Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 21 October 2014 17:58, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Oct 2014, at 00:56, David Nyman wrote: On 19 October 2014 17:48, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Oct 2014, at 15:26, David Nyman wrote: On 19 October 2014 02:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Whether I find it satisfactory or not is a different question. The point I was making is that people who find it satisfactory express this belief idea by claiming that consciousness does not exist. Assuming that you don't, in fact, find it satisfactory, I'd be interested in your reasons. Given the assumption of the exhaustive adequacy of physical reduction, Graziano would appear to be quite correct in his assessment that the idea of any left over phenomenon, after correlation of conscious states with the relevant physical processes, is physically incoherent. On the same assumptions, we clearly cannot cite any *judgement* to the contrary as evidence of any such supernumerary phenomenon, as any such judgement must likewise be nomologically entailed by physical law. If so, what reason can you cite for believing that there is any such thing? Very good question, of course: the hard question. Note that up to some point, we can eliminate consciousness to, in appearance. Yes, because what is empirically available is restricted (by definition) to the physics of appearance. (I need to be technical on this, but I might try to translate latter, or to simplify, or to criticize) Actually I was thinking about something else, like reducing the mind body problem to the body problem, like in the UDA, and then extracting physics from that problem (by finding the right statistic on the relative personal diaries). This might have made sense, if the quantum logics were appearing in the S4Grz1, Z 1or X1 logics, and forgetting all about the S4Grz1*, Z1*, and X1* star. (I can argue this would have lead to solipsism (no first person plural discourse) and to a Quantum mechanics with collapse, in fact superposition would not be contagious to the *conscious* observer. This would have led to a QM with a consciousness reducing the wave packet, but only in the diaries, and that could be taken as an illusion in some coherent way. It is avery funny theory: it is a non-collapse QM, where consciousness describe itself as the collapser of the wave. There is no collapse, only because that consciousness does not exist! (Not sure it makes sense for a non zombie tough!) If QM appears only at S4Grz1the idea above would make some more sense, but still hard to swallow for any non-zombie entity). The reason here is that S4Grz1 = S4Grz1* But now the qualia and quanta appear at the star pov (Z1*, X1*, S4Grz1*), and all the differences between S4Grz, Z, and X (and the comp one S4Grz1, X1, Z1) come from the G/G* splitting, so the true non justifiable invites itself in the picture, keeping the many nuances brought by those different logics). In fact I revive some of your old critics of comp, like it can be considered as eliminating consciousness too, because it might make logical sense, in case physics did not appear exclusively in the star logic. A good thing, because it makes Everett-QM confirming the sharing of the histories by many people. This is better than Albert-Loewer theory, which get multi-solipsist. The default assumption, as Graziano succinctly notes, is that the details of this apparent physical mechanism (at least in some ideal form) exhaust both the ontological and the epistemological catalogues. Only with actual infinite magic in the details. I guess you saw this, then formally it is even clearer, but a bit of this could have been the case, if physics appear in the non star logics. Not sure the computation can interfere in that setting. We get all isolated in such setting, from each others. Consequently, in this sense, appeals to the putative existence of anything over and above such an exhaustive account must be physically incoherent. If one takes a sufficiently hard line (and I do!) it becomes apparent that this mode of explanation gobbles up competitors like some inexorable flesh-eating microbe. Anything meta-physical (such as computation, under these assumptions) merely degenerates, under observation, into one or another physical approximation. Yes, and even physics is no more clear, because the theories use explicitly arithmetical relations. Indeed in string theory you need to believe that some infinite sum of all natural numbers is equal to -1/12, independently of you, to get the right mass of the photon! Then computation is a notion which exists even more as it does not need any axiom of infinity, and the existent computations are provably existent, even already in RA. No need of induction axiom. In fact, for a logician, to believe in the physical laws, together with the belief that they apply here and now, is equivalent with a *very
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 18 October 2014 14:22, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Weak emergence of consciousness. The emergent phenomenon is distinguishable from the physical processes constituting it in the way any system is distinguishable from its parts, while still being fundamentally nothing more than its parts. A system can be distinguished from its parts, in the sense you seem to intend, only in terms of some point of view that makes such distinctions relevant. The trouble is that if we attempt to apply this analysis to consciousness, what we get is a point of view that emerges from its constituent parts only retroactively, in terms of itself. Doesn't this seem rather circular? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 19 October 2014 02:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Whether I find it satisfactory or not is a different question. The point I was making is that people who find it satisfactory express this belief idea by claiming that consciousness does not exist. Assuming that you don't, in fact, find it satisfactory, I'd be interested in your reasons. Given the assumption of the exhaustive adequacy of physical reduction, Graziano would appear to be quite correct in his assessment that the idea of any left over phenomenon, after correlation of conscious states with the relevant physical processes, is physically incoherent. On the same assumptions, we clearly cannot cite any *judgement* to the contrary as evidence of any such supernumerary phenomenon, as any such judgement must likewise be nomologically entailed by physical law. If so, what reason can you cite for believing that there is any such thing? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 19 October 2014 17:48, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Oct 2014, at 15:26, David Nyman wrote: On 19 October 2014 02:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Whether I find it satisfactory or not is a different question. The point I was making is that people who find it satisfactory express this belief idea by claiming that consciousness does not exist. Assuming that you don't, in fact, find it satisfactory, I'd be interested in your reasons. Given the assumption of the exhaustive adequacy of physical reduction, Graziano would appear to be quite correct in his assessment that the idea of any left over phenomenon, after correlation of conscious states with the relevant physical processes, is physically incoherent. On the same assumptions, we clearly cannot cite any *judgement* to the contrary as evidence of any such supernumerary phenomenon, as any such judgement must likewise be nomologically entailed by physical law. If so, what reason can you cite for believing that there is any such thing? Very good question, of course: the hard question. Note that up to some point, we can eliminate consciousness to, in appearance. Yes, because what is empirically available is restricted (by definition) to the physics of appearance. The default assumption, as Graziano succinctly notes, is that the details of this apparent physical mechanism (at least in some ideal form) exhaust both the ontological and the epistemological catalogues. Consequently, in this sense, appeals to the putative existence of anything over and above such an exhaustive account must be physically incoherent. If one takes a sufficiently hard line (and I do!) it becomes apparent that this mode of explanation gobbles up competitors like some inexorable flesh-eating microbe. Anything meta-physical (such as computation, under these assumptions) merely degenerates, under observation, into one or another physical approximation. Take the UDA: the first person, there (unlike AUDA) admit a pure third person description: the content of the diary that the person takes with her in the multiplication (in arithmetic or in the QM universal matrix, whatever). The magic is described in the diaries, the person get information (in shannon sense) from apparently nowhere (they don't feel the split). To share that information with other, we need the first person plural, and the hope that the computations which makes us interact are among the winning one. That might already suggest universal group like the unitary group. But up to now, this picture does not yet address the hard question, despite it explains the content of the personal diaries. What will specifically address that question is the Theatetus idea. By definition, the owner of the diary has the content of the diary as experience, making them true at that self-observation level: So there is, as it were, a primary level of truth - that of self-observation itself - that is given *by definition*? I mean a level that is, in itself, distinct from whatever relative truths may be implied by the content, or what-is-observed. it guatantie the link between provability and truth, Guarantee in what sense? but by incompleteness, you have to make explicit in the definition of the knowability even for the correct prover/believer (which is an amazing consequence of Gödel Löb theorems). This entails the splitting between the truth accessible to the machine from its perspective, and its ability to see that too, Do you mean: to see that the accessible truth is restricted to its (the machine's) particular perspective? which is the case for machines believing in some induction axioms. What axioms in particular? That splitting entails also the very existence of all the nuances between the (8) points of view. The ideally correct universal machine is born in arithmetic with already psychological and theological internal conflicts. Can you make a distinction here between what you consider psychological, and what theological? But the more it introspects, the more it get the picture of the abyssalness of its ignorance, making it naturally humble in front of the possible truth, and humble in front of the bridges between truth, belief, observation, sensations, and knowledge. Its ignorance can hardly be more abysmal than my own! UDA pers se address only the hard matter appearance problem, I think from some of your post you understood that AUDA does address the hard question, and gives perhaps the most we can hope for when assuming computation: the theory of consciousness and person is similar as the theory of god: it is a negative theory: you are not this, nor that, etc. Yes, I have some sense of how the something over and above can be intelligibly situated in terms of AUDA, although I am painfully aware of the limitations in my grasp of the detail. Paradoxically (or perhaps not so much) what has helped me is sticking
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 15 October 2014 14:38, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I guess he would say, as Dennett does, that zombies are impossible. But how is the statement there is no subjective impression consistent with the view that zombies are impossible? Surely the very definition of a zombie is something that possesses all the physical correlates of subjectivity but lacks a subjective impression? That's precisely what he's arguing for. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 15 October 2014 19:32, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: If Churchland logic is applied in the case of comp, it leads to the the idea that not only the first person is eliminated, but also all references to the gluons, quarks, electron, bosons, fermions, waves, probability, taxes, etc. All we have is elementary arithmetic. Interesting. In an earlier conversation, I suggested to you that realism about composite entities such as those you list above (and I guess even quarks would be composite with respect to elementary arithmetic) could ultimately be justified only by including the logic of the knower. You seemed to disagree, but perhaps your point is that such realism is epistemological rather than ontological? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 16 October 2014 13:31, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If consciousness is merely a side-effect of conscious-like behaviour then zombies are impossible. What do you mean by a side effect? Do you mean something that would necessarily be physically incoherent (according to Graziano, and correctly so, given his assumptions)? IOW, something-or-other that is over and above an exhaustive analysis of physically-defined entities or processes? He clearly states that believing in such things is unnecessary and wrong. I still maintain that the consciousness-deniers can't really think that they're unconscious since that would be absurd. As to what consciousness-deniers can or cannot think, in this case why not take him at his word? He clearly states that in his view and that of his colleagues *there is no subjective impression*. What exists, in his view, are computations (or more correctly their physical instantiations) and these are fully sufficient to account for all the internal and external manifestations (including those labelled as perceptions, thoughts and feelings) we naively take to be subjective impressions. Consequently, he concludes, there is no need whatsoever, on this basis, to believe in any such impressions. I agree that this conclusion amounts to a reductio ad absurdum, but he clearly believes it and at least he's done us the favour of making this abundantly clear. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 16 October 2014 19:54, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I think it's a matter of semantics. I'm sure Graziano experiences what I experience, given my use of the word experience, but due to his understanding of what underpins this experience he chooses to say it doesn't really exist. It's as if someone chose to say life does not really exist on the grounds that it's all just chemistry. That doesn't strike me as a good example. I presume both you and he would agree that there's simply no need to posit something (elan vital?) over and above its physical basis in order to have a satisfactory intuition about what is meant by life. There's nothing obviously counter-intuitive about the idea that life demands no explanation beyond the particular physical processes that constitute living systems. On the other hand I presume you don't find the parallel intuition - that consciousness demands no explanation beyond its correlation with specific physical processes - similarly satisfactory. Am I wrong? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 16 October 2014 19:54, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: A necessary side-effect roughly equates to the idea of weak emergence. Weak emergence of what, precisely? And in what way could this emergent something be distinguishable from the physical processes constituting it? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 16 October 2014 18:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/16/2014 5:59 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 16 October 2014 13:31, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If consciousness is merely a side-effect of conscious-like behaviour then zombies are impossible. What do you mean by a side effect? Do you mean something that would necessarily be physically incoherent (according to Graziano, and correctly so, given his assumptions)? IOW, something-or-other that is over and above an exhaustive analysis of physically-defined entities or processes? He clearly states that believing in such things is unnecessary and wrong. For example, increase in entropy? I presume Graziano would say that what we mean by entropy is, in the final analysis, indistinguishable from the processes constituting what is so characterised, just as he claims that conscious states of the brain are indistinguishable from the processes constituting what is so characterised. To be consistent, his view would have to be that it is unnecessary and wrong to believe that either entropy or consciousness are anything over and above their exhaustively analysed physical bases. I still maintain that the consciousness-deniers can't really think that they're unconscious since that would be absurd. As to what consciousness-deniers can or cannot think, in this case why not take him at his word? He clearly states that in his view and that of his colleagues *there is no subjective impression*. What exists, in his view, are computations (or more correctly their physical instantiations) and these are fully sufficient to account for all the internal and external manifestations (including those labelled as perceptions, thoughts and feelings) we naively take to be subjective impressions. Consequently, he concludes, there is no need whatsoever, on this basis, to believe in any such impressions. How does that last follow? Isn't our naively taking them to be subjective and believing in them also nomologically entailed by the physical processes? Yes, obviously. He's saying that this is *sufficient* (as opposed to merely necessary) to account for everything about consciousness that requires explanation, including all claims to the possession of subjective impressions. Consequently, in his view, we shouldn't take our belief in our own subjectivity to be evidence of anything over and above the nomological entailment of certain physical processes. Seems to me it's a kind of empty theory; like saying It's all computation but without saying why some computations seem to instantiate me and some don't. Well, since he believes that we aren't conscious in the first place, perhaps he also thinks that some states of the brain are even more unconscious than others! David Brent I agree that this conclusion amounts to a reductio ad absurdum, but he clearly believes it and at least he's done us the favour of making this abundantly clear. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 14 October 2014 11:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: It is not uncommon for believer to accept a contradiction to save their faith, which appears to be of the type *blind*. Yes indeed. It also puts me in mind of Sherlock Holmes's famous dictum: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Though it may not be quite what the eminent detective had in mind, it strikes me that many people are driven to espouse highly improbable positions purely in reaction to something they consider impossible. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 13 October 2014 15:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Well, some people might say just information processing, and that is like using some god to *explain* everything, instead of trying to formulate the problem. This is doubly so in the use of the term information, which is a word which almost automatically leads to a confusion between the first person notion (like in: I listen to the information on the radio and was shocked) and the third person notion (like in Shannon theory, or Quantum information theory, etc. I agree. He says at one point When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. Note that he can't avoid saying when WE introspect and OUR cognitive machinery. What is taken for granted here is *particularity*. He can't help resorting to a tacit god's-eye perspective that is used, without justification, to pick out whatever is under discussion and ascribe it to we and our. He might, I suppose, wish to protest that this is just folk language and that there is, in the ultimate analysis, no picking out of the first-person we and our. This is perhaps what is behind the attempt to deploy illusion as a term-of-art. Unfortunately it is merely a term-of-obfuscation, as it unable to conceal the frank contradiction inherent in ascribing a perceptual position to something you claim does not exist. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 13 October 2014 16:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: That is the difference between []p and []p p. The difference is null, extensionally, from the point of view or the arithmetical truth. But the difference is huge from both the body and soul points of view. Neither []p nor []p p will ever justify or know that []p and []p p define the same set of beliefs or knowledge. True, but unjustifiable. Graziano writes: But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience. If I understand you correctly, what he is describing above is []p. What is missing from his account is []p p, presumably because he has concluded that a belief in p is sufficient in the absence of p! Note that he states (correctly) that p is physically incoherent, which gives a clue to his prior ontological commitments. Of course []p is a necessary component of the account, but it is not sufficient. Indeed the fact that it is necessary is often incompletely grasped (e.g. in Craig's theory) but it's insufficiency can also be elusive, especially for those in the grip of a dogma. If it were indeed sufficient, then neither matter nor arithmetic could entail more than a wilderness of zombies. What bamboozles this kind of reductionism is that p cannot be propositionally justified. It is not another proposition but rather the truth of the propositions that correctly refer to it. Hence its absence would force rejection of the veracity of all claims to its possession. It would force not only the conclusion that the propositionally-correct claims of others are false, but that our own are equally in error. In other words, that both they and we are zombies. This is, in effect, what Graziano is claiming, however absurdly, in the above passage. I don't agree with Stathis that he is really making a claim of epiphenomenalism; he is clear enough that the argument here is that there is no subjective impression. He really is claiming that there are only zombies despite all propositional claims to the contrary. One might think that, stated as baldly as this, such a conclusion would be as effective a reductio as one could wish. After all, When one has eliminated the impossible..etc. However, when one has a prior commitment to third-person absolutism (to cite Professor Dennett's personal epithet) it may only be acceptable to believe that whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Such a position might seem to be unsustainable in practice without resorting to what one might call metaphysical and conceptual grand larceny. In other words, it's pretty much impossible for discussion of such a schema to proceed without constant reference to first-personal phenomena and concepts (beginning with we and our) that can have no ultimate validity in its own terms. I've been re-reading Patricia Churchland recently in a sincere attempt to understand this kind of position in a more nuanced way, and her view is that, in terms of some ultimate neuroscience, all such first-person concepts will be completely eliminable. That is, she believes that a future neuroscience will be capable of fully characterising a mechanism that computes the existence of first-person phenomena when in reality they are entirely fictitious. The theory of such a mechanism, in her view, will simply eliminate our current folk theory of the first-person much as the modern theory of combustion has replaced that of phlogiston. This seems pretty close to what Graziano is saying in this piece. It's at least a mercy that Churchland thinks that such a goal lies beyond any current conceptual horizon and hence a long way in the future, so we may get to linger here a little longer before the grin disappears with the rest of the cat. Frankly, I conclude that there's no arguing with some people. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 14 October 2014 11:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: They eliminate consciousness because they grasp that it is the only way to keep the aristotelian belief in a creation intact. I seem to be motivated to comment at some length on this topic! It must be because of what I've been reading and thinking about recently. Graziano writes, in an attempt to justify, in evolutionary terms, how the brain might come to believe (incorrectly) that it is subjectively aware: ...my colleagues and I have been developing the “attention schema” theory of consciousness, which may explain why that computation is useful and would evolve in any complex brain. Here’s the gist of it: Take again the case of color and wavelength. Wavelength is a real, physical phenomenon; color is the brain’s approximate, slightly incorrect model of it. In the attention schema theory, attention is the physical phenomenon and awareness is the brain’s approximate, slightly incorrect model of it. In neuroscience, attention is a process of enhancing some signals at the expense of others. It’s a way of focusing resources. Attention: a real, mechanistic phenomenon that can be programmed into a computer chip. Awareness: a cartoonish reconstruction of attention that is as physically inaccurate as the brain’s internal model of color. He's quite explicit here about the primacy of physical brain-based explanation. But he also appeals to computation within this brain-first explanatory schema, as in his distinction between wavelength as a real, physical phenomenon and color as an approximate model of it. The problem for this style of explanation is that, in terms of his explicit schema, any software model is entirely reducible to primary brain hardware. The real, physical phenomena of the brain are fundamental and hence only physical phenomena are accessible as objects of selection in any evolutionary account, assuming physical primacy. This distinction vitiates any attempt to justify the differential selection of any particular software organisation since any such selection must already be fully accounted for on the basis of real, physical phenomena. IOW, it actually provides no non-question-begging explanation of why there would be any selective advantage for either attention or awareness per se in this schema, as both would be equally subsumed in their real physical implementation. Neither account could be more than an a posteriori re-description of what had already been selected in the real, physical regime, on the basis of purely hardware criteria. Properly understood, such soft concepts must be seen as explanatorily redundant - as you imply - if material explanation is accepted as primary. In short: If Aristotle were right, there would be no need of dreams to explain why there were machines. But if Plato is right, then we need machines to explain why we are dreaming. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA redux (again!)
