranging atoms in certain 
positions. You don't get a self by bringing a bunch of atoms together and 
calling them "a robot", because calling them "a robot" is just something 
that you yourself do in your own consciousness. Only because you call that 
bunch of atoms "a robot" it doesn't mean that all of a sudden magic happens 
and that bunch of atoms really become "a robot", or a self. So you don't 
just get selves. Self is a rather specific entity. Self is exactly that 
entity that is included by default in the very notion of "self-reference". 
Self is that ontological entity that has as its very property the property 
of referring-back-to-itself. And automatically that kind of entity is 
unformalizable.

On Friday, 19 April 2019 10:44:39 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
> The problematic part of "self-reference" is "self".
>
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

Vitalism is still true. Nobody knows how a being develops from embryo to 
its fully developed form. DNA is just a book. Nobody knows how it actually 
functions. It might well receive top-down influence in levels from higher 
order consciousness that guides the development of the biological entity.

Then Lob is just talking about other things. The true self-reference is not 
formalisable, since neither is nor not-is.

On Friday, 19 April 2019 02:27:31 UTC+3, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>
> The same argument was made in favour of vitalism - before the 
> structure and mechanics of DNA was discovered. 
>
> Self-reference is formalisable. See Löb's theorem. 
>
> -- 
>
>  
>
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
> Principal, High Performance Coders 
> Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpc...@hpcoders.com.au 
>  
> Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
>  
>
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 6:27:31 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 03:17:59AM -0700, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything 
> List wrote: 
>
> Self-reference is formalisable. See Löb's theorem. 
>
>
>


The problematic part of "self-reference" is "self".

HOL theorem proving agents - as developed at MIRI and MIT-CSAIL - (attempt 
to) implement Löbian provability-logic reflection. (*Self-" is used a lot [ 
https://intelligence.org/files/TilingAgentsDraft.pdf ].) This may be 
sufficient for non-conscious, intelligent robots.

But if "self" is what (for example) Galen Strawson* defines, the above is 
not "self-reflection".

Because there is no "self".


** at least some ultimates must be experiential*

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/935894.Consciousness_and_Its_Place_in_Nature
 

- pt

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

Of course there are no atoms. The point is that the robot follows the same 
behavior as the appearances of "atoms" in our consciousness. In other 
words, if you know the behavior of atoms (even though they are nothing more 
than appearances in consciousness), you know the behavior of the robot. 
There is no free will there, no act, no purpose, etc. But in the case of 
consciousnesses, the "atoms" in the "brain" are not enough to predict the 
behavior of a conscious being, because the "atoms" in the "brain" receive 
top-down influence in levels from the intentions of consciousnesses. 
Consciousnesses really have free will, really act, really have purposes. 
This has nothing to do with "scholastic philosophy". This is just rational 
thinking. If you you use your rationality you realize these things. If not, 
you start to believe in fantasies in which robots have souls.

On Thursday, 18 April 2019 23:54:04 UTC+3, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 4/18/2019 3:34 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
>
> The only downside being that... the robot does not exist. People are 
> tricking themselves too easily into personifying objects. There is no robot 
> there, there are just a bunch of atoms 
>
>
> I thought you didn't believe in atoms.  I look forward to your 
> construction of atoms from consciousness of...what?  atoms?
>
> Brent
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

Then if it is not a complete description, why do you call it 
"self-reference" ? You should just call it: "a table of parameters". The 
true self-reference is complete: it is included in itself in its entirety. 
And is doing this without getting into infinite regress. The reason it can 
avoid infinite regress is that the true self-reference is an unformal 
entity. Or as I read some guy saying: self-reference neither is nor not-is, 
self-reference neither exists nor not-exists. It is a very special kind of 
entity.

On Thursday, 18 April 2019 20:56:08 UTC+3, Brent wrote:
>
>
> No.  A "model" is not a complete description, it's a representation of 
> some specific aspects.  Your "self-reference" cannot refer to everything 
> about yourself...which according to you is a stream of consciousness.
>
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

It is a precise definition in the sense that if I see red, then I see red. 
You cannot come and tell me: "Well... maybe it wasn't red, maybe it was 
yellow.". No! It was red! And if you then say: "Oh, but also the robot sees 
red, because...", then you enter a realm of fantasy that has nothing to do 
whatsoever with rational thinking. We are not interested in fantasies, i.e. 
"operational definitions". We are interested in truth. And be saying the 
robot sees red, you are not doing anything in helping to understand truth, 
you are just playing word-games.