On 23 August 2014 23:50, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: *You're saying it may be incoherent to reduce consciousness to computation, if computation is reducible to physics? Why would that be incoherent? Must 'reduction' necessarily be reduction to the bottom to be coherent? Or are you assuming consciousness can't be reducible to physics therefore it can't be reducible to some intermediate (computation) that risks be reducible to physics?* No, I'm definitely not saying, in principle, that consciousness couldn't be reduced to physics. Indeed my whole point has been that if computation is, in the end, nothing over and above physical action, any theory that links consciousness to computation is tacitly a claim that consciousness is itself nothing over and above physical action. That claim may be true, but it can't be a claim about computation, only one about physics. Indeed, your own engineering-level analogies exploit precisely this ambiguity. You have yourself expressed the view (re Tegmark's ideas, as I recall) that mathematics is a human invention: i.e. a collection of abstractions from physical reality. On that basis, the very notion of computation *could only be* a meta-mathematical metaphor approximated by certain classes of physical action. I'm grateful to Bruno for pointing out that CTM, taken seriously, rather than being merely a psychological theory riding on the coat-tails of physics, must entail a profound reversal of explanatory priority. I have no idea whether this insight will lead, in the end, to a correct TOE, but it seems clear that it does require computation to take explanatory priority over physics. David On 8/23/2014 9:09 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 23 August 2014 05:02, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: *What we observe in practice are physical devices of various kinds (indeed, in principle, indefinitely many kinds) that we accept FAPP as adequately instantiating particular classes of computation within certain fairly stringent limits.* *What we observe, aside from observing our own thoughts and maybe even then, is always theory laden. Partly we see the world through a theory of objects that evolution has provided us, sort of naive physics, but a theory nonetheless as optical illusions demonstrate.* And the relevance of this remark to my point is what, precisely? Just a cautionary remark that observing a physical device already involves assumptions that it is an experience that can in principle be shared and agreed on by other observers - i.e. that it assumes some physics. *To put it another way, we are prepared to interpret the normal physical behaviour of such devices *as if* it instantiated the mathematical notion of computation.* *Right, because it usually (modulo a dropped bit or so) does.* Obviously. And your point is...? *These considerations should make it clear that any description of the normal behaviour of a physical device as computation can only be in a sense that is, ultimately, metaphorical.* *I think you are too hung up on ontology. You denigrate everything that's not in terms of the ur-stuff of (some unknown) true ontology as metaphor or fiction. Why not accept that knowledge, including knowledge of ontology, is always provisional and uncertain and it's best to think of it as a model summarizing our best idea - but not necessarily the one TRUE idea.* Maybe you are getting a little too hung up on what you imagine me to be hung up on. If that is the case, it might make you somewhat unreceptive at the outset to what you assume to be my line of argument. I'm not trying to grind any axe in particular but only to articulate what I suspect are sometimes unrecognised assumptions as clearly as I can and then examine the consequences. Of course I may well be wrong on any point and so my aim is to encourage discussion from which I might learn. In this particular case what I'm driving at isn't that either matter or computation need be considered as some kind of mystical ur-stuff (whatever that would be). What I'm questioning is whether it is really coherent to attribute *first-person* consciousness to computation against the background of any theory that is committed to a physically primitive level of explanation. You're saying it may be incoherent to reduce consciousness to computation, if computation is reducible to physics? Why would that be incoherent? Must 'reduction' necessarily be reduction to the bottom to be coherent? Or are you assuming consciousness can't be reducible to physics therefore it can't be reducible to some intermediate (computation) that risks be reducible to physics? I know you cross swords with Bruno over the meaning of primitive in this context, but I don't see why this has to be problematic. Primitive simply means the level of explanation to which it is *assumed* every other level can be reduced. I think we only cross swords
Re: MGA redux (again!)
On 23 August 2014 05:02, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: *What we observe in practice are physical devices of various kinds (indeed, in principle, indefinitely many kinds) that we accept FAPP as adequately instantiating particular classes of computation within certain fairly stringent limits.* *What we observe, aside from observing our own thoughts and maybe even then, is always theory laden. Partly we see the world through a theory of objects that evolution has provided us, sort of naive physics, but a theory nonetheless as optical illusions demonstrate.* And the relevance of this remark to my point is what, precisely? *To put it another way, we are prepared to interpret the normal physical behaviour of such devices *as if* it instantiated the mathematical notion of computation.* *Right, because it usually (modulo a dropped bit or so) does.* Obviously. And your point is...? *These considerations should make it clear that any description of the normal behaviour of a physical device as computation can only be in a sense that is, ultimately, metaphorical.* *I think you are too hung up on ontology. You denigrate everything that's not in terms of the ur-stuff of (some unknown) true ontology as metaphor or fiction. Why not accept that knowledge, including knowledge of ontology, is always provisional and uncertain and it's best to think of it as a model summarizing our best idea - but not necessarily the one TRUE idea.* Maybe you are getting a little too hung up on what you imagine me to be hung up on. If that is the case, it might make you somewhat unreceptive at the outset to what you assume to be my line of argument. I'm not trying to grind any axe in particular but only to articulate what I suspect are sometimes unrecognised assumptions as clearly as I can and then examine the consequences. Of course I may well be wrong on any point and so my aim is to encourage discussion from which I might learn. In this particular case what I'm driving at isn't that either matter or computation need be considered as some kind of mystical ur-stuff (whatever that would be). What I'm questioning is whether it is really coherent to attribute *first-person* consciousness to computation against the background of any theory that is committed to a physically primitive level of explanation. I know you cross swords with Bruno over the meaning of primitive in this context, but I don't see why this has to be problematic. Primitive simply means the level of explanation to which it is *assumed* every other level can be reduced. The point is not that we can know any particular theory of this sort to be TRUE, but only that we should rigorously pursue its consequences *as if it were*. My point then is that we should start by treating a theory of physical primitivism as if true. If so, it is only consistent to suppose that any phenomenon under consideration in terms of that theory must be assumed to be adequately and fully accountable (at least in principle) at its lowest level of physical reduction. You persistently demur from this line of argument, but I think you miss my point, which is entirely harmless in every case except (I contend) that of the 1p part of consciousness. It is entirely possible to understand a physically-instantiated computation (and hence, on CTM, an associated state of consciousness) to be the same physical process regardless of the level of reduction at which it is considered. After all, any such level is, in the end, merely a term of art associated with the theory in question. But what I'm questioning is whether it is coherent to (tacitly) treat the 1p part as merely such a term of art. My sense is that you equivocate on this, because if we only consider the 3p part (as in your analogy of the Mars Rover) the point (i.e. 3p-reducibility) is indeed harmless. But the 1p part resists 1p-reduction. It stubbornly is what it is. Hence my question essentially is about the kind of theory required to make sense of associating an irreducible 1p part with a reducible 3p part. AFAICS such a question cannot even be posed coherently in terms of physical primitivism. Indeed you have suggested that it is unreasonable to ask for this. What inclines me to Bruno's ideas (assuming CTM of course) is that this particular question may be better posed in terms of a theory that takes computation, not physics, as its primitive. I think the remainder of your remarks equivocate on precisely this 3p-1p distinction, so I won't comment on them specifically. If I've read you wrongly on this I'd be grateful for clarification. David On 8/22/2014 6:46 PM, David Nyman wrote: I must confess that I've been reading the MGA revisited thread with a certain sense of frustration (notwithstanding that Russell has made a pretty good fist of clarifying some key points). My frustration is that I have never been able to see why we need an elaborate reductio like the MGA to dispose decisively of a *computational* theory
MGA redux (again!)
I must confess that I've been reading the MGA revisited thread with a certain sense of frustration (notwithstanding that Russell has made a pretty good fist of clarifying some key points). My frustration is that I have never been able to see why we need an elaborate reductio like the MGA to dispose decisively of a *computational* theory of mind on the basis of a primitive materiality. The crux of the argument is whether the computational part of the theory can be reduced without ambiguity to the action of a physical device (e.g. a computer or a brain). If not, what we're left with looks like a crypto-materialist theory in computationalist disguise. In point of fact I agree with Stathis that multiple realisability is already sufficient to establish this point. But let me elaborate a little further. When we consider the matter, we don't actually observed computation (in any rigorous mathematical sense) in physical reality. What we observe in practice are physical devices of various kinds (indeed, in principle, indefinitely many kinds) that we accept FAPP as adequately instantiating particular classes of computation within certain fairly stringent limits. To put it another way, we are prepared to interpret the normal physical behaviour of such devices *as if* it instantiated the mathematical notion of computation. But at all times it is sufficient to assume that such behaviour, be it of computers or brains, is constrained exclusively and exhaustively by physical law. It's their net action, as physical devices, that is at all times assumed to be essential, whatever computational (or other) interpretation may be ascribed to them externally. Unfortunately, these otherwise rather obvious facts tend to be obscured in ordinary, and even in technical, discourse by the free intermixing of software and hardware paradigms. These considerations should make it clear that any description of the normal behaviour of a physical device as computation can only be in a sense that is, ultimately, metaphorical. This extends to any software re-description of physical action, as for example Brent's Mars Rover analogy, or Dennett's third-person absolutist take on perception and cognition. On the assumption of a primitive physical reality, such descriptions can (and indeed must) be understood as metaphorical and approximate, not literal and absolute. They are grounded in the assumption of their ultimate reducibility, and approximate equivalence, to some kind of net physical action. In this light, physical devices don't literally compute; the most we need to say is that their physical behaviour adequately *approximates* computation, under suitable interpretation and within certain limits. Under such constraints, it would seem that a so-called computational theory of mind could in fact amount to nothing other than the claim that consciousness is a *state of matter*. This particular state of matter, it would be claimed, must obtain whenever physical action happens to be approximately re-describable (at some arbitrary level) in terms of a certain class of computation. But given that the theory is grounded, and is at all times expressible, in terms of an explicitly physical, as distinct from mathematical, ontology, it is hard to discern how such a computational stipulation could contribute anything intelligible to the claim. ISTM that the foregoing considerations are sufficient, on their own merits, to establish the necessity of the reversal at Step 8, if a *computational* (as distinct from some sort of tacitly crypto-material) theory of consciousness, is to be salvaged. If so, it is indeed clear that the task becomes at least twice as hard as before, as the observed correlations between matter and consciousness now have to be justified on the basis of an ontology that is (mathematically) adequate for a general and rigorous (as distinct from local and approximate) emulation of computation. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 19 August 2014 01:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? Well, you frequently counsel me against arguing on the basis of personal incredulity. So I could respond by asking you when was the last time you learned a fact about the world by deducing it from the molecular structure of your brain. Given that we are committed to explaining the complex in terms of something simpler, then some sort of structure, defined molecularly or otherwise, must surely be implicated in what it means to learn a fact, even though we can't yet say precisely what it is. I guess I take the logics that Bruno investigates in AUDA to be at something analogous to the molecular level vis-a-vis any explanation of cognition or perception that would strike us as intuitively familiar. So just as an understanding of the dynamics of molecular bonding has turned out to be crucial to an appreciation of the possibilities of large-scale structure, the hope (or project) is that we can derive something of analogous relevance, to the structure of human-like cognition and perception, from a rigorous study of particular classes of more basic logical relations. that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events. That's not a bad way of putting it as a general position. My point though was that if we want to start from a very general notion of computation that doesn't presuppose physics, we must seek to justify the differentiation of a sub-class of lawlike physical realities from a much larger totality. According to comp, this differentiation is rooted in the statistical dominance of certain classes of internal belief or reference that are deducible from a quasi-ubiquitous form of self-referential machine psychology. I guess it is only to be expected that a fundamental concept of this sort would strike us as being at some remove from any putative elaboration at the human scale. The devil, as ever, will be found in the detail. David On 8/18/2014 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by proving it from Peano's axioms? that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events. Brent I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of machine psychology over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the postulated reversal. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 19 August 2014 07:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be run in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains. Well, what I was responding to was ..I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. Virtual or digital physics, presumably taking specifically physical computations as its primitives, would characterise the brain as a physical composite object hierarchically reducible to such primitives. Comp, by contrast, seeks to justify the observed dominance of lawlike physical appearances against the background of the fractal computational explosion implied by the dovetailer. So in comp terms, the brain must ultimately correspond to a fungible class of self-referential computations that is able (somehow) to predominate statistically over a cosmic snowstorm of competing machine psychologies. All that said, as Bruno is wont to say, digital or virtual physics as a primitive appears to be self-defeating. On the assumption of CTM it will inevitably be trumped by the Vastly more extensive machine psychology extractable from the dovetailer and hence become explanatorily irrelevant. As to computations instantiating consciousness without (or as I would prefer to say, logically prior to) instantiating physics, I guess we would need more distinctions about consciousness as a general theoretical or logical concept to make sense of this. ISTM that this is just what Bruno is attempting to do with AUDA. As I remarked to Brent, it might be expected that any analysis of very basic logical relations at this level would be at quite some remove from our usual intuitions about consciousness. Nonetheless, the project, if successful, must ultimately prove capable of justifying their relevance to normal human experience. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Comp and logical supervenience
On 19 August 2014 21:35, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I can agree. But it is not entirely, as I suspect you might prefer, a reversal between 3p reality and 1p reality, as we continue to have a big 3p reality: the arithmetical reality which contains computer science and the machine's dream-support (the relevant computations). So the reversal is made possible and sensical, because it is supported by the arithmetical relations driving the consciousness fluxes in the relatively most probable continuations. Yes, I understand. I hope I've shaken off my former 1p absolutism in the course of familiarising myself with your ideas. That said, I suspect that there is often an illegitimate sleight of the imagination in play in discussions of the 3p reality. ISTM that there is often (though not in your case, I hasten to add) the implicit assumption of a kind of default or meta- knower that goes on interpreting what's really there in the absence of any other observer. So in that light it just seems obvious, for example, that the moon exists primarily as a brute 3p fact and any subsequent observation of it is merely some contingent secondary relation. It's almost as if we're overcompensating for the infantile belief that objects disappear when they can't be seen. In comp terms, however, it is clear that the moon can be no such brute fact, but rather the resultant of a complex potential for the lawlike appearance of a moon under suitable observational constraints. In this vein I offer the well-known limerick of Ronald Knox: There was a young man who said God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad. Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Comp and logical supervenience
On 18 August 2014 12:19, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Then the arithmetical realism suggests the existence of approximation of physical realities, without observers. The falling leaf will make a sound (a 3p wave), but of course, without observers, there will be no perception or qualia actualized there. Isn't it perhaps more the case that without observers there is no there there (as Gertrude Stein might have put it)? The indexical reality attributable to observation is a bit like one of the rare intelligible books adrift in the ocean of dross that constitutes the Library of Babel. But unlike Borges's alphabetic Library, the structure of the programmatic Library generated by the dovetailer entails the presence of books that are self-interpreting and self-locating. It's only in the context of such self-actualisation that one could truly say that there is a physical there there, if you see what I mean. The pre-observational approximation you mention above strikes me more as the prerequisite potential for the actualisation of intelligible physical realities, somewhat in the sense that the Library of Babel might represent an analogous potential for the actualisation of intelligible books. Perhaps this is a quibble, but personally I find the notion of physical reality as something that exists independent of us to be a slippery, not to say equivocal, concept. Obviously some kind of *potential* for such reality must exist independently of observation, and comp indeed is a thesis about precisely what might constitute that potential. If comp is correct, physical realities are like flecks of gold filtered from the Vastly redundant dross spewed from the dovetailer. The filtration is in turn a consequence of the self-referential statistics encountered by a plurality of natural knowers directly entailed by the theory. So in point of fact, if comp is correct, there isn't a physical reality that can truly be seen as entirely independent of us; indeed this is what prevents the mind from being swept under the rug of physics. According to comp, physics is nothing other than the summation of lawlike constraints on the possibilities of observation; it's this that constitutes the reversal of physics and machine psychology. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Comp and logical supervenience
On 18 August 2014 14:15, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote: OK that may be true, but without an observer, nothing will exist to select out that computation from the chaotic infinities. I don't know how you can say that the leaf meaningfully exists, because other computational threads will destroy the leaf instantly, do every conceivable thing to it, and then who can say there's a leaf? Without an observer's measure it has no stability and can only be projected artificially into the computations by some observer who already has the concept of a leaf. Frankly I'm surprised to hear you argue this. I agree. I've said before that it requires a truly heroic effort of the imagination to rid oneself of the implicit notion of a default interpreter (God?) that continues to see what's there even in the absence of any other possibility of knowledge. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper
On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as beliefs in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the dreams of the machines) that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of machine psychology over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the postulated reversal. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* incomprehensible. Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise. The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the logical steps of the argument, particularly in assumptions about the scope of reasonable explanation. Brent and others point to parallel accounts of neural activity and conscious self-reporting and ask what more could be required in the way of explanation?. AUDA may indeed give a clue to the direction in which explanation could be extended, beyond ostensive parallelism of this kind, particularly with respect to the central logical puzzles of mutual reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would require us to relinquish any prior commitment to primitive materialist assumptions. My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to articulate my own (still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of reductionist explanation under strictly materialist assumptions (i.e. without either tacit or explicit reliance on supernumerary posits). ISTM that one of the problems in reaching any kind of stable agreement (or even disagreement) on these issues is equivocation over the terms of reference. Consequently I've tried to make my own view of the reductionist assumption clear: i.e. that explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in principle be reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite class of primitive physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends to lead to disputation over the sense of without loss, but I'll come to that in due course. Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism entails that it is misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon, above the level of the chosen explanatory basement, as having independent existence. Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes of the argument) such phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically dispensable. It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little longer! I've offered analogies in terms of such things as societies and football teams (you can easily supplement these with your own) in terms of which this consequence of reductionism is rather obvious. But for some reason it stops being obvious in the matter of matter itself. On reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we directly experience such higher-level phenomena in an unreduced form. Hence none of us (and that includes Professor Dennett) can avoid the fact of encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a reality in unreduced high-level terms, even though our best explanations actually rule out the other-than-metaphorically-independent significance of any such levels. If you doubt the degree of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the general tenor of disputes over free will. This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist analogy breaks down. Nobody would seriously claim, beyond a manner of speaking, that football teams amount to anything other than the aggregate action of the persons that constitute them. But on the other hand almost everyone (pace Daniel Dennett) would claim direct access to a reality that is something (even if we can't agree exactly what) that is, at least, categorically distinct from any description of the aggregate action of the material processes of the brain. The same distinction, however, can't be claimed for computation, on the assumption of material reduction. Just as in the case of the football team no instance of computation can escape reduction to material tokens that have been contrived, under suitable interpretation, to embody the necessary physical action. There isn't even the saving grace that we directly perceive computation in unreduced form. What we actually perceive are macroscopic physical devices that, by assumption, produce all their effects entirely in terms of basic material processes that are fully subject to reductive explanation. Every explanation we give in terms of computation can in principle be replaced without loss by a description of a physical process. This is the underlying reason that Alice's net behaviour can persist unaltered even after disruption of any putatively computational organisation of her brain. Under physicalist assumptions, Alice is first, last and always a physical device. Indeed, were that not the case, it would be difficult to see how any physical computer could ever be manufactured! On this analysis then, it can hardly be coherent to claim that any
Re: One in the eye for Hoyle?
On 30 July 2014 00:26, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: And there I was worrying about CERN destroying the world Yeah, I was careful to take this shot on a long lens! David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 29 July 2014 18:41, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: It is thought as a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousness supervenes on the physical activity, then it supervenes on the movie, But there is no computation in the movie, only a description of a computation, so consciousness does not supervene on the physical activity of the brain, it supervenes directly on the abstract self-referential number relation with themselves and with respect to their most probable universal neighbors, from your laptop to gravitation and many others. Yes, that is the only possible move to salvage CTM. But one isn't forced to take this second step. One could claim that, since there is no computation in the movie, CTM is thereby falsified. But, since Alice's overt behaviour and hence her relation to her environment are by assumption unchanged, it might not be unreasonable to suppose that her consciousness continued to supervene on the physical activity. Of course a claim of that sort could no longer be qua computatio, but in some sense qua materia. It's unclear how such a position could be distinguished from eliminativism about consciousness (at least, pace Brent, elimination of the possibility of *explanation* beyond physical parallelism), but it isn't prima facie incoherent. That apart, at this point in the argument, assuming one accepts the reversal and salvages CTM, some things are still not quite clear (at least to me). For example let's now assume that Alice remains conscious at the conclusion of the thought experiment, qua computatio. What is the nature of the relation between her observable brain processes and the computations that are supposed to be associated with her consciousness? And what is the relation between what is observable in general and any deeper level we may suppose to be reponsible for it? I tried to develop some intuition about this latter point with an analogy based on the distinction between an LCD screen and the movies that could be presented on it (though unfortunately it seems as if this may have got mixed up in your response with the movie in the MGA). In any case, in my analogy, all the characters and action at the level of the movie are of course generated at the deeper level of a rendering engine (which I rather inaccurately called the level of the screen). Now let's assume that this movie is some futuristic, fully-immersive, self-interpreting presentation. For the analogy to hold, the physical constitution of the embedded characters and environments must be fully consistent both with the action at the level of the movie and the self-interpretation of the characters. Nonetheless all these internal observations and observables are a consequence of a deeper level of rendering, which itself has no necessity of isomorphism with anything at the level of observation. Does the idea of such a level (which must of course be noumenal or unobservable in principle with respect to the level of internal observation) still make any sense in comp terms? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: It Knows That It Knows
On 27 July 2014 16:15, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: This tacit supernumerary assumption is what may make it seem plausible that there is no need of a knower for such a distinction to be relevant (i.e. that realism about Deep Blue is justified in the absence of any possible knower). I can make sense of this. Yet, in the TOE extracted from comp, we can forget such a knower, as we don't really need to know if P or ~P is true, just that it is true independently of us (little ego). But any epistemic view on such a P requires a knower. It is an open question to me if it makes sense to say that the ultimate truth (arithmetical truth) is really a knower or not. I realise that I'm pushing rather hard on my intuition here, so I don't insist, but I think whenever one talks about true independently of the little ego one is tacitly relying on a default knower to take up the strain. Consequently we cannot escape the epistemic view, even if that view is (tacitly) that of God who sees and inteprets everything on our behalf. Would it still mean anything to say that P is true or not true independent of God's view on the matter? Perhaps it is only in some sense like this that the ultimate or (assuming comp) arithmetical truth is a knower. I think I see it well now. I intuit something similar, and even something stronger (coming from salvia), which I can feel as making comp wrong, ... but I think that is still only in some 1p view. This is going in the direction that the real knower *is* arithmetical 1p-truth, the p in []p p, and that the body or representation, or belief, []p is filtering consciousness. If this is true, there should be account of people saying that they felt being more conscious when some part of the brain is destroyed, or made non-functional, and that seems to be the case, both with dissociative drugs, but also with people lacking the hypo-campus: they definitely feel something more in the form of a perpetual presence. Brains do not produce consciousness, it would reduce consciousness, by filtering it through the differentiation of histories. Dying (with amnesia) would become a platonist remembering of our universal consciousness. The two way road between Earth and Heaven would be amnesia, in both direction, like salvia suggests. Interesting. Have you read My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor? She is a neuro-scientist who suffered a massive stroke due to the bursting of an aneurysm in her left hemisphere (from which she fortunately ultimately recovered). In her memoir she describes the changes in consciousness that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the almost complete shut-down of her left hemisphere. Of course there were major losses to specific functions (especially language) but what was fascinating was that there was also what one could only describe as a concomitant expansion in her degree of consciousness. It was indeed as if her left hemispherical function had been a filter through which her stream of consciousness had been narrowed. Of course it's a very long way from this to any idea that a brain is not required for consciousness and indeed her own view, as a neuroscientist, was that her altered experience was a result of the relative disinhibition of her right hemisphere. After all, her experience tended to re-normalise as her left hemisphere recovered its function, although some aspects of the altered state have subsequently remained with her. Perhaps one could take the view that even if no *particular* brain is required to manifest a person in a reality, such manifestation will always be in terms of *some* brain or other. This would be a bit like Hoyle's universal person, whose multifarious personas and memories are partitioned by the mutually amnesic relation between its different brains. For such a person, dying is merely a particular case of the general phenomenon of forgetting one reality the better to recollect another. Could one identify such a universal person with the p of arithmetical truth? And why do you think that such an identification might imply that comp was wrong? But you may be right, as God changed his mind, and sent a cop at my home at 3 o'clock in the morning, with my bag, and everything in it (including also some cannabis and salvia!). Quite efficacious the police here, very gentle too. Yes, that's cool :) Wow. David On 25 Jul 2014, at 17:37, David Nyman wrote: On 24 July 2014 22:18, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: To put it another way, there is nobody present for whom it could represent a difference. It still exist, or the difference 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... will need itself a knower to make sense. But with comp, we don't need more than the elementary arithmetic truth, to eventually make a knower by filtering the truth by a body or a representational set of beliefs. Well I think, in a curious way, it may indeed need a knower to make sense. I'm trying to explain one of my early morning intuitions
Re: It Knows That It Knows
On 28 July 2014 11:25, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Actually, comp is terrifying. Rest assured, it terrifies me too. I think the terror stems, in a sense, from the persistent (and I guess, at the terrestrial level, essential) illusion of control. The idea that I could be precipitated into any experience whatsoever with no say-so on my part is what seems terrifying. Interestingly, I've sometimes experienced a mild version of this fear immediately before falling asleep. It's the fear of losing control to the dreaming state; a kind of existential claustro (or agora) phobia. I've tried to rationalise the terror induced by comp in various ways. For starters, it's not a fear of something in prospect, because if comp is true *it's true right now*. My preferred intuition here, which (despite having been unsuccessful in persuading Bruno) I still feel is not inconsistent with comp, is Hoyle's universal person. It's perfectly possible to think of experience in terms of an endless logical sequence of self-relating observer moments (or experiential monads). Recall that Bruno sometimes says that comp is a theory of reincarnation. If so, then Hoyle's analogy serves as a kind of heuristic in terms of which we are reincarnated afresh into personhood in each and every moment. To put it another way, at the universal perspectival limit, each and every moment is itself an experience of death and rebirth. Now there's a thought. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 27 July 2014 19:38, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: Again I am asking about the logic that explains *why* we should abandon the notion of a primitive universal computation given that we agree with steps 1-6. I thought when you said the UD would dominate, you were trying to give an argument for why any notion of a primitive universal computation would somehow become irrelevant to determining measure as long as we assume it contains an eternally-running UD (which if true would certainly be a good argument for abandoning the primitive universal computation as an irrelevant hypothesis, like the argument for abandoning an absolute reference frame in relativity because even if it existed it would have no measurable consequences). Maybe I misunderstood you, though. I'm sure that Bruno can give you a much better and more comprehensive answer than I can on this. However I would reiterate that it is Step 7 and Step 8 which (ISTM) are essential to understanding the dominant role of the UD. Steps 1-6 establish the indeterminacy of localisation after copying and the insensitivity of such localisation to delays in (re-)constitution. These steps are all based on the initial assumption (Step 0) that consciousness is correlated with some classically (and finitely) describable level of brain function that can consequently be copied (at least in principle). But up to (and including) Step 7 it is assumed that all such computation is nevertheless always instantiated by some kind of primitively-physical computer. There's been lot of quibbling about what primitive is supposed to mean here, but AFAICS it just means anything we agree as basic (i.e. underlying everything else) and irreducible. So primitively-physical means that certain (i.e. physical) computations, and these alone, are assumed to comprise the primitive base for everything else. The original point of this thread, as I've said, was to reiterate the implications of Steps 7 and 8 in terms of the reversal of physics and computation. I won't recapitulate the arguments here, since they're already given earlier in the thread. In summary, the conclusion is that, to salvage comp or CTM, we must abandon the notion of primitive physics (at least as being relevant in explanation) in favour of primitive computation. But primitive computation mustn't in the first instance be understood as *some computation in particular* taking this basic and irreducible explanatory role. We are looking rather for something that will stand for a definition of *computation itself*. To establish this notion we need to posit an ontology sufficient to emulate computation itself. In the UDA, arithmetical relations are accepted as sufficing for this purpose (consult the expert for details) and, in terms of such relations, a sigma_1 complete theory is accepted as defining the necessary scope of computation. The establishment of such a basis for computation itself, free of any purportedly more-primitive restriction on its scope, is what lets, so to speak, the central notion of the UD off the leash. In terms of such a theory, an infinitely fractal structure, consequent on the recursive dovetailing implicit in any such theory, will come to dominate statistically the residual measure of any computation in particular. This seems (admittedly with some hand-waving on my part) to be rather obvious in general, if not specific, terms. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
Hilarious! I've always had a soft spot for Searle. He writes very well, he's much more entertaining than most philosophers and his riveting 1984 series of Reith Lectures on the BBC re-ignited my fascination with the topic. But his would-be-simple solution of the mind-body problem holds up only so long as you fail to notice how often he contradicts himself. For example, in this very video, he ridicules behaviourism (i.e. reductionism writ large) and computationalism and then assures us that consciousness is simply a system feature of neurology (i.e. the behaviour of the brain). As ever, his elucidation of the problem is more helpful than any proposed solution he offers, but I guess that just puts him in the same camp as (most of) the rest of us. David On 27 July 2014 09:40, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_searle_our_shared_condition_consciousness -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
with this stipulation, the MGA seems still to imply that the brain as observed embodies neither consciousness, nor the specific computations that underlie it. Rather, *that* brain is a means by which such consciousness is manifested in relation to a reality (as you are wont to say). In terms of my LCD analogy, the brain that we observe is a computation at the level of the movie, but the deeper computations that are responsible, both for that observation and our observing of it, are at the level of the screen. The problem is only for the higher order *first person* relation with the physical activity of the device, ISTM (It seems to me). Then we would seem to agree here. If this analogy holds, at least in general outline, what justification, under CTM, could remain for any assumption that our own observations and references might accidentally allude to some LCD-physics postulated, mutatis mutandis, as underlying the COR? Would it not seem extraordinary that any such underlying physics could contrive to refer to itself through the medium of its merely computational derivatives? Not sure. If arithmetic can do that, why not physics? Because with a schema based on arithmetic it becomes possible to differentiate the level of the movie from the level of the screen. In arithmetic, it is accepted that all physical references are confined to the COR (i.e. are at the level of the movie). The screen is a deeper level that need not (indeed, in arithmetic, cannot) be strictly isomorphic with what is manifested at the level of the movie. So the immediate problem with the conjunction of a primitive physics and CTM is that phenomena at the level of the movie get conflated with those at the level of the screen (i.e. the brain as observed gets conflated with the brain responsible for observation). These are hardly original insights as Plato and Kant (to name but two) have long since pointed them out. The assumption of CTM immediately implies a COR (or more colloquially that observed reality is a kind of full-participation movie). From this point forward any notion, that the level of the representational device can simply be assumed to be isomorphic with what is represented by means of it, is unwarranted and unjustified. Indeed, it is incoherent. THAT physics would necessarily be entirely inscrutable and inaccessible for reference at the level of the COR (think of the LCD analogy). And hence we simply would have no a priori justification for assuming the observational physics of the COR to be isomorphic with some notional underlying LCD-physics. In fact, once having assumed CTM, we would have no further basis for assigning THAT physics any role whatsoever in our explanatory strategy. At first sight I agree here. Nice. Well it seems that, pace vocabulary differences, that I trust are a little clearer now, we agree. In fact, the more I think about it, the more ISTM that the reference problem is the hidden Hard Problem at the heart of physics. It is as if we maintain a sort of primary cognitive dissonance to avoid confronting it. Since what I've called the COR (or some kind of virtual reality account of consciousness) is the default assumption in science, it must surely be obvious that the logic of observation can only refer at its own level. Hence anything we conjecture as being responsible for that level must automatically be considered noumenal with respect to observed phenomena. Yet much of physics seems tacitly to assume that observed phenomena *refer in fact* to a noumenon that is essentially isomorphic with what is observed (albeit many orders of magnitude removed). I've rarely seen any explicit justification of why we would suppose that to be the case, but typically if you ask for one, you get a circular answer (e.g. in terms of evolutionary utility). But to be satisfied with any such answer is to be blind to the fact that it must in fact be couched entirely in terms of the COR. I guess it's hardly surprising that any serious attempt to defend such a notion in detail quickly runs into the buffers. David David, As I try to see if we disagree, or if it is just a problem of vocabulary, I will make comment which might, or not be like I am nitpicking, and that *might* be the case, and then I apologize. On 23 Jul 2014, at 15:38, David Nyman wrote: Recent discussions, mainly with Brent and Bruno, have really got me thinking again about the issues raised by CTM and the UDA. I'll try to summarise some of my thoughts in this post. The first thing to say, I think, is that the assumption of CTM is equivalent to accepting the existence of an effectively self-contained computationally-observable regime (COR). My problem here is that COR is ambiguous. I don't know what you mean by sef-contained computationally-observable regime. It seems to me that UD* *is* such a self-contained computable/computational structure, and the existence of both the UD and UD* are *theorem* of arithmetic, which means
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 23 July 2014 17:49, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: So, why not adopt a Tegmark-like view where a physical universe is *nothing more* than a particular abstract computation, and that can give us a well-defined notion of which sub-computations are performed within it by various physical processes? Essentially because of the argument of Step 7 of the UDA. The assumption here is that consciousness (i.e. the logic of the first-person) is derived from computation. It then follows that we cannot ignore the possibility in principle of building a computer that not only implements a UD but also runs it for long enough to generate its infinite trace, UD* (incorporating, by the way, a fractal-like infinity of such dovetailing). If denying such a possibility on grounds of a lack of primitively-physical resources is evasive, to deny it on grounds of a lack of mathematical resources is surely merely incoherent. But if we do not deny it, but rather embrace it, we can see that such a structure would inevitably dominate any observational reality. We would then see physical processes in the first place as the logic of what is *manifested* in observation, as distinct from a more fundamental logic of observation itself. IOW the logic of physical manifestation is (assumed to be) a consequence of a radical asymmetry of measure inherent in the computational infinity of the UD*, as filtered through a deeper logic of observation implemented in its universally self-referential sub-class. Here the natural analogy is with The Library of Babel, with the crucial difference of the self-filtering characteristic of universal self-reference. This is the first step in filtering out the Vast regions of gibberish that make the alphabetical version of the library so unusable. We must also assume that canonical physical law emerges as a consequence of intrinsic statistical asymmetries, in order to justify the observed probabilistic distribution (i.e. the prevalence of normal over white rabbit experiences). David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 27 July 2014 17:27, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I don't see why that should follow at all, as long as there are multiple infinite computations running rather than the UDA being the only one, I may be missing some other point you're making, but I think this is already dealt with after Step 8 of the UDA (universal dovetailer argument). By this point in the argument, we have abandoned the notion of a primitively-physical universe. Given that we are assuming CTM, we need some ontology to fix the notion of computation, and arithmetical relations suffice for this purpose. At this point, we're not interested in quibbling over the meaning of words like existence, but rather in seeing what we can derive from a given assumption. Anyhow, if arithmetic is taken as the ontology, then given its sufficiency to fix the notion of computation, the existence of a Programmatic Library of Babel is already entailed. Such a Library must in particular contain universal dovetailers that themselves generate every possible program and execute each of them in sequence by means of dovetailing. This must include recursively regenerating themselves in an infinitely fractal manner. This characteristic implies a quite extraordinarily explosive regenerative redundancy. Hence it seems plausible a priori, even without a detailed calculus, that the resulting computational structure (i.e. the infinite trace of the UD, or UD*) must completely dominate any measure competition within the computational landscape defined by arithmetical truth (or the small part of it needed for the assumption). David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 27 July 2014 18:46, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: But when you say by this point in the argument, do you mean there was some earlier step that established some good *reasons* for why we should abandon the notion of a primitively-physical universe (or primitive universal computation), or is it just something that was posited at some point for the purposes of exploring the consequences, without any claim that this posit was implied by earlier steps in the argument? No, it is the strong implication of Step 7 on the basis of Steps 0-6, and the only option available after Step 8, short of abandoning CTM (i.e. the computational theory of mind, which is Step 0 of the UDA). My intention in starting this thread was (hopefully) to clarify Steps 7 and 8. Anyway, the short-hand version of CTM is that you are willing to accept (yes, doctor) that there is a classical level of description of your brain at which your consciousness will be invariant for a correct substitution at that level. Since clearly we have no idea in practice what that level may be, yes doctor is considered to be an act of faith. That seems very handwavey to me, In my hands it most certainly is hand-wavey! I suggest you consult Bruno for a version that relies less on manual dexterity. and while it might seem plausible initially I think it becomes less so when you think more carefully about how measure might actually be assigned. Do you disagree that if we use the particular definition of measure I suggest, in the example I gave with U and U' (both containing a universal dovetailer alongside a bunch of other computers churning out endless copies of me in Washington or me in Moscow) the UD will *not* dominate the measure competition, in that U and U' will give very different answers to the relative likelihood that I find myself in Washington vs. Moscow in Bruno's thought-experiment? Well, a bunch of other computers still seems to assume something more primitive than the simple assumption of arithmetic for the ontology. In terms of the UDA, all bunches of computers are already subsumed within the infinite redundancy of UD*. David On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 1:13 PM, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 27 July 2014 17:27, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: I don't see why that should follow at all, as long as there are multiple infinite computations running rather than the UDA being the only one, I may be missing some other point you're making, but I think this is already dealt with after Step 8 of the UDA (universal dovetailer argument). By this point in the argument, we have abandoned the notion of a primitively-physical universe. But when you say by this point in the argument, do you mean there was some earlier step that established some good *reasons* for why we should abandon the notion of a primitively-physical universe (or primitive universal computation), or is it just something that was posited at some point for the purposes of exploring the consequences, without any claim that this posit was implied by earlier steps in the argument? As I said, it seems that someone could accept everything in steps 1-6 of Bruno's argument but still posit that the measure of each observer-moment would be determined by its limit frequency in some unique universe-computation U. Given that we are assuming CTM, we need some ontology to fix the notion of computation, and arithmetical relations suffice for this purpose. Sorry, what does CTM stand for? It doesn't appear anywhere in Bruno's Comp (2013) paper which I'm using for reference. BTW, I suggested an ontology in the earlier comment to Bruno at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html -- basically using an axiomatic system which allows you to deduce the truth-value of various propositions about a computation, propositions equivalent to statements like after N time steps, the read/write head of the Turing machine moves to space 1185 on the Turing tape, finds a 0 there, changes its internal state from #5 to #8 and changes the digit there to 1. Then, a given computation can be defined in terms of the logical relations between a set of propositions, so one computation A can contain an instance of another computation B if some subset of propositions about A have an isomorphic structure of logical relations to the logical relations between propositions about B. Since the structure of arithmetic can also be defined in terms of a set of propositions with logical relations between them, and any statement about a particular computation can be decided by determining the truth-value of a corresponding statement about arithmetic, it may be that defining computations in terms of arithmetical relations would lead to all the same conclusions as the definition I suggest above, though I'm not sure. Such a Library must in particular contain universal dovetailers that themselves