On Thursday, 18 April 2019 20:44:04 UTC+3, Brent wrote:
>
> I see you are of the scholastic school of philosophers (I thought they 
> were all dead) who suppose that they can make things true by giving them 
> "precise definitions" in words.  You should study some science and learn 
> the importance of operational definitions in  connecting words to facts.
>
> Brent 
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

It's still not clear to me what your concept of "machine" is. Is it just an 
abstract theory or is it some actually existing entity ? If it is actually 
existing, is it made out of atoms ? Because if it is made out of atoms, 
where does its free will come from ? In the case of humans free will comes 
from the fact that we are not made out of atoms, but we are 
consciousnesses, "atoms" being just ideas in us.

On Thursday, 18 April 2019 17:04:15 UTC+3, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> They have as much free will as human (direct consequence of the Mechanist 
> assumption).
>
>

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Re: My book "I Am" published on amazon

['Cosmin Visan' via Everything List]

1) The qualia of black-and-white is not on the same level with the qualia 
of colors. The qualia of colors include the qualia of black-and-white. You 
cannot see a color if that color is not emergent upon black-and-white (or 
more specifically shades-of-gray). You cannot experience music if music is 
not emergent upon sounds. You cannot taste chocolate if chocolate is not 
emergent upon sweet. You cannot understand Pythagoras Theorem if the 
understanding of Pythagoras Theorem doesn't emerge upon the understandings 
of triangles, angles, lengths, etc. And this is real emergence, because you 
really get new existent entities that never existed before in the history 
of existence. God himself never experienced these qualia. 

I don't understand your second part of the question regarding our 
"cognitive processes". Are you referring to our specific form of human 
consciousness ? I don't think this is only restricted to our human 
consciousness, for the reason that it happens to all qualia that we have. 
All qualia domains are structured in an emergent way.

2) The main ideas in my book are the emergent structure of consciousness 
and the self-reference which gives birth to the emergent structure. The 
ideas about self-reference that I have are rooted in phenomenology. First I 
observe that consciousness is structured in an emergent way, and then I 
conclude that the reason it is like this is because there is an entity 
called "self-reference" that looks-back-at-itself and in this process 
includes the previously existing self and brings a new transcendent self 
into existence, like in the case of colors emerging on top of 
black-and-white.

3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down influence 
in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical 
experiments have little input from any top level, so they behaving 
according to their own level and display certain laws. But when they are 
part of a greater holistic system, like in the brain (which is just an 
appearance of internal workings in consciousness) they receive top-down 
influence from the intentions in consciousness, and so they behave 
according to the will of consciousness. Is the same phenomenon when we 
speak, that I also gave in my presentation. When we speak, we act from the 
level of intending to transmit certain ideas. And this level exercises 
top-down influence in levels and the sentences, words and letters are 
coming out in accordance with the intention from the higher level.

On Thursday, 18 April 2019 16:22:18 UTC+3, telmo wrote:
>
> Hi Cosmin,
>
> 1)
>
 
>
Ok, I saw your presentation. We agree on several things, but I don't quite 
> get your qualia emergence idea. The things you describe make sense, for 
> example the dissolution of meaning by repetition, but what makes you think 
> that this is anything more than an observation in the domain of the 
> cognitive sciences? Or, putting it another way, and observation / model on 
> how our cognitive processes work?
>
>
> 2) Consciousness is not mysterious. And this is exactly what my book is 
> doing: demystifying consciousness. If you decide to read my book, you will 
> gain at the end of it a clarity of thinking through these issues that all 
> people should have such that they will stop making the confusions that 
> robots are alive.
>
>
> I don't mean to discourage or attack you in anyway, but one in a while 
> someone with a book to promote shows up in this mailing list. No problem 
> with me, I have promoted some of my work sometimes. My problem is with "if 
> you read my book...". There are many books to read, please give the main 
> ideas. Then I might read it.
>
>
> 3) No, they are not extraordinarily claims. They are quite trivial. And 
> they start from the trivial realization that the brain does not exist. The 
> "brain" is just an idea in consciousness.
>
>
> I have no problem with "the brain is just an idea in consciousess". I am 
> not sure if this type of claim can be verified, or if it falls into the 
> category of things we cannot assert, as Bruno would say. I do tend to think 
> privately in those terms.
>
> So ok, the brain does not exist. It is just a bunch of qualia in 
> consciousness. But this is then true of every single thing! Again, no 
> problem with this, but also no reason to abandon science. The machine 
> doesn't exist either, but its elections (that don't exist either) follow a 
> certain pattern of behavior that we call the laws of physics. Why not the 
> electrons in the brain? What's the difference?
>
> Telmo.
>
>

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