Re: It Knows That It Knows
. But it is equally essential that this 3p reality is complemented, one might even say redeemed, as a TOE, by the further entailment of the explicitly 1p logical modalities of the conscious knower. So it is only with comp's 1p apotheosis, in the form of those modalities and that knower, that we can see the sense in which fire can finally be breathed into the equations. What might prevent us from seeing this is that we can't help imagining the proposed scenario from a God's-eye perspective. God then takes the role of the knower and sees that Deep Blue is still there. Thus we have unwittingly justified our ascription of Deep Blue to some aspect of the generalised ontology by divine retrospection. That makes sense. The outer God gave rise to the inner God which contemplate the outer God, and eventually they can join, and separate again, in the course of many lives, inside and in between people. Exactly. I think that seeing this may help to clarify my meaning. I hope. I am rereading the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, it might help for this. Cool :-) David On 23 Jul 2014, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote: On 23 July 2014 18:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You miss, and perhaps David's too (?), the fact that above a threshold of relative complexity, the lower level is not relevant for the description of the higher level. It would be like asking why Obama has been elected?, and getting back the answer: everything followed the SWE. Hmm...Well, I originally suggested that the knower *couldn't* simply be reduced to computation or numbers, unlike the case of physical reducibility. In my view, the presence of a 1p knower is what retrospectively justifies realism about higher-level 3p structures with which the knower is to be associated. To see what I mean, let's assume that there is some putative ontology that can't in principle be used to justify the presence of such a knower. Any higher-level scenario conceived in terms of such an ontology is then vulnerable to a particularly pernicious species of zombie reductionism. It isn't merely that the radical absence of first person-hood leaves in its wake nothing but zombies with 3p functional bodies but no consciousness. It's much more radical than that. The zombie body is now radically lacking in existence-for-itself. Consequently, the distinction between any such putative body and its ontological reduction is a differentiation without a difference. To put it another way, there is nobody present for whom it could represent a difference. It still exist, or the difference 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... will need itself a knower to make sense. But with comp, we don't need more than the elementary arithmetic truth, to eventually make a knower by filtering the truth by a body or a representational set of beliefs. Rough artificial cops on the road, made in woods are zombies, but their existence still makes senses in the 3p, for a putative observer present of not. We the computational histories existe logically before the consciousness flux differentiate into knower interpreting themselves, if we want use the computation as defined in the usual 3p theoretical computer science. I realise this may be difficult to accept, for example in the case of Deep Blue that you posed to me. However, imagine re-posing this case with respect to an ontology with which (let us assume) a knower could not *in principle* be associated. That might not be as easy as you think, but let us see. In that case there could be no effective distinction between Deep Blue and its physical reduction, Why? That's not true. In UD* Deep blue has the time to play basically all chess games, perhaps even with all humans, much before the UD get the simulation of our good real blue at the level of the atoms of its late real incarnation. Even in the 3p, Deep blue is already more in its code, goal, strategies, examples, and high level skills, like his elementary belief in a the token of the game, the position on the chessboard. Even that abstract guy would survive, if we implement it in the Babbage machine. It is not a knower in the comp sense, because it has no well defined set of beliefs that he can express, but it might already experience something, hard to say without looking at the code (I think it is still in large part brut force, and that it does not represent itself to play, so we have not enough to apply Theaetetus). since we have ruled out, by assumption, the possibility of persons to whom this could represent a difference. Except the difference between being, and not being, relatively to some universal reality. The soul has a third person origin, even God has a third person origin, as the outer God is a complete 3p reality (arithmetical truth, or the sigma_1 part). What might prevent us from seeing this is that we can't help imagining the proposed
Re: It Knows That It Knows
On 24 July 2014 22:44, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So I think you just saying I am missing the qualia - but that's the part that I think it is unreasonable to ask for an explanation of. In what terms can it be explained - I'd say none. And I don't think your explanation in terms of computation, while different and interesting, is any more complete than my physical one. The qualia per se are not the capital point IMO. What may be even Harder is precisely what comp purports to explain (and what would consequently make it more complete than physics): a deep and necessary relation between 1p and 3p logical regimes. The explanatory strategy is to show how such regimes can be specifically distinguishable whilst at the same time elucidating their inter-dependence. It also purports to explain, again specifically in terms of the relation between the two regimes, their necessary limitations of mutual reference. In terms of this schema, whatever is sharable between 3p and 1p explanatory entities and relations is to be found at the crossing-point, or common point of reference, of two specifically distinguishable logical regimes. They will finally be explicable (in comp terms) as the same thing under two distinct, though limited, descriptions. Physics (as a theory of what is observable, as distinct from a theory of observation that embraces a theory of what is observable) does not set out to explain any such relation. It is, of course, unreasonable to ask for a 1p account from any theory whose terms of reference are thus explicitly limited. To the extent that any such relation is confronted in physical terms, there is typically a reliance (usually tacit) on comp as the vehicle. There is also what is possibly an even more deeply tacit reliance on a God's-eye default knower/interpreter. Indeed it is only because of this latter assumption that we are able to talk without apparent incoherence in terms of a universe that exists independent of observation. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [New post] Why Probability in Quantum Mechanics is Given by the Wave Function Squared
On 24 July 2014 18:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: This may clarify (or provoke) discussion of Moscow vs. Washington. It's interesting that Carroll and Sebens use FPI and Sean says it increases his confidence in Everett's MWI. But in his penultimate paragraph he essentially lays out an endorsement of Fuchs QBism, which is generally seen as the instrumentalist alternative to MWI. Brent, could you possibly summarise what you see as the essential distinction between the CS and Fuchs alternatives for dummies? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
CTM and the UDA (again!)
Recent discussions, mainly with Brent and Bruno, have really got me thinking again about the issues raised by CTM and the UDA. I'll try to summarise some of my thoughts in this post. The first thing to say, I think, is that the assumption of CTM is equivalent to accepting the existence of an effectively self-contained computationally-observable regime (COR). By its very definition, the COR sets the limits of possible physical observation or empirical discovery. In principle, any physical phenomenon, whatever its scale, could be brought under observation if only we had a big enough collider. But by the same token, no matter how big the collider, no such observable could escape its confinement within the limits of the COR. If we accept that the existence of a COR is entailed by assuming CTM, we come naturally to the question of what might be doing the computation. In terms of the UDA, by the time we get to Step 7, it should be obvious that, in principle, we could build a computer from primitive physical components that would effectively implement the infinite trace of the UD (UD*). Furthermore, if such a computer were indeed to be implemented, the COR would necessarily exist in its entirety somewhere within the infinite redundancy of that trace. This realisation alone might well persuade us, on grounds of explanatory parsimony and the avoidance of somewhat strained or ad hoc reservations, to accept FAPP that UD*-COR. Should we be so persuaded, any putative underlying physical computer would have already become effectively redundant to further explanation. Notwithstanding this, we may still feel the need to retain reservations of practicability. Perhaps the physical universe isn't actually sufficiently robust to permit the building of such a computer? Or, even if that were granted, could it not just be the case that no such computer actually exists? Reservations of this sort can indeed be articulated, although worryingly, they may still seem to leave us rather vulnerable to being captured by Bostrom-type simulation scenarios. The bottom line however seems to be this: Under CTM, can we justify the singularisation, or confinement, of a computation, and hence whatever is deemed to be observable in terms of that computation, to some particular physical computer (e.g. a brain)? More generally, can we limit all possibility of observation to a particular class of computations wholly delimited by the activity of a corresponding sub-class of physical objects (uniquely characterisable as physical computers) within the limits of a definitively physical universe? This is where Step 8 comes in. Step 7 seeks to destabilise our naive intuition about an exclusive 1-to-1 relationship between computations and particular physical objects by pointing to the consequences of a physical implementation of UD*. Step 8 however is a change of tactic. First, it postulates a scenario where physical tokens have been contrived to represent a conscious computation (either in terms of a brain or in terms of a substitute computer). Then it sets out to shows how all putatively computational relations between such tokens could in principle be disrupted without change in the net physical action or environmental relations of the system that embodies them. Step 8 differs from Step 7 in that it seeks in the first instance to undermine the very notion that physical activity can robustly embody *any* second-order relations above and beyond those of net physical action. Accepting such a stringent conclusion would then seem to rule out CTM prima facie. The only possibility of salvaging it would lie in an explanatory strategy in terms of which computational relations take logical precedence over physical ones. Given that computational relations are effectively arithmetical, this in turn leads to the conclusion that CTM-UD*-COR (or more generally, that each implies the others). Notwithstanding this it would seem that Step 8 is not wholly persuasive to everybody, so is there yet another tack? The line of argument that I've been pursuing with Brent has led me to consider the following analogy, which I'm sure you'll recognise. Consider something like an LCD screen as constituting the universe of all possible movie-dramas. In terms of this analogy, what are the referents of any physical observations on the part of the dramatis personae featured in such presentations? IOW what are we to suppose Joe Friday to be referring to when he asks for Just the facts, ma'am? Well, the one thing we can be sure of is that NO such reference can allude to the underlying physics (i.e. the pixels and their relations) of the LCD display. If this analogy holds, at least in general outline, what justification, under CTM, could remain for any assumption that our own observations and references might accidentally allude to some LCD-physics postulated, mutatis mutandis, as underlying the COR? Would it not seem extraordinary that any such underlying physics could contrive to
Re: It Knows That It Knows
On 23 July 2014 18:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You miss, and perhaps David's too (?), the fact that above a threshold of relative complexity, the lower level is not relevant for the description of the higher level. It would be like asking why Obama has been elected?, and getting back the answer: everything followed the SWE. Hmm...Well, I originally suggested that the knower *couldn't* simply be reduced to computation or numbers, unlike the case of physical reducibility. In my view, the presence of a 1p knower is what retrospectively justifies realism about higher-level 3p structures with which the knower is to be associated. To see what I mean, let's assume that there is some putative ontology that can't in principle be used to justify the presence of such a knower. Any higher-level scenario conceived in terms of such an ontology is then vulnerable to a particularly pernicious species of zombie reductionism. It isn't merely that the radical absence of first person-hood leaves in its wake nothing but zombies with 3p functional bodies but no consciousness. It's much more radical than that. The zombie body is now radically lacking in existence-for-itself. Consequently, the distinction between any such putative body and its ontological reduction is a differentiation without a difference. To put it another way, there is nobody present for whom it could represent a difference. I realise this may be difficult to accept, for example in the case of Deep Blue that you posed to me. However, imagine re-posing this case with respect to an ontology with which (let us assume) a knower could not *in principle* be associated. In that case there could be no effective distinction between Deep Blue and its physical reduction, since we have ruled out, by assumption, the possibility of persons to whom this could represent a difference. What might prevent us from seeing this is that we can't help imagining the proposed scenario from a God's-eye perspective. God then takes the role of the knower and sees that Deep Blue is still there. Thus we have unwittingly justified our ascription of Deep Blue to some aspect of the generalised ontology by divine retrospection. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: It Knows That It Knows
Have you read Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Great book! Even if they are impossible to verify in detail, Jaynes's ideas are a terrific stimulus to thinking about both the function and the origin of consciousness (in the 3p sense). By the way, I once used TOOCITBOTBM in a game of charades. They got it! David On 20 Jul 2014 13:46, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 7/19/2014 11:37 PM, Kim Jones wrote: On 20 Jul 2014, at 3:51 pm, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: It could be that language constructs the self (or perhaps more precisely that using language allowed us to create the concept of a self as one amongst many linguistic concepts). I don't grok this thing of the self 'evolving' like brains and thumbs. We surely didn't create the concept of the self. The self did not evolve. It switched ON. It awoke. There was a moment. It was a moment in history. Kind of like the ape and the bone in Kubrick's '2001'. You seem to know a lot about it. Have you read Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Brent It may be that some substance consumed altered consciousness. From that moment forward, there was a signal difference. The possibility of suffering being a very large one. I don't think, along with Russell Standish, that ants are conscious, for example - but individuals may share in a group 'self'. Selfhood is independent of minds or of contents of minds or the precision or mental acuity (perception) of minds. It appears to be the kind of knowledge of something that cannot be demonstrated in any 3p way. K -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Chalmers and Consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=uhRhtFFhNzQ This is a TED video of David Chalmers on the Hard Problem. His basic ideas will be pretty well known to most of us on this list although interestingly, he now seems less equivocal about panpsychism than in The Conscious Mind. He talks about the need for crazy ideas to tackle the Hard Problem. In this regard, he mentions Daniel Dennett's functionalism-is-everything and his his own formulation of information + panpsychism as examples of such crazy theories. However, IMHO these ideas simply aren't crazy enough to confront the Hardest part of the problem. Both seem blind to the crucial need to *reconcile* the 1p and 3p accounts, albeit they ignore it in opposite ways. Dennett's position is essentially to eliminate the 1p part, whereas panpsychism (with or without information) just seems incoherent on the reconciliation. Chalmers seems to consider the outstanding problem in the latter case to be structural mismatch (i.e. physical things don't appear to be structured like mental things). He proposes that this might be solved by invoking informational structure as encoded in physical systems. However, ISTM that the really Hard problem (at least a priori) is not structural, but referential. IOW, how can phenomena that are (putatively) the mutual *referents* of the mind and the brain be shown, in some rigorous sense, to be equivalent, always assuming that one or the other isn't tacitly eliminated from the explanation? Indeed, if one accepts physics as a self-sufficient level of explanation, what purely 3p justification, or need, is there for claiming that a physical system refers at all, as distinct from what is already explained in terms of physical interaction? This is well captured by the Paradox of Phenomenal Judgement (POPJ). The POPJ asks: With reference to what theory (specifically and in detail) is it possible to reconcile the claim that utterances about mental phenomena are exhaustively reducible to purely physical processes, with the parallel claim that such utterances refer to 1p phenomena that are not so reducible? Comp, of course, purports to have the theoretical resources to justify such a reconciliation. Any other contenders? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 14 July 2014 02:36, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: But from the above I'm led to wonder whether you've actually read the MGA, so I repeat them here for convenient reference: Hi Brent - did you see my response to this? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Autism, Aspbergers, and the Hard Problem
On 16 July 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: but I would say it is very likely that having mindreading-empathy deficits on the autistic spectrum would tend to result in a strong bias against idealism, panpsychism, free will, or the hard problem of consciousness. I must say I've often wondered about this very thing in the course of some online discussions. However I try not to fall prey too readily to any assumption of this sort, to at least temper any tendency on my part to debate the person rather than the argument. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
any of its sub-classes. Consequently, it must be the case that, although one can construct an argument for the emergence of physical relations in the form of an observer-dependent sub-class of computation, there simply can be no parallel argument available in the opposite direction. Of course there can. All you have to do is be equally assertive. Mathematics is fundamentally physical. OK, so in that case we must regard it as fully reducible to physical action simpliciter. And clearly physics as a whole is more extensive than any sub-class; not every physical process is conscious or is a computation. Well I guess I would have to argue that, under strictly physicalist assumptions, NO physical process is, in any non-question begging sense, conscious or a computation. If it is sufficient in principle that all physical action fall within the scope of reductive explanation then what is left over, or unaccounted for? Supernumerary hypotheses such as computation and thought consequently demand justification beyond the reach of the a priori assumptions of bare reductionism. Nonetheless I feel I must concede, albeit a tad unwillingly, that Bruno is probably correct in pointing out that it is only in considering the 1p part that this conclusion becomes absolutely unavoidable. Although one can easily construct an argument for the emergence of mathematical thoughts and computation based on evolution, Again I would stipulate that one can easily construct such an argument only so long as one ignores the a priori assumption that mathematical thoughts, computation and evolution are exhaustively reducible to physical action simpliciter. It follows in principle that there is no requirement for the further hypotheses of mathematical thoughts and computation, or for that matter evolution, in explaining the relevant transitions between physical states that putatively constitute them. One can hardly then avoid the conclusion that these hypotheses are motivated by a posteriori psychological or epistemological considerations as distinct from a priori physical ones. there can be no parallel argument in the opposite direction. Well, that of course is moot indeed. Actually, having forced myself once again through these mental contortions I feel I now have a somewhat firmer grasp of Bruno's reversal argument purely *on the assumption of CTM*. Even if we accept, for the sake of the argument, a definition of computation as physical, as soon as we hypothesise the existence of a physically infinite UD (i.e. Step 7) we cannot avoid the necessity of justifying the entire spectrum of physical phenomena from the resources of computational logic alone. And in that case we find that what we have originally conceived as a fundamental physics underlying computation has already been relegated to the status of a kind of sub-noumenon that can have no further role in explanation. Consequently I can appreciate, as more than purely Gallic sentiment, Bruno's allegation of explanatory treachery in the face of reluctance to accept the consequences of that reversal unless the physical existence of an infinitely-running UD can be proved beyond a peradventure. David On 7/13/2014 5:38 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 13 July 2014 22:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Well, if you still hold to your earlier opinion, you should agree that, in terms of an explanatory hierarchy based on an ontology of molecular kinetics, temperature must be considered to have been eliminated *ontologically* (i.e. to have been revealed as *nothing more than* the underlying kinetics). I can, and see what you mean, but I prefer not, because I am realist on the relations and higher 3p description too. Well, I'm still not really convinced that the fundamental assumptions of physical reduction justify your realism on the higher-level descriptions. But actually I'm not even sure that one need insist on this to stop the notion of physical computation dead in its tracks. And of course if one can do this then it must also, a fortiori, put a stop to any idea of linking any such notion with consciousness. This reductio was really the point of my argument and if I had to sum it up for grandma I would say that the key idea is just that, ex hypothesi physicalism, action of any sort and at whatever level of description must always be reducible to *physical action simpliciter*. So accepting physics as a TOE is equivalent to accepting both that no possible action can be omitted from its explanatory scope and that no further class of action need be appealed to in accounting for any physical state of affairs. I think from that one can already get the idea that, under such assumptions, supplementary notions such as computation are simply *redundant* in explaining physical action. Indeed the MGA itself exploits this basic insight by showing how relations originally accepted as computational can be entirely evacuated from a physical system whilst
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 14 July 2014 18:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Such explanations are bottom up all the way down. Hence there is simply no place in that explanatory hierarchy for any supplementary notion of computation distinguishable from what is already fully embodied in physical action. Hmm... You do the non relevant mistake again (or I misinterpret you badly). I am afraid that what you say here for physics can be applied to arithmetic too. No doubt I may be mistaken (I'm trying to be clear enough to be wrong). Computation per se may indeed be reducible to just the basic number relations, in something like the sense that matter, under physicalism (phys), is reducible to just the basic physical relations. But ISTM, that comp is redeemed from (or as you say vaccinated against) reduction (and by the same token zombie-hood) by the irreducible emergence of the internal views. It is much more difficult to see how phys can be redeemed in any comparable way without resorting at least tacitly to comp (at which point the difficulties begin anew). This in my opinion already does not eliminate the reality of the 3p high level description, but of course constitutes a threat to eliminate the role of consciousness. But do you think that the 3p high-level description would be equally real if (somehow) it were not ultimately redeemable by the internal views (e.g. if, counter-factually, my own high-level 3p description merely resulted in zombie-hood)? Here physicalism fails, almost because it is not interested in consciousness. Here QM (and especially Everett-QM) should open the mind of the physicists that such a reductionism mind = brain state is failing. Yes, this is the point I have been making for some time now. But the machine itself has a natural knower associated to it. Forgive me for not commenting more extensively on your remarks (which I will study) but this seems to me to be the absolutely capital point. ISTM above all else that a natural knower is the crux of the redemption of the first person from exhaustive physical reduction and effective elimination. It's precisely the radical absence of such a natural knower in the reductive hierarchy of phys - indeed the irrelevance of such a knower to its defining mode of explanation - that I've continually had in mind. Of course, it may still seem open to phys to make a grab for the knower associated to the machine, unless the conjunction of comp and phys can be shown to be incompatible, or at least lead to the explanatory irrelevance of the latter. I can understand your attitude here, and I draw the same conclusion, but I still think it a pity to miss any potential opportunity to de-construct the notion of physical computation in its own terms. All right, just be careful to not de-construct 3p computer science and 3p-number theory in the same élan :) Hmm.. that would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed. However, as I've said, ISTM that comp, unlike phys, has the internal resources to resist any analogous de-construction. David On 14 Jul 2014, at 02:38, David Nyman wrote: On 13 July 2014 22:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Well, if you still hold to your earlier opinion, you should agree that, in terms of an explanatory hierarchy based on an ontology of molecular kinetics, temperature must be considered to have been eliminated *ontologically* (i.e. to have been revealed as *nothing more than* the underlying kinetics). I can, and see what you mean, but I prefer not, because I am realist on the relations and higher 3p description too. Well, I'm still not really convinced that the fundamental assumptions of physical reduction justify your realism on the higher-level descriptions. I see, and perhaps I should not have made that remark here, as it is distracting from the issue that you discuss with Brent. I really don't think it is important (here). But actually I'm not even sure that one need insist on this to stop the notion of physical computation dead in its tracks. But only through the MGA, because at step seven, we might still, from a logical point of view, make a move toward the assumption that the real physical is not robust enough to run a significant part of the UD*. Of course that move is ad hoc, and then MGA attempts to show how much that move is ad hoc. But the existence or not of high level 3p objects is not really relevant to kill the notion of physical computation, or of primitively physical entities. And of course if one can do this then it must also, a fortiori, put a stop to any idea of linking any such notion with consciousness. This reductio was really the point of my argument and if I had to sum it up for grandma I would say that the key idea is just that, ex hypothesi physicalism, action of any sort and at whatever level of description must always be reducible to *physical action simpliciter*. So accepting physics as a TOE is equivalent to accepting both
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
minimal first-order combinatorial ontology (such as RA). FAPP, in terms of the comp explanatory strategy, this comes to be represented by the infinite trace of the UD. It might, I guess, be arguable that computation is a phenomenon of arithmetic, but certainly not in any straightforwardly hierarchical sense analogous to, say, temperature/molecular kinetics. Whatever the nuances, computation - and in particular its self-referential sub-class - is the singular phenomenon explicitly relied on in the noumenal explanatory basement. From this point forward the explanatory strategy necessarily shifts from the noumenal view from nowhere to the epistemological view from everywhere; or from 3p to 1p (plural). That is to say, all phenomena must from here on be justified by reference to *explicitly knowable* modalities of logic and truth, filtered from the computational everything, by the competing points of view of its noumenal machinery. Consequently physics - and in particular its proprietary reductive hierarchy of explanation - is no longer posited at the unknowable, 3p or noumenal level, but rather entirely and exclusively at the knowable, phenomenal or 1p-plural level, where it must appear both in its formal (reducible) and informal (irreducible) guises. This crucial yin-yang nuance is what points to a possible resolution of the apparently inner with the apparently outer, aka the paradox of phenomenal judgement, or more simply the mind-body problem. David On 11 Jul 2014, at 09:41, David Nyman wrote: On 11 July 2014 00:54, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: As I understand the MGA it assumes physicalism and then purports to show that computation still exists with minimal or zero physical activity - it evaucates the physics and keeps the computation. For heaven's sake, Brent! This is what you originally said to Liz. What you're referring to is Maudlin's argument. It's the *opposite* of my understanding of the MGA, which seeks to show how physical action can be preserved unchanged even in cases where the original computational relations have been completely disrupted. I spent several paragraphs describing this with additional examples. You then commented this with I agree with all you wrote, which led to some further discussion based (as I thought) on this understanding. Your comment above now leaves me hopelessly confused. I would be grateful if you would review our recent discussion and clarify what you do or do not agree with in my analysis. I think that it will help to define perhaps more precisely what is a computation. I will reread the thread (many posts) when I have more time, and make only one comment. We have a computation when a universal machine compute something. We have an intensional Post-Church thesis 'which follows from the usual Post-Church-Turing thesis), which makes possible to translate universal machine compute something in term of numbers addition and multiplication + one existential quantifier. Now, when are two computations the same? If we fix a base phi_i, we might define a computations by sequences of step of the universal base computing some phi_k, that is the nth steps phi_k(j)^n of the computation by the base of the program k on the input j, with n = 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. But now that very computation will recure infinitely often, and not always in (algorithmically) recognizable way. You can conceive it might not be obvious that the evolution of a game of life pattern (GOL is Turing-universal) is simulating a Fortran interpreter simulating a Lisp program computing the ph(j)^n above. That is exactly why our computations, with and without (and in between) their environment (with and without oracles) recurre infinitely often in the sigma_1 truth (UD*). So two computations can be the same at some level of description, and yet occurs in quite different places in the UD*. Comp says that there is a level of description of myself such that those computation *at the correct level carries my consciousness. But Brent, and Peter Jones, adds that the computation have to be done by a real thing. This is a bit like either choosing some particular universal number pr, and called it physical reality, and add the axioms that only the phi_pr computations counts: the phi_pr (j)^n. Well, this would just select (without argument) a special sub-universal dovetailing among (any) universal dovetailing. The only force here is that somehow the quantum Everet wave, seen as such a phi_pr do solve the measure problem (accepting Gleason theorem does its job). But just choosing that phi_pr does not solve the mind-body problem, only the body problem in a superficial way (losing the non justifiable parts notably). Or they make that physical reality non computable (as comp needs, but they conjecture that it differs from the non (entirely) computable physics that we can extract from arithmetic (with comp). But then it is just a statement like your
Re: Atheist
On 12 July 2014 20:34, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Of course they wouldn't because 17 is a prime number is a tautology. It's true simply in virtue of it's meaning like x is x. But is it a fact about the world or just a fact about language? I must confess to being somewhat flabbergasted that we're still debating the semantics and metaphysical provenance of numbers as if it were in any way relevant to the fundamental topics under discussion. Of course we can use the the vocabulary of numbers in everyday terms as a proxy for whatever practical grasp of mathematics has been achieved by humans as a product of their evolutionary engagement with their bodies and the wider environment. Many years ago I read a fascinating little book called The Psychology of Learning Mathematics, on that very topic. But I can't see in what way this is relevant to their role in the explanatory ontology of comp. What we call physical theory boils down, I guess, to the view that a particular, restricted class of *special* mathematical relations can ultimately be shown sufficient to derive all subsequent phenomena that require explanation. Comp, on the other hand, postulates that this apparently special class can be shown, more fundamentally, to be a spectrum of epistemological phenomena ultimately derivable from the implications of number relations alone. Of course, in either case, everything depends on the can be shown part and the extent to which this is achievable is the extent, in the end, to which anyone should take the putative ontologies seriously. Perhaps it's a little ironical that, these days, both cosmological and micro-physical theorising (at least in certain circles) seem to be converging. like comp, on a species of observer-selection as a means of justifying their putatively special class (or now classes) of ultimate physical relations. Only comp, AFAICT, has focused specifically on the *mechanics of observation* as central in such selection, or on number relations simpliciter as its ultimately sufficient combinatorial ontology. But my point remains, that in any other respects than those stated above, arguments over the metaphysical provenance of numbers, just like those over that of material stuff, are beside the point. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 13 July 2014 22:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Well, if you still hold to your earlier opinion, you should agree that, in terms of an explanatory hierarchy based on an ontology of molecular kinetics, temperature must be considered to have been eliminated *ontologically* (i.e. to have been revealed as *nothing more than* the underlying kinetics). I can, and see what you mean, but I prefer not, because I am realist on the relations and higher 3p description too. Well, I'm still not really convinced that the fundamental assumptions of physical reduction justify your realism on the higher-level descriptions. But actually I'm not even sure that one need insist on this to stop the notion of physical computation dead in its tracks. And of course if one can do this then it must also, a fortiori, put a stop to any idea of linking any such notion with consciousness. This reductio was really the point of my argument and if I had to sum it up for grandma I would say that the key idea is just that, ex hypothesi physicalism, action of any sort and at whatever level of description must always be reducible to *physical action simpliciter*. So accepting physics as a TOE is equivalent to accepting both that no possible action can be omitted from its explanatory scope and that no further class of action need be appealed to in accounting for any physical state of affairs. I think from that one can already get the idea that, under such assumptions, supplementary notions such as computation are simply *redundant* in explaining physical action. Indeed the MGA itself exploits this basic insight by showing how relations originally accepted as computational can be entirely evacuated from a physical system whilst preserving the same net physical action (including, pace Brent, the same relations with a physical environment). Even in the case that we accept a notion of physical computation as an a posteriori attribution, that attribution cannot retrospectively be accepted as adding anything to the exhaustive reductive hierarchy of the physical object or system in question. To put it baldly, under physicalism, a PC or a brain is, at whatever level of description, a physical object first last and always. Any action associated with that object must, under the same assumptions, be exhaustively reducible to the explanatory basement of physical entities and relations. Such explanations are bottom up all the way down. Hence there is simply no place in that explanatory hierarchy for any supplementary notion of computation distinguishable from what is already fully embodied in physical action. In the end, the point is that, as you argue yourself, computation is a fundamentally mathematical (indeed an arithmetical) notion, not a physical one. And clearly computation as a whole is more extensive than any of its sub-classes. Consequently, it must be the case that, although one can construct an argument for the emergence of physical relations in the form of an observer-dependent sub-class of computation, there simply can be no parallel argument available in the opposite direction. Then I think it helps to single what is precisely difficult in consciousness which will be the modal difference, instead of a 3p higher description. I can understand your attitude here, and I draw the same conclusion, but I still think it a pity to miss any potential opportunity to de-construct the notion of physical computation in its own terms. David On 13 Jul 2014, at 14:19, David Nyman wrote: On 11 July 2014 19:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I agree with Brent, and I think everybody agree, when he says that reducing does not eliminate. You are a little too quick here with your everybody, since obviously my whole point has been that I *don't* agree! I would remind you that, in an earlier iteration of this argument with Peter Jones, you said that 3p reductive explanation eliminates *ontologically*, but not *epistemologically*. This, essentially, is the distinction I've been insisting on. The problem is that a pure 3p reduction does not eliminate a 3p notion, either, except for consciousness, due to the fact that it is a pure 1p notion. It is not because I can explain prime number in terms of addition and multiplication, than prime number would not exist, that is why there is a whole 3p higher order 3p science. But that 3p science is, (and it is there that we agree, and it is the key relevant point in the thread with Brent), is that no 3p reduction at all can be done for consciousness. The analogy brain/chess playing with machine/self-playing works without eliminating the chess player, but does eliminate the chess player consciousness if we limit ourself on that analogy. But we can't use that to compare consciousness/neurons to temperature/molecules-kinetic. In that later case we reduce a 3p high level to a 3p lower level. And indeed, this does not eliminate temperature. Well
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 11 July 2014 00:54, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: As I understand the MGA it assumes physicalism and then purports to show that computation still exists with minimal or zero physical activity - it evaucates the physics and keeps the computation. For heaven's sake, Brent! This is what you originally said to Liz. What you're referring to is Maudlin's argument. It's the *opposite* of my understanding of the MGA, which seeks to show how physical action can be preserved unchanged even in cases where the original computational relations have been completely disrupted. I spent several paragraphs describing this with additional examples. You then commented this with I agree with all you wrote, which led to some further discussion based (as I thought) on this understanding. Your comment above now leaves me hopelessly confused. I would be grateful if you would review our recent discussion and clarify what you do or do not agree with in my analysis. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 10 July 2014 04:35, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I'm not sure about physics. I think the point of the MGA is that matter isn't primary? (As I've already mentioned, I'm not 100% au fait with the MGA.) It tries to show that by leading you to accept a scenario in which there is no physical action but which you believe is computing consciousness (of a dream). That's Maudlin's argument, in which he uses a particular toy model to show that the degree of physical action needed to implement any given computation can be *trivialised* (though not in fact entirely eliminated). However the MGA, in my understanding, exploits a different tack to reach a different conclusion. It assumes a device, the systematic relation of whose physical components is accepted as implementing a computation, which in turn is assumed to correspond to some conscious state. The argument is then that, even in the case that any or all of the original computational relations (i.e. logic gates) is disrupted, an equivalent sequence of physical states can still be made to go through. This can be by fortuitous accident (cosmic rays or suchlike) or by the deliberate superimposition of a recording of a prior iteration (for this reason the argument exploits an optical computer). So the conclusion is that the same sequence of physical states and the same end product can persist even in the case that every *systematic relation* between those states, originally accepted as 'implementing a computation', has been disrupted. Hence, here it is the notion of *computation* itself, not physical action, that has been trivialised. Essentially, the nub of the argument is: You show me a physical device that you claim produces a given effect *in virtue of its systematically implementing a computation*, and I'll show you a case in which every trace of said systematic relations can be evacuated and yet the same sequence of physical states occurs. The real point of the MGA is to make it obvious that, ex hypothesi physicalism, derived notions such as computation lack any *effective* role in the production of a given physical outcome. An example closer to home would be that the PC on which I am currently typing might have one or innumerable faults in its logic gates but those faults are in fact being fortuitously compensated by a series of accidents. In such a case I would be none the wiser because the same physical results would be produced and as far as I am concerned those results *just are* the computation. Or, even closer to home, I may unknowingly suffer disruption to certain synaptic junctions in my brain, but if these deficiencies happen fortuitously to be compensated in like manner, my consciousness would be similarly undisrupted. This latter example is actually rather plausible in that open brain experiments have shown that external stimulus of brain cells can elicit memory recall, strongly implying that fortuitous events do indeed elicit the same, or similar, conscious states as those produced by normal brain function. In short, under physicalism, a 'computation' *just is* a particular sequence of physical states. Indeed what else could it be? The states, so to speak, come first and hence the notion that those states 'implement a computation' is always an a posteriori attribution that neither need, nor can, bring anything further to the party. In this light the particularity of physical structures such as my PC, for example, is that they happen to be arrangements in which certain preferred physical outcomes normally have a greater probability of occurring relatively reliably rather than fortuitously. In terms of such outcomes the notion of physical computation can only be a convenient fiction which, in the final analysis can always be shown to be *effectively* redundant. And this is indeed the conclusion of my own more general reductio of reductionism. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 7 July 2014 20:13, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: So no, there's no heresy involved in such an idea unless, IMHO, it is a blind for eliminativism. Why? Is eliminativism then the heresy? I'm not even sure what 'eliminativism' means in this context. You seem to argue that reductive hierarchy in physics eliminates the explananda, but in Bruno's theory the reductive hierarchy does not? I don't think anything is necessarily eliminated by explaining it. But the unfortunate thing is that it is indeed eliminated when it is explained reductively. And so you might well say that elimination is the reductionist heresy. I'd be grateful, by the way, if you could be more explicit about your reasons for disagreement than merely stating that you don't think I'm right. When I'm wrong (which is doubtless all too frequently) it would be helpful to know in what particulars. Anyway, what I originally had in mind was limited to the tacit elimination of the first-person that occurs in the exhaustive reduction of 'consciousness' to physical action. But actually, in the course of this discussion, It's borne in on me, with greater force than before, that it isn't only the first-person that is eliminated in the course of reductive explanation, but the entire third-person hierarchy above the basement level. No explanandum of the hierarchy can be other than a proxy for its basement-level reduction, in essentially the same sense that society is a proxy for persons and their relations. So there must be something wrong in the state of reductionism, at least in this bare form. And if Bruno's theory were indeed similarly susceptible to bare reduction, the same criticism would apply. Reductive explanation is like some flesh-eating microbe - it eats away the structure as it reduces it, until nothing but the bare explanatory bones remain. That indeed is its power. But, in this bare form it can't stand alone as a theory of everything, because manifestly everything does not appear in the form of a bare reduction. So we need an explanatory vaccine against the microbe of reduction. I've already said why I believe that Bruno's theory does indeed provide such a vaccine, essentially by (partly) formalising the relation between the One and the Many. The One, which I guess is represented here by Arithmetical Truth, has many modes. These modes can be distinguished (in part) by reference to detailed character of what appears in the many points-of-view that are consequential on the self-referential capabilities of universal computation. The fact that the latter requires us to assume arithmetic, or something with equivalent combinatorial power, as a minimal ontology, does not mean that the explanatory strategy then proceeds by reference to any simple hierarchy of numbers. Of course it is crucial to the success of this explanatory strategy that a 'physics' emerge as statistically dominant in these views (indeed, precisely that subset of the computational 'everything' that is capable of instantiating the manifest phenomena) and *that physics* will indeed appear as hierarchically reducible. But such a physics of appearance will in addition be inextricably bound to modes of self-referential truth that resist such reduction (the 'internal views'). None of this means that comp per se is true of course, but I suspect this whole comp contra reduction thing is worthy of a thread by itself. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 10 July 2014 19:39, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In short, under physicalism, a 'computation' *just is* a particular sequence of physical states. Indeed what else could it be? The states, so to speak, come first and hence the notion that those states 'implement a computation' is always an a posteriori attribution that neither need, nor can, bring anything further to the party. I agree with all you wrote. But as Bruno says it's a reductio. Given that it's absurd, the question is what makes it absurd. I think it's the assumption that the sequence of physical states constitutes a computation *independent* of any reference to a world. When you talk about your PC and accidental compensation for a physical fault, the concept of 'compensation' already assumes a correct operation - but what makes an operation correct?...it's relation to you and the rest of the world. A computation, a sequence of states simpliciter, could be a computation of anything or of nothing. So the intuition that the computation still exists without the physical instantiation is contradicted by the intuition that a computation must be about something. With conflicting absurdities I'm left unconvinced. But the MGA has never been claimed to show that computation exists without physical instantiation. The consequence it presses on us is rather that it is absurd to accept a series of physical accidents or a recording as continuing to implement a computation. Yet that would be the conclusion forced on us by the conjunction of physicalism and computationalism. Under physicalism, if it goes on walking and quacking like a computation, then it *continues to be* a computation; the physical states and outcomes are what *constitute* a computation. Furthermore, we need not suppose any such system as the one in question to be isolated from the rest of the world and hence devoid of reference. The 'relation with the rest of the world', under physicalism, is fully satisfied by the *physical* relation of the system in question with the rest of the *physical* world. As long as the relevant sequence of physical states is unchanged there can be no reason to complain that this requirement can't be met. So after all this we are faced with not one, but two, options. 1) CTM is false and physicalism is true but incompatible with computationalism; hence, if the system in question continues, after the postulated disruptions, to support some conscious state it can't be in virtue of its ever having implemented a computation. This leads to its own nest of puzzles. 2) CTM is salvageable but not in the case that physical activity is the true 'basement level'. We must hope to elucidate some more deeply concealed basement where, in some formalisable sense, number relations are sufficient and computation itself is the key organisational principle. This entails what Bruno calls the reversal of physics and machine psychology. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 10 July 2014 21:21, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: But I think it becomes absurd only because the scenario ignores the fact that it is the physical instantiation that provides a reference to the world which then gives the computation meaning. It is the implicit isolation into physical system which is going through a computation that gives the impression that it is just the sequence of states that instantiates the computation. It might save you some typing if you read the whole post before you comment on a part of it. I dealt with this point a couple of sentences later. Under physicalism, if it goes on walking and quacking like a computation, then it *continues to be* a computation; the physical states and outcomes are what *constitute* a computation. OK, if by physicalism you include that the computation goes on in the physical context of a world. Yes, just so; now read on. Furthermore, we need not suppose any such system as the one in question to be isolated from the rest of the world and hence devoid of reference. The 'relation with the rest of the world', under physicalism, is fully satisfied by the *physical* relation of the system in question with the rest of the *physical* world. Right. Yeah, right indeed. The system as described continues to relate physically, in the relevant ways, with the rest of the physical world. If I may quote my next sentence As long as the relevant sequence of physical states is unchanged there can be no reason to complain that this requirement can't be met. So what precisely is your remaining objection? So after all this we are faced with not one, but two, options. 1) CTM is false and physicalism is true but incompatible with computationalism; What do you mean by computationalism? Just saying yes to the doctor? No, I mean the assumption that a physical system can be conscious simply in virtue of its implementing a computation. Since in the gedanken experiment we have succeeded in evacuating any trace of computation from the system, whilst preserving its net physical action, if it remains conscious, it can't be in virtue of its ever having implemented a computation. If on the contrary we conclude that it loses consciousness, we then have the mystery of how this can be the case given that the sequence of physical states remains the same. Either way the conjunction is shown to be incompatible and it would be unsafe on this understanding to say yes to the computationalist doctor. 2) CTM is salvageable but not in the case that physical activity is the true 'basement level'. Why not? Why isn't the option that CTM is true but the C must be a sequence of states instantiated in the context of a physical world - where the physics need not be fundamental (but could be). ? If you still want to claim this either you haven't yet quite grasped all the implications of the MGA, or the physical world to which you now refer can't be the one that has featured in the argument to this point. We've already shown that we can evacuate all traces of computation from *that* world whilst preserving its sequences of physical states complete with all relevant relations to an external physical environment. Hence to hang on to the C we must look to computational relations to be primary, rather than secondary, in our explanatory strategy. This in turn implies that any physical world below computation would have to be consigned to some explanatory sub-basement; IOW a world of ur-physics that existed merely in order to implement computational relations. It is the latter that must do all the work in our explanatory basement. Hence, to appropriate an image of Bruno's, the putative ur-physical sub-basement would merely be there to stable a sort of supernumerary invisible horse whose sole purpose is to pull the numbers around. Sure, we could posit its existence, but it couldn't otherwise feature in our explanations. This entails what Bruno calls the reversal of physics and machine psychology. That's possible, but I don't see it as the only possibility. Granted, I guess. But would you care to suggest some viable alternatives? David On 7/10/2014 12:49 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 10 July 2014 19:39, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: In short, under physicalism, a 'computation' *just is* a particular sequence of physical states. Indeed what else could it be? The states, so to speak, come first and hence the notion that those states 'implement a computation' is always an a posteriori attribution that neither need, nor can, bring anything further to the party. I agree with all you wrote. But as Bruno says it's a reductio. Given that it's absurd, the question is what makes it absurd. I think it's the assumption that the sequence of physical states constitutes a computation *independent* of any reference to a world. When you talk about your PC and accidental compensation for a physical fault, the concept of 'compensation' already
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 6 July 2014 04:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Yes, but it's a theory of epistemology after the physical fact. It assumes without further justification what it wishes to prove, No, it defines a certain kind of belief, just as Bruno identifies belief with provable in some axiomatic system (which you must admit is not a standard meaning of belief) one can identify belief with certain actions in context. I don't know what you mean by after the physical fact. If it's a physical theory of belief then of course it's explained in terms of physical facts. You seem to reject this as though it's obviously wrong. Not wrong, just not the whole story. My argument has been that any mechanism of belief that is hierarchically reducible to a finite set of (assumptive) primitives cannot thereafter rely on the (supposedly) independent effectiveness of derivative notions such as computation as the basis of its mechanism of knowledge. This is essentially the same conclusion as MGA or Maudlin and amounts to an insistence on what is most powerful in reductive explanation (i.e. the redundancy of intermediate levels of effectiveness) . Hence the specific line of attack is that, under reductionism, the effectiveness of derivative notions such as physical computation cannot be meaningfully distinguished from that of their ontological primitives. Since this isn't always obvious, I've offered suggestions, closer to hand than the hierarchical relation between micro and macro physical phenomena, to exemplify the similarly tacit reification of supernumerary ontological assumptions (e.g. mountains, football teams, societies, etc.). It may be inadequate or Bruno's theory may be better, but you seem to think it's somehow heretical to have a physical idea of what constitutes belief. Well, It is at least my intention to make clear what I actually think so that you don't have to rely on what I may seem to think. But if my argument goes through, what is left to a reductionist strategy would look like some kind of mind-brain, or more properly mind-reductive-primitive, identity theory. But then the burden would be on finding a convincing justification of identical, in this non-standard sense, that doesn't amount to effective elimination of the first term. We can clearly understand in what way Mark Twain and Sam Clemens were identical, but it is somewhat less easy to fathom in any equivalent sense how such heterogeneous concepts as mind and brain could share that relation. So no, there's no heresy involved in such an idea unless, IMHO, it is a blind for eliminativism. But the risk in any straightforward equation of the physical idea of what constitutes belief with some parallel physical account, however exhaustive, is that of consigning the 1p part to some not-available-for-explanation limbo. One might therefore say that action, belief and truth are hypothesised as being complementary or co-effective, rather than hierarchical-reductive, in relation. Truth in comp only refers to mathematical truth of the form Exf(x). It's a long way to connect that to I see a dog. True enough it's a long way, but it might yet be a first step on the right path. By contrast, I don't see how any equivalent truth-relation can be tacked on to reductive physicalism except as an act of courtesy. What can it mean to say that the physical evolution of some particularised system corresponds to a self-referential truth (i.e. a subjective reality transcendent over its physical states) other than as an ad hoc attribution in the face of an indisputable a posteriori fact? Of course, sans a viable theory of mind, this latter position is indeed the one we find ourselves in. But what we really seek is some explanatory framework within which such relations as believes, knows and acts can be conciliated on something more than a merely metaphorical or operational basis. Beyond that commonality, the spectrum of subjectivity (i.e. its possible objects) would extend asymptotically towards infinity, I guess, but always according to the specifics of the logic and statistics extractable from comp. At least, that is the hypothesis and the project. OK, I can buy that. OK, sold. How many would you like? ;-) David On 7/5/2014 5:08 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 5 July 2014 06:27, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Ok, maybe it's mostly a matter of semantics. I don't exclude things as not existing just because they are not part of the primitive ontology. But of course I haven't been saying these things don't exist. On the contrary, I've been labouring to differentiate, for the sake of this discussion, two distinct senses of existence. The first sense picks out the basic ontology of a theory and the second refers to whatever can (putatively) be derived from that ontology on the basis of further epistemological considerations. And I've been pointing out that nothing whose existence is picked out only in the the latter sense can
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
that the same kind of thing can be done in a physical theory. On the comp assumption, by contrast, belief in a truth and acting as if true, in conjunction with their truth content, are alike derived from the outset as consequences of a fundamentally epistemological theory. One might therefore say that action, belief and truth are hypothesised as being complementary or co-effective, rather than hierarchical-reductive, in relation. I think in the case of consciousness, explanation as opposed to engineering has to take foundational questions of knowledge and reference as seriously as those of physical phenomenology. And I also think comp at least provides a possible model of how progress could be made in this direction. But not a physical, neuroscience based model. You reject that, in spite of the fact that it has had considerable success. I don't reject it at all. I'm only going so far as saying that ultimately it may lack the explanatory moxie to take us as far as we could go under more comprehensive assumptions. Your stance, I think, is that wherever a future neuroscience is capable of taking us is as far as any reasonable person could expect explanation to reach. To put it more baldly, whatever can't be known in this way just isn't knowable. All I've really been trying to argue for in this thread is that this limit may in the end turn out to be an artefact of a particular explanatory strategy. As to success, I don't recall Einstein being taken to task for dissing the considerable success of Newton's theory. In the end any paradigm, however successful, may suffer the fate of being subsumed into a more comprehensive one if certain puzzles stubbornly resist it for long enough. And I'm suggesting that one early but perhaps worrying symptom that this fate may lie somewhere up the road for physical reductionism is a persistent tendency to trivialise, mystify, or eliminate epistemological puzzles that seem to resist capture within the framework of that theory. So what does an answer look like? Is Turing completeness enough - that's what Bruno says. But apparently it makes you and a jumping spider equally conscious. I don't think that's a very good answer. Where is it written that I and a jumping spider are equally conscious? That is, on the assumption that I'm not actually a jumping spider, which I guess is not a matter for complete certainty, in the cyberverse. I think that comp implies only that I and a jumping spider may share a particular species of self-referentiality that is representable in any Turing complete system (indeed, that this is the basis of the I shared by all such subjects). Beyond that commonality, the spectrum of subjectivity (i.e. its possible objects) would extend asymptotically towards infinity, I guess, but always according to the specifics of the logic and statistics extractable from comp. At least, that is the hypothesis and the project. David On 7/4/2014 6:14 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 4 July 2014 22:36, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Do you wish to say that mountains have *ontological* significance *in addition* to the rocks that comprise them? Yes. There could be rocks without there being mountains. If rocks and their relations are primitive in this analogy, what is the independent *ontological* relevance of a mountain *in addition* to the rocks that comprise it? What, given ideal knowledge of the disposition of rocks, would I fail to account for in terms of their further evolution? We accept of course that they exist *epistemologically* (i.e. as objects of knowledge from the point of view of a knower), but we can't adduce that fact, a posteriori, in support of their having any *ontological* purchase independent of their components. Can you define ontological purchase? I'm merely reiterating that they lack further ontological significance in addition to that of their ontological primitives. Please understand that this isn't an attempt on my part to impose my ideas on reality. I'm only speaking in terms of the requirements of a theory; and whatever a reductive theory takes to be its primitive ontology exhausts *by definition* what is ontologically relevant *in terms of that theory*. The alternative, I presume, is some form of strong ontological emergence - i.e. the idea that, at some higher level of organisation, completely novel features, not reducible to the basement-level ontology, must be taken into account. Ok, maybe it's mostly a matter of semantics. I don't exclude things as not existing just because they are not part of the primitive ontology. In physics the stuff that is most primitive in a model is also stuff who's existence is least certain, e.g. strings, super-symmetric particles, space-time quanta,... While the stuff you would say doesn't really exist is the most certain - including the instruments used to infer the primitive stuff and records of the data taken. What then is physical computation
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 3 July 2014 10:02, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Yes, primary belief, though necessarily incorrigible in the first instance, is nonetheless vulnerable in the second instance to correction or reinterpretation. Just as well, really. But is it? Only in the primary sense of immediate cognition. If primary belief (your belief in where the buck stops) were vulnerable to correction then why has Christianity for example, persevered so long without revision or updating of beliefs when say, knowledge of the universe progressed. I think you're using primary belief in a different sense here. What you're describing is what psychologists like to call cognitive dissonance. Rather disturbingly for our cherished assumptions of rationality, an ability to keep contradictory beliefs apart within a single mind seems actually to be indispensable to what is often thought of as mental health. First impressions seem to count for a lot in forming the patterns of recognition the brain uses. Well, I would say that the patterns of recognition the brain uses are part of the visual belief system and hence constitute embodied primary beliefs in the sense I intended. A powerful primary belief in matter seems to be a very difficult thing to have some people admit to. Yes, though I'm not sure how much this owes to primary patterns of recognition and how much to more abstracted habits of mind. In the first instance, a belief in the materiality and causal relevance of matter is clearly crucial to survival and hence would be expected to have a long and deep history in the evolution of brain function. Secondarily, it might be the case that such deeply embedded survival prejudices may be difficult to overcome even in the context of more abstract reasoning. That said, there is a very long history of belief not in one, but two, primary realities: i.e. body and soul. This seems to be the default human assumption, and you can even detect it in secular form in the apparent narrative plausibility of movie plots involving body swapping. I think the problem comes in moving from the default dualist assumption to some form of monism. Then it starts to look as if the only viable options are the elimination or trivialising of soul, on the one hand, or the relegation of body to a secondary manifestation of a generalised theory of cognition, on the other. Neither of these options is particularly easy to swallow. David On 3 Jul 2014, at 9:09 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: Yes, primary belief, though necessarily incorrigible in the first instance, is nonetheless vulnerable in the second instance to correction or reinterpretation. Just as well, really. But is it? If primary belief (your belief in where the buck stops) were vulnerable to correction then why has Christianity for example, persevered so long without revision or updating of beliefs when say, knowledge of the universe progressed. First impressions seem to count for a lot in forming the patterns of recognition the brain uses. A powerful primary belief in matter seems to be a very difficult thing to have some people admit to. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 3 July 2014 14:22, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: And perhaps most interestingly, its central motivation originates in, and simultaneously strikes at the heart of, the tacit assumption of its rivals that perception and cognition are (somehow) second-order relational phenomena attached to some putative virtual level of an exhaustively material reduction. The problem of the exhaustively material reduction is that it does use comp, more or less explicitly, without being aware that it does not work when put together with with materialism. Yes, and I was roused from my customary torpor specifically to have another stab at a thoroughgoing reductio of this position (or else, of course, learn where I am in error). But, frustratingly, it does seem to be extraordinarily hard to get across for the first time, because of the tacit question-begging almost unavoidably consequent on the difficulty of vacating the very perceptual position whose all too manifest entities are undergoing ontological deconstruction. Once seen, however, the error may then strike one as having been obvious. The commonest response, in my experience, after describing the mind-body problem to someone for the first time, is I don't see the problem. On further probing, the default assumptions usually turn out to be either straightforward mind-brain identity, or mind = simulation, brain = computer. If the former, I point, in the first place, to the completely non-standard and unjustified use of the identity relation that this entails. If the latter, simple reductive analogies like house-bricks, or society-people, can sometimes help to convey the idea that any exhaustively reductive material schema necessarily *eliminates* its ontological composites (difficult to see precisely because *epistemological* composition manifestly remains and the distinction is thereby elusive). Anyway, if the point is grasped it becomes possible to see the disturbing consequences that such a reduction has for the standard conjunction of material computation and consciousness. Does comp by itself solves the problem? I think it is technically promising, if we agree with the ancient epistemology. It provides directly the needed quantization to get a stable measure on the relative computational histories, and it separates well the quanta from the qualia, or more generally the 3p communicable, the 3p non communicable, the 1p, etc. Physics predicts very well eclipses, but still fail completely to predict the first person experience of the subject verifying the predicted eclipse. To do this, they need to use some brain-mind identity thesis, which is violated with comp, and arguably also with Everett QM. I don't think that most physicists (there are exceptions) have taken the problem of consciousness seriously (i.e. as a problem in physics) up to this point, hence my speculation that certain kinds of answer are ruled out (or rendered either absurd or trivial) by posing the defining questions of a field in one way rather than another. As you say, comp is a theory of consciousness, so its question is that of explaining material appearances from the point of view of a generalised (arithmetical) theory of knowledge. By contrast, physics is explicitly NOT a theory of consciousness and, should it consider the question at all, must expect material appearances to be explained in the same terms as any other physical phenomenon (e.g. Tegmark's recent idea that consciousness is a state of matter). For me at least, the ways in which the mind-body problem has been approached against the background of physical-primitivism have the feel of being not even wrong or, at least, of being attempts to answer a badly-posed question. Brent's alternative speculation that the problem itself will fade away in the face of superior engineering, whilst (unfortunately) all too sociologically plausible, consequently strikes me as a willingness to capitulate to outright mysterianism, or else tacit eliminativism. Such intractable mysteries or equally, the tacit elimination of troublesome problems, are perhaps defining hallmarks of an explanatory strategy operating outside its limits of applicability. Unfortunately this insight seems to strike some as a form of heresy against physics, rather than an observation about explanation in general. I agree comp rehabilitates old thinking, but sometimes the mechanist assumption (unaware of Church thesis and digitalness) was already there. Well, a form of digitalism (still without Church thesis) was arguably present in Pythagorus and reappear with the neoplatonists (unfortunately not all neoplatonist will be as serious on this as Plotinus). For this thread I want to insist on the little book by Gerson Ancient Epistemology. I'll take a look :-) David On 01 Jul 2014, at 14:00, David Nyman wrote: Whatever its independent merits or demerits, and its inherent complexity, ISTM that comp gets closer to a way of posing questions
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
by the chosen means can't be known at all. But I don't believe that the equivalence implied by your use of just as above is necessarily justified, as I've argued. I think that comp gives us some grounds for hope that further exploration of the relation between belief and truth, as in the example of visual belief and truth I suggested earlier, may ultimately be quite fruitful in closing such a gap, whilst at the same time elucidating why it may not be completely eliminable. Do you see no merit in the second type of theory? Do you disagree that one can usefully differentiate theories by the kinds of question they set out to answer? No, I agree. But usefully differentiating a theory is not the same as differentiating a useful theory. I can differentiate theory that asks, What does God command us to do. from a theory that asks, What ethics makes for a satisfying society. and only one of them is useful. Of course, the proof of the pudding, etc. But my point was just that theories can be so differentiated, and we agree on this at least. And my further point is that if comp ultimately proves useful, it may well be in elucidating questions that systematically elude, or are trivialised by, other models. God did it is the most comprehensive explanation. Deutsch never really defines what makes a good explanation - except that leads to theories that are better at prediction. God did it may be comprehensive but not terribly enlightening, I fear. I think that a good explanation is one that allows us to fruitfully elucidate a broader spectrum of questions. We should expect this to lead to better predictions, of course, but over a broader and deeper range than that accessible by less comprehensive explanations. David On 7/1/2014 4:42 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 1 July 2014 22:33, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: The point, again in principle at least, is that nothing *above* the level of the basic ontology need be taken into account in the evolution of states defined in terms of it; put simply, there is no top-down causality. Actually, causality, except in the no-spacelike influence, doesn't enter into fundamental physics. Models are generally time-symmetric. Well, I was trying to be short, hence to put it simply. Would you take issue with the preceding statement that The point, again in principle at least, is that nothing *above* the level of the basic ontology need be taken into account in the evolution of states defined in terms of it.? And if so, what essential difference would your specific disagreement make to the point in question? I agree with that. It is for this reason that I've been pointing out that whatever levels are posited above the basic ontology cannot possess, in terms of the theory, any independent ontological significance. And are you saying that is different for comp? That there's top-down causality in comp? What's top? I'm saying that comp uses its basic ontological assumptions to motivate an epistemology - i.e. a theory of knowledge and knowers. Well, it assumes one; although I'm not sure how the ontology of arithmetical realism motivated it. It assumes that provable+true=known. I don't think this is a good axiom in the sense of obviously true. It's subject to Gettier's paradox. But there's nothing wrong with assuming a model and seeing where it leads. Hence I'm suggesting that from this point on that the consequences of this epistemology become irreducible to the original ontology; ?? I don't think I can parse that. The consequences of an epistemology are things known. An ontology is things that exist. So you're saying, things known become irreducible to things that exist? Were they reducible before, i.e. before the ontological assumption motivated the epistemology? instead the theory must hinge thereafter on the principled relations that can be established between such knowers and the putative objects of their knowledge. OK. Rather, what we *can* say is that such macroscopic, or composite, phenomena as temperature or, for that matter, the neural correlates of consciousness, are *explanatorily* relevant. We might go so far as to describe these phenomena as epistemological integrations over the ontological fundamentals. But if we do that the problem should become painfully obvious: the theory in which we are working has no explicit epistemological component. I think you're confusing epistemological and subjective. I disagree. I'm using epistemological in the sense of what is consequential on an explicit theory of knowledge and knowers. AFAIK physics deploys no such explicit theory and relies on no such consequences; in fact it seeks to be independent of any particular such theory, which is tacitly regarded as being irrelevant to what is to be explained. That is my criterion for distinguishing the two types of theory I had in mind. OK. Although, physics does struggle with that it means
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 2 July 2014 22:04, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Since the primary truth of what I see is simply what I see (i.e. it is incorrigible) it can't be subject to Gettier's paradox. I can't be right about what I see for the wrong reasons because what I see is constitutively true. But is it incorrigble? An optical illusion can cause you to see A is bigger than B even though A is smaller than B. Of course you can say, Well, it's still incorrigbly true that A *appeared* bigger than B. but that's different. Well, it isn't different to my point, which is precisely that what I see (i.e. the 1p part) corresponds in the first instance to the truth content of my visual belief system (i.e. the 3p part). Note that there is nothing I can do about it. Hence in this case belief and truth are necessarily, constitutively, or analytically, equivalent. Only in the second instance are they vulnerable to correction. One might say that belief and truth in this first sense are incorrigibly bound together in a common vulnerability to secondary, or empirical, error. What you literally *saw* was that A was bigger than B, i.e. that is the immediate perception and it only later that you are persuaded that it was mere appearance. So the perception that your brain forms is really creating a model based on sensory input Yes, that's the first instance to which I refer above.. and it can be wrong Yes, primary belief, though necessarily incorrigible in the first instance, is nonetheless vulnerable in the second instance to correction or reinterpretation. Just as well, really. In other words there is no seeing at all without interpretation; There is no simply what I see. I think you have been conflating two different senses of interpretation that I specifically intended to distinguish. The first corresponds to the immediate perception associated with the visual belief system and the second with subsequent correction or reinterpretation. Only the first sense is incorrigible. But that's not the point of Gettier's paradox. Gettier's paradox is that you may believe something that is true by accident, e.g. with no causal connection to the facts that make it true. Under Theaetetus's definition this counts as knowledge, but not under a common sense understanding. I think you may now see that this doesn't contradict my point. If the visual belief system and its associated truth content are constitutively equivalent, there is no question of truth by accident in the first instance. Of course any second-order reinterpretation of such first-order beliefs may be empirically true by accident, or wholly untrue for that matter, but that is a different question. Specifically, if a theory lacks an explicit epistemological strategy then, in despite of any success in elucidating the structure of appearance, it may in the end tend to obfuscate, rather than illuminate, fundamental questions pertaining to the knowledge of such appearances. May tend is fairly weak criticism in face to enormous success. The success is because science closes the loop by testing its theories. The epistemological strategy is to pass those tests. But science and comp are not in opposition. To the contrary, if comp as an explanatory strategy is to have any hope of being successful it must *become* science and hence pass all empirical tests that are thrown at it. And in any case I'm not criticising the success of the current paradigm, I'm merely speculating, on grounds that I've argued, as to whether that same success can ultimately extend to questions which were, in a certain sense, deliberately sidelined at the start. But such apparently subsidiary questions may ultimately expose an explanatory Achilles' heel. Time will tell, I guess. Is that true? In what way do the collapse hypothesis or Everett's interpretation depend on how human beings work in detail? They depend on human thought being quasi-classical, even though humans are (presumably) made of quantum systems. This is just part of the bigger question of how does the appearance of the classical world arise from a quantum substrate. OK, thanks, I see what you mean. But I suppose you didn't mean to say that this implies a dependency on any theory of knowledge in particular, other than it be capable of being represented quasi-classically. Is that accurate? David On 7/2/2014 8:51 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 2 July 2014 01:24, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Well, I was trying to be short, hence to put it simply. Would you take issue with the preceding statement that The point, again in principle at least, is that nothing *above* the level of the basic ontology need be taken into account in the evolution of states defined in terms of it.? And if so, what essential difference would your specific disagreement make to the point in question? I agree with that. Good, that's the essential premise I've been reasoning from. I'm saying that comp uses its
What's the answer? What's the question?
Some recent discussions have centred on the (putative) features of hierarchical-reductionist ontologies, and whether comp (whatever its intrinsic merits or deficiencies) should be considered as just another candidate theory in that category, This prompts me to consider what fundamental question a particular theory is designed to answer. Making this explicit may help us to see what other questions are, by the same token (and perhaps only implicitly), treated as subsidiary or, as it were, merely awaiting resolution in due course in terms of the central explanatory thrust. I think it's fair to say that theories centred on an exhaustively-reducible physical or material ontology seek to answer the question of What are the fundamental entities and relations that underlie and constitute everything that exists and how did things get to be this way?. Even if this is a rather crude formulation, if questions such as these are deemed central and definitive, the issue of How and why does it *appear* to us that things are this way? becomes subsidiary and presumably awaits ultimate elucidation in the same terms. IOW, both we and what appears to us will in the end be explained, exhaustively, as composite phenomena in a physical hierarchy that can be reduced without loss to the basic entities and relations. ISTM however that comp asks different questions from the outset: How and why does it APPEAR that certain entities and relations constitute everything that exists, and what the hell is appearance anyway? To be sure, in order to deal with such questions comp has to begin with How does everything get to be this way?, but the crucial distinction is that basic physical entities and relations are, in this mode of question-and-answer, a complex by-product of the logic of appearance, and the subjects of said appearance. A further consequence is that it is no longer obvious that subjects, or what appears to them, are reducible in any straightforward way, either to physical entities and relations, or to the original first-order combinatorial ontology. It is true that we can pose questions in the first way and still say that we are non-eliminative about consciousness. The problem though is that because we have already committed ourselves to an exhaustively reductive mode of explanation, we can't help consigning such first-person phenomena to a subsidiary status, as an impenetrable mystery, an essentially irrelevant epiphenomenon, or some sort of weirdly-anomalous side-effect of basic physical activity. ISTM that this mode of question-and-answer, from the outset, essentially can't escape trivialising, ignoring, or rendering unanswerable in principle, the role of the first person. Consequently, I can't avoid the suspicion that, despite its phenomenal success (pun intended) it can't, in the end, be the most helpful way of asking the most fundamental questions. Whatever its independent merits or demerits, and its inherent complexity, ISTM that comp gets closer to a way of posing questions that might in the end yield more satisfying and complete answers. As it happens, in so doing it rehabilitates earlier attempts in the tradition stemming from the Greeks and Indians, and from later exemplars such as Berkeley and Kant. And perhaps most interestingly, its central motivation originates in, and simultaneously strikes at the heart of, the tacit assumption of its rivals that perception and cognition are (somehow) second-order relational phenomena attached to some putative virtual level of an exhaustively material reduction. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
On 1 July 2014 19:24, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think you have created a strawman exhaustively-reducible physical or material ontology. Sure, physicists take forces and matter as working assumptions - but they don't say what they are. They are never anything other than elements of a mathematical model which works well. And what does it mean to work well? It means to explain appearances - exactly the same thing you put forward as a uniquely different goal of comp. Firstly, I'm not really persuaded by your contention that forces and matter, to use your example, are merely elements of a mathematical model which works well. Rather, in terms of that very model, such elements are precisely those that (at least in principle) are supposed to comprise a fully-sufficient bottom-up ontology for the theory as a whole. The point, again in principle at least, is that nothing *above* the level of the basic ontology need be taken into account in the evolution of states defined in terms of it; put simply, there is no top-down causality. It is for this reason that I've been pointing out that whatever levels are posited above the basic ontology cannot possess, in terms of the theory, any independent ontological significance. Rather, what we *can* say is that such macroscopic, or composite, phenomena as temperature or, for that matter, the neural correlates of consciousness, are *explanatorily* relevant. We might go so far as to describe these phenomena as epistemological integrations over the ontological fundamentals. But if we do that the problem should become painfully obvious: the theory in which we are working has no explicit epistemological component. It is in fact explicitly designed to render a principled account of the relevant phenomena in the absence of any particular epistemological assumptions. Secondly, I think you may have missed the distinction I was attempting to make between a theory having the fundamental goal of seeking to explain what appears and one that seeks to explain why and how appearance manifests to its subjects. In the first case the goal is to create a mathematical model of appearance (i.e. physics), on the assumption (should this be considered at all) that the phenomena of perception and cognition will fall out of it at some later stage. In the second case the goal is to justify from first principles the existence, in the first place, of perceivers and cognisers and, in the second place, the appearances that manifest to them; then to show that the latter constitute, amongst other things, an accurate model of physics. Although I think comp is an interesting theory and worthy of study, I think I look at it differently than Bruno. I look at it as just another mathematical model, one whose ontology happens to be computations. But I have already said why I think comp can be distinguished from other theories in this respect. I may well be mistaken, but I don't see you have actually addressed the points I sought to make. As I noted in another post, any explanation is going to be exhaustively reductive or it's going to be reduction with loss. You can't have it both ways. Bruno's theory explicitly defines the loss, i.e. unprovable truths of arithmetic. That may be a feature, or it may be a bug. I don't agree that these alternatives exclude each other. In fact, I've been trying to point out that an exhaustively reductive physical theory cannot avoid losing consciousness. Hence the stipulation without loss is only tenable when that unfortunate consequence is ignored or trivialised. My argument has also been that Bruno's theory, whatever else its merits or demerits, is not reductive in the relevant sense; so far I haven't seen you respond directly to these points. David On 7/1/2014 5:00 AM, David Nyman wrote: Some recent discussions have centred on the (putative) features of hierarchical-reductionist ontologies, and whether comp (whatever its intrinsic merits or deficiencies) should be considered as just another candidate theory in that category, This prompts me to consider what fundamental question a particular theory is designed to answer. Making this explicit may help us to see what other questions are, by the same token (and perhaps only implicitly), treated as subsidiary or, as it were, merely awaiting resolution in due course in terms of the central explanatory thrust. I think it's fair to say that theories centred on an exhaustively-reducible physical or material ontology seek to answer the question of What are the fundamental entities and relations that underlie and constitute everything that exists and how did things get to be this way?. Even if this is a rather crude formulation, if questions such as these are deemed central and definitive, the issue of How and why does it *appear* to us that things are this way? becomes subsidiary and presumably awaits ultimate elucidation in the same terms. IOW, both we and what appears to us
Re: What's the answer? What's the question?
of the notorious paradox of phenomenal judgement, by distinguishing the specific logics by which 3p and 1p accounts can justifiably be said to refer to the same phenomena. And non-self-reflective consciousness can be accounted for by neurophysiology. Only by losing it in the first-person sense, since neurophysiology is vulnerable to exhaustive reduction. I think you have unrealistic ideas of what is explained and what is lost. Perhaps, but nevertheless I tend to agree with Bruno that it is premature to say that the only adequate answer to certain questions is, in effect, don't ask. In a sense *nothing* is explained by physics. It provides models that are successful at prediction. The models may be looked on as explanations, but that's a kind of psychological comfort we get form them depending on how familiar we are with the form of explanation. This is a little too positivist or indeed post-modern for my taste, I'm afraid. I'm can't be satisfied by a purely operational approach of this kind. I tend to side with David Deutsch in believing that we are motivated to look for the most comprehensive explanations, not merely the most successful predictions. ISTM in any case that predictions, rather like data, already tacitly presuppose some more comprehensive explanatory framework in terms of which predictions or data can be isolated and interpreted. Of course I'm perfectly ready to concede that it is hard to escape the influence of our personal predilections. That said, I must say my own predilections in this regard have undergone fairly comprehensive revision as a result of my encounters with comp. David On 7/1/2014 1:32 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 1 July 2014 19:24, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think you have created a strawman exhaustively-reducible physical or material ontology. Sure, physicists take forces and matter as working assumptions - but they don't say what they are. They are never anything other than elements of a mathematical model which works well. And what does it mean to work well? It means to explain appearances - exactly the same thing you put forward as a uniquely different goal of comp. Firstly, I'm not really persuaded by your contention that forces and matter, to use your example, are merely elements of a mathematical model which works well. Rather, in terms of that very model, such elements are precisely those that (at least in principle) are supposed to comprise a fully-sufficient bottom-up ontology for the theory as a whole. The point, again in principle at least, is that nothing *above* the level of the basic ontology need be taken into account in the evolution of states defined in terms of it; put simply, there is no top-down causality. Actually, causality, except in the no-spacelike influence, doesn't enter into fundamental physics. Models are generally time-symmetric. It is for this reason that I've been pointing out that whatever levels are posited above the basic ontology cannot possess, in terms of the theory, any independent ontological significance. And are you saying that is different for comp? That there's top-down causality in comp? What's top? Rather, what we *can* say is that such macroscopic, or composite, phenomena as temperature or, for that matter, the neural correlates of consciousness, are *explanatorily* relevant. We might go so far as to describe these phenomena as epistemological integrations over the ontological fundamentals. But if we do that the problem should become painfully obvious: the theory in which we are working has no explicit epistemological component. I think you're confusing epistemological and subjective. It is in fact explicitly designed to render a principled account of the relevant phenomena in the absence of any particular epistemological assumptions. Secondly, I think you may have missed the distinction I was attempting to make between a theory having the fundamental goal of seeking to explain what appears and one that seeks to explain why and how appearance manifests to its subjects. In the first case the goal is to create a mathematical model of appearance (i.e. physics), on the assumption (should this be considered at all) that the phenomena of perception and cognition will fall out of it at some later stage. In the second case the goal is to justify from first principles the existence, in the first place, of perceivers and cognisers and, in the second place, the appearances that manifest to them; then to show that the latter constitute, amongst other things, an accurate model of physics. Ok, I may have missed that. That's why I say once conscious-like behavior is engineered, talk about percievers and cognisers will seem to be quaint questions, like Where is the elan vital in a virus? Comp has an explanation of why some questions about consciousness are unanswerable, on pain of logical contradiction; and in that respect it is an improvement over
Re: Tyson is not atheist (was Re: So, a new kind of non-boolean, non-digital, computer architecture
On 29 June 2014 05:47, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: t's the materialist hat (I'm not sure which colour it is). Calling bullshit! on comp and similar ideas without stopping to understand them seems to stem from a religious belief in materialism (Bill Taylor on the FOAR forum is another example of this). There is endless spluttering and shouting and often even (gasp) capital letters, but never any sign that the person concerned has stopped and thought it through, in the spirit of what if he's got a point? Yeah, occasionally I find myself re-reading conversations I had with Bruno years ago (usually as a result of googling for some reference). It reminds me that in the beginning I was pretty certain he must be wrong, but his patience and persistence forced me repeatedly to refine and reconsider my arguments, to the point that eventually I started to see the holes in my own logic. This is the value of really sticking to a line of thought in discussion (as opposed to point scoring). It helps us, if we are willing to make the effort, to expose the contradictory assumptions in our own thinking. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Pluto bounces back!
On 27 June 2014 12:24, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: I can call forth spirits from the vasty deep! Why, so can I, and so can any man; but do they come when you do call them? (Shakespeare, I'm not sure which play offhand, or who said it ... or if I quoted it accurately ... but I'm sure you get the point). It was Hotspur, in response to Glendower's boasting (Henry IV Part 1). I must say I've always considered it a very apposite riposte! David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 26 June 2014 23:12, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Ok, thanks. I think I grasp your idea. But ISTM you are taking fiction and artefact to mean untrue or non-existent. I don't see that is justified. Just because a water molecule is made of three atoms doesn't make it a fiction. If our perceptions and cognition are successfully modeled by some theory whose ontology is atoms or arithmetic, then that is reason to give some credence to that ontology. But I see no reason to say the perceptions and cognitions are now untrue and useless as a basis for inference simply because they are derivative in some successful model? I fear you may not yet have quite grasped it, based on the last sentence above. I don't mean to say that the perceptions and cognitions themselves (i.e. the 1p part) are untrue or useless, it's the fiction of their having a non-conceptual 3p correlative in a hierarchical-reductive ontology. Furthermore, it wasn't at all my intention to *equate* atomic and arithmetical ontologies, but to try to be explicit about how they might be *differentiated*. To reiterate, any theory based on atoms (i.e. some finite set of entities and relations whose behaviour is postulated to underlie all other phenomena in a hierarchical manner) is, at least in principle, straightforwardly reductive without loss. It follows that any derived level (such as a water molecule) is precisely a conceptual fiction, convenient or otherwise, in the strong *ontological* (though not in the explanatory) sense, as a molecule is ex hypothesi a composite concept, not a member of the putatively basic set of ontological entities. This is hardly a surprise as it falls directly out of the strategy of reductionism. I appreciate, nonetheless, that it is an unusual distinction to make (as Bruno remarked, not many people see it) because in any purely 3p discourse it may seem to be a distinction without consequence, since there is in principle no loss of theoretical effectiveness after the reduction. But the selfsame distinction has crucial consequences in the unique context of perception and cognition, when we wish to associate a 1p part with a 3p part, because it then becomes starkly apparent (or at least it should) that no such non-conceptual part lies to hand, in the latter case, beyond the entities of the basement level ontology. As an example, let's consider computation in the role of the putative 3p part. On this analysis, any instantiation of computation based on atomic reductionism must be seen, from the ontological perspective, as instantly degenerating to the primitive relations of atoms. Of course (and this is what continues to confuse the picture) nothing prevents our continuing to *conceptualise* the behaviour of particularised composites of atoms as constituting computation *at the 1p level* of perception and cognition. But the selfsame theory originates all 3p phenomena effectively at the level of the atomic primitives, *independent* of any higher-level conceptualisation. Hence, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of seeking to justify the correlation of a specific 1p concept (e.g. computation) with some 3p composite activity that has no independent ontological legitimacy or effectiveness outside the confines of that very conceptualisation! This seems to me to be arguing in a particularly vicious circle. I suspect it is this inherent circularity that drives some to dismiss the 1p part as illusory and the 3p composition as real, but the desperation of this move is revealed in the consequence that the elimination of the first inevitably implies the simultaneous disappearance of both! In my view the above argument exposes an actual contradiction, or at least a serious inconsistency, in hierarchical-reductive attempts to associate 3p and 1p phenomena in general, without effectively eliminating the latter. Indeed, I think it may be a more general and ultimately more convincing argument than those deployed in Step 8 of the UDA. This brings us to the consideration of whether the selfsame argument can be deployed against an arithmetical ontology. If we can show that such an ontology (as you have suggested) is a straightforward reductionism then indeed the same criticism should go through. However, I think we can discern that this is not the case. Arithmetical relations, as deployed in comp, do indeed serve in a certain sense as the primitives of the theory, but they are not thereby a basement-level foundation on which the remainder of the theoretical structure rests in a hierarchical-reductive organisation. Rather, they appear in the theory as the minimum necessary to justify the constructive existence of a computational domain in terms of which logico-computational features of a generally epistemological nature (notably self-reference) can be derived. It is the epistemological consequences of the latter (notably the FPI) that then take over the explanatory thrust, and it is impossible thereafter to
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 27 June 2014 05:02, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: Well my original phrase was convenient fiction and it was only intended to be considered relevant in a context of what is and isn't fundamental / primitive. Obviously the convenient fictions ARE very convenient, for example I prefer to be thought of as Liz rather than a collection of 10^24 atoms (or an infinite sheaf of computations as the case may be). Yes, it does seem to be quite hard to stay on topic :-( David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 26 June 2014 04:33, Kim Jones kimjo...@ozemail.com.au wrote: *All political and sociological phenomena whatsoever CAN be reduced without loss to the behaviour and relations of individual human beings.* Yes of course, but that was my point. I offered the analogy as a toy model of 3p reductionism per se. It's pretty clear that when we talking about, say, a country having opinions or character, that this is merely a manner of speaking. If we cared to, this manner of speaking could be reduced without loss to the behaviour and relations of the individual human beings who play the role of the fundamental entities in this reduction. However it seems, for some reason, to be less obvious to most people in the case of *physical* reductionism. Actually the reason is perhaps not so mysterious after all, as it is difficult not to take for granted what is constantly staring us in the face - hence the frequent confusion between what should be considered ontologically, as opposed to epistemologically, basic. But on reflection, can we really countenance an appeal to one convenient fiction (computation) to explain another (consciousness) given a prior commitment to the exhaustive hierarchical reducibility of both to the ontological basement level of explanation? And in relying on epistemological fictions in general to account for *epistemology itself* are we not thereby in serious peril of merely arguing in a circle? *If Bruno is right the only thing that is real are persons who are essentially minds or computational relations anyway. Bruno is not saying there is no sunstrate or 'hypothese'. He's dropping continual heavy hints as to what it is. But, we just can't really describe that with a mind. The hammer cannot hit itself. Blame Gödel or someone...* Well, I've said before that I originally had misgivings that Bruno's schema was vulnerable to a similar analysis as I have given above - i.e. that it was in the end an exhaustive reductionism, in this case with number relations as the basement level. But actually, on reflection, this cannot be the case as it turns out to be impossible to reduce comp to number relations tout court *without loss*. In fact, not less than everything would be lost in such a reduction (assuming comp to be correct, of course): the whole of physics, the entire possibility of observation, the whole kit and caboodle. The emulation of computation and the universal machine in arithmetic - with the concomitant umbilical connection to arithmetical truth - make any straightforward hierarchical 3p reduction, along the lines of physicalism, impossible in principle. The totality of computation implies both the FPI (the indeterminism at the heart of determinism) and a fundamental asymmetry of measure. Taken together, these motivate a principled explanation of a consistent set of observable (indexical) physical appearances, abstracted, as it were, from the dross of the totality, by the unequal attention of a generalised universal observer. Indeed the systemic inter-dependence of its explanatory entities make a schema of this sort, as Bruno is wont to say, a veritable vaccine against reductionism. But is it correct? That's another question. David On 26 Jun 2014, at 8:07 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: The principal assumption then is that all phenomena whatsoever can be reduced without loss to some primitive (i.e. assumptively irreducible) basis, in which process the higher levels are effectively eliminated. Equivalently, one might say it's bottom-up all the way down. As an analogy, in the human sphere, this would be the contention that all political or sociological phenomena whatsoever can be reduced without loss to the behaviour and relations of individual human beings (i.e. what Margaret Thatcher presumably intended by there's no such thing as society). David All political and sociological phenomena whatsoever CAN be reduced without loss to the behaviour and relations of individual human beings. In addition, when was Margaret Thatcher ever wrong about something? ;-) So you lose a few 'isms' in this view...sounds like a good idea to me. If Bruno is right the only thing that is real are persons who are essentially minds or computational relations anyway. Bruno is not saying there is no sunstrate or 'hypothese'. He's dropping continual heavy hints as to what it is. But, we just can't really describe that with a mind. The hammer cannot hit itself. Blame Gödel or someone... Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 25 June 2014 23:58, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: As a matter of sociology, you may well be right. But that apart, why wouldn't such putative 3p conscious processes be as vulnerable to elimination (i.e. reducible without loss to some putative ur-physical basis) as temperature, computation, or any other physically-composite phenomenon? You mean reducible in explanation, but not eliminable in fact. No, I mean the precise opposite: eliminable in fact, but not in explanation. Temperature is explained by kinetic energy of molecules, but you can't eliminate temperature and keep kinetic energy of molecules. There's a difference between eliminating in an explanation or description and eliminating in fact. There is indeed. But as you yourself say below, we do suppose that all 3p describable phenomena can be reduced and hence that any intermediate level in the hierarchy of reduction IS eliminable (i.e. surplus to requirements) *in fact*. Such intermediate levels (be they in terms of temperature or kinetic energy of molecules) are by contrast NOT eliminable from our explanations, simply because we lack the capability to follow through any explanation at the fully-reduced level. The principal assumption then is that all phenomena whatsoever can be reduced without loss to some primitive (i.e. assumptively irreducible) basis, in which process the higher levels are effectively eliminated. Or that all 3p describable phenomena can be reduced. Which is what I suppose. There may remain 1p phenomena (qualia?) which are not explicitly part of the reductive description, but which we suppose are still there because of the similarity of the 3p part to our 3p part which is consistently correlated with our 1p part (i.e. the reason we don't believe in p-zombies). But our 3p part turns out to be one of the convenient epistemological fictions that we have (inconveniently) eliminated *in fact*. This is no kind of a problem for a purely 3p reduction, in terms of which which all such intermediate levels are in the end fictional, but every kind of a problem for the remaining 1p part, which it is (to say the least) inconvenient to consider such a fiction. Equivalently, one might say it's bottom-up all the way down. As an analogy, in the human sphere, this would be the contention that all political or sociological phenomena whatsoever can be reduced without loss I think without loss is ambiguous. It could mean that in a simulation of the phenomena we would not have to consider it (because it would arise from the lower level, e.g. markets) or it could mean that it wouldn't occur. No, it just means that if you assembled all the relevant human players in the appropriate relations you would ex hypothesi have reproduced the higher-level phenomena. Hence the inverse reduction from the sociological to the human can be accomplished unambiguously without loss. It really is a case of bottom-up all the way down. David On 6/25/2014 3:07 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 25 June 2014 22:01, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Note that I have not argued that the ability to 3p engineer consciousness will do anything to explain or diminish 1p conscious experience. I just predict it will become a peripheral fact that consciousness of kind x goes with physical processes or computations of type y. As a matter of sociology, you may well be right. But that apart, why wouldn't such putative 3p conscious processes be as vulnerable to elimination (i.e. reducible without loss to some putative ur-physical basis) as temperature, computation, or any other physically-composite phenomenon? You mean reducible in explanation, but not eliminable in fact. Temperature is explained by kinetic energy of molecules, but you can't eliminate temperature and keep kinetic energy of molecules. There's a difference between eliminating in an explanation or description and eliminating in fact. And, should they indeed be eliminable in this way, what does that bode for any 1p accompaniments? Note, please, that I am not staking any personal belief on the reductive assumptions as stated; I'm merely attempting to articulate them somewhat explicitly in order to discern what might, and what might not, be legitimately derivable from them. The principal assumption then is that all phenomena whatsoever can be reduced without loss to some primitive (i.e. assumptively irreducible) basis, in which process the higher levels are effectively eliminated. Or that all 3p describable phenomena can be reduced. Which is what I suppose. There may remain 1p phenomena (qualia?) which are not explicitly part of the reductive description, but which we suppose are still there because of the similarity of the 3p part to our 3p part which is consistently correlated with our 1p part (i.e. the reason we don't believe in p-zombies). Equivalently, one might say it's bottom-up all the way down. As an analogy, in the human sphere
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 26 June 2014 00:08, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: You mean reducible in explanation, but not eliminable in fact. Temperature is explained by kinetic energy of molecules, but you can't eliminate temperature and keep kinetic energy of molecules. There's a difference between eliminating in an explanation or description and eliminating in fact. I must admit I can't see that personally. If temperature is, in fact, molecular kinetic energy, then it doesn't actually exist at any level, it's just a convenient fiction, surely? Spot on, Liz. Actually, we can consider both or either to be such fictions, in terms of their mutual reducibility to some (exhaustive and assumptively irreducible) basement level (string, anyone?). My point is that the fundamental tenet of any 3p reductionism is bottom-up all the way down. If that leads to inconvenient consequences (not to mention a nasty dose of cognitive dissonance) don't blame me, blame the assumptions. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 26 June 2014 20:38, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I don't understand your point? Are you saying that if there is a basement level explanation then everything above is a fiction? I think of fiction = untrue. If there is not a basement, then every explanation is a fiction, since there is always a lower level. Or are you claiming there can be no reductive explanations of anything; that something is always left out? Well, I attempted to address these points in my response to your previous post. However, to re-iterate, I'm trying to draw a clear distinction between explanatory and ontological assumptions. You may personally take the view that in the end all we have is (attempts at) explanation and in one sense (that of cognitive closure with respect to ultimate reality) I would agree. Nevertheless, any exhaustively reductive explanatory scheme is founded, ex hypothesi, on a bottom-up hierarchy, such that the basement level entities and relations, whatever we take them to be, are deemed fully adequate to support (i.e. to be re-interpreted in terms of) all the levels above them. IOW, they comprise, exhaustively, the ontology of the theory. It's in that sense that higher levels in the hierarchy are (ontologically) fictional; i.e. they are, however useful in an explanatory role, surplus to requirements from an ontological perspective. Not that, in any purely 3p reduction, anything is thereby left out. How could it be, if all the higher levels are fully reducible to the basement level? It's only when we consider the putative association of 1p phenomena with *intermediate* levels of the 3p hierarchy that a gap appears, because now we are associating such 1p phenomena with a level, that, whatever its *explanatory* power, has no independent *ontological* purchase. Furthermore, at this point it becomes easier to see that these explanatory fictions are, essentially, artefacts of the perception and cognition we are seeking to explain; no doubt, in the best cases (e.g. computation), of great generality and power, but nonetheless, ex hypothesi, incapable of adding anything effective to the bottom-up ontological hierarchy. If so, we seem to have arrived at the position of attempting to found the aetiology of perception and cognition on nothing more than its own fictions! But since these fictions immediately degenerate, ontologically speaking, to the basement level, it should be apparent that they are capable of offering rather less independent ontological support than the smile of the Cheshire Cat. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 25 June 2014 17:26, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: The problem is that, in the final analysis - and it is precisely the *final* analysis that we are considering here - such theories need take no account of any intermediate level of explanation in order to qualify as theories of everything, since any phenomenon whatsoever, on this species of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. Ah! I remind you get the point. Still not sure many see it. Self consciousness can become equivalent with the knowledge of at least one non justifiable truth, but the raw consciousness remains problematical and it seems I have to attribute it to all universal numbers, perhaps in some dissociated state. In my experience it isn't just that they don't see it, but that something in them fiercely resists seeing it. And this is, I think, because it violates an implicit tenet of physicalism, which is that in the final analysis there must be an exhaustive accounting of any state of affairs that makes no fundamental appeal to the first person. From this perspective, consciousness, in the first-personal sense, is considered, in the last resort, as dispensable or else as a kind of epiphenomenal rabbit to be produced at the last moment, by some sleight-of-matter, from the physicalist hat. The problem, however, is that the process of dispensing with the first person cannot itself be achieved without recourse to the convenient fictions of that very epiphenomenon, which makes the whole enterprise self-defeating and, indeed, egregiously question-begging. It exasperates me when people adduce phenomena such as temperature or life as analogous to consciousness, without noticing that the analogy is, at best, a half-truth. It is true - or at least plausible - that there might be some discoverable set of physical processes that could, in principle, be shown to be correlated with the conscious states of any physical system we deem to be conscious. But we are also forced to assume - ex hypothesi physicalism - that all such processes are fully instantiated entirely at the most basic level posited by the physical theory in question. This poses no problem whatsoever, in principle, for temperature, or life, or any other of the exhaustively 3p-describable levels stacked in a virtual hierarchy on the foundation of physics. It is of no import that any higher level is eliminated in such a reduction, because it is not, in the end, required to do any work; in fact the very success of the reduction is that such levels are revealed, in essence, as convenient fictions. It is uniquely in the case of consciousness that this approach becomes self-defeating, unless we are willing to allow the convenient fiction of consciousness itself to be eliminated with all the rest. But then, if we do so allow, the very phenomena on which we have been relying instantly vanish, like the Cheshire Cat, leaving not so much as a smile behind. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 14 June 2014 04:32, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I thought I'd been pretty clear that it's ill defined, a point on which I agree with Bruno. I tried to define it in the exchange with David, but he seemed to reject my definition and just assumed everybody knows what it means. As I recall you proposed that physical might equate to sharable, in an operational sense, and indeed I wouldn't demur from that as an operational definition. But the question I was focusing on was the mode of derivation of that particular set of operationally definable entities and relations from whatever universe of possibility is postulated by the underlying theory. And it is here that I would contrast Bruno's approach with, say, string theory or the MUH, in that the mode of derivation relies on epistemological logic from the bottom up, as it were. This is why for me, if it can indeed be made to work, such an approach seems to take more than a step or two towards explicating the co-emergence of matter and mind from the computational universe of possibility. In many, if not most, other formulations, the latter is treated more like a metaphysical rabbit that is assumed to pop out of the hat just in time, so to speak, purely as an epiphenomenon of physical processes. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 01:27, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: But although we may speculate that consciousness and physical events both depend on computation (perhaps only in the sense of being consistently described) it doesn't follow that a UD exists or the conscious/physical world is an illusion. People throw around it's an illusion so freely that it ceases to distinguish rhinoceri from unicorns. You're right, oftentimes they do. But I wouldn't include Bruno in people here (if you see what I mean). Once one assumes the existence of the UD (or rather its infinite trace) the hard problem then becomes one of justifying in detail every aspect of the *appearance* of matter through its interaction with mind. Then, as Bruno is wont to say, the problem turns out to be (at least) twice as hard as we might have feared. As to the admissibility of the UD, for me, in the end, it's just another theoretical posit. As it happens, it strikes me as sufficiently motivated, because once computation is fixed as the base, I don't see how one would justify restricting its scope to certain computations in particular. It also suits my Everything-ist predilection (when I'm wearing that hat) to see the world-problem formulated in terms of a self-interpreting Programmatic Library of Babel. But my preferences are neither here or there, of course. What counts, as always, is how fruitful a theory turns out to be. So the proof of the comp pudding, in the end, will lie in its ultimate utility. By that point, should it come, I guess most people will have stopped quibbling about the existence, or otherwise, of the number 2. It should be clear then, under such assumptions, that neither a conscious state, nor any local physical mechanism through which it is manifested, can any longer be considered basic; Aren't conscious thoughts epistemologically basic. They are things of which we have unmediated knowledge. Yes, they are. But on the comp assumption, they're still in a specific sense derivative. Admittedly this is a subtle distinction that must be handled with care. For example, I don't think that it wouldn't be accurate to say that conscious thoughts are caused by arithmetic or computation. It's more that the epistemological consequences turn out to be a logical entailment of the original ontological assumptions. And part of that entailment is that there is indeed a we that can have unmediated knowledge of certain truths. rather, *both* must (somehow) be complex artefacts (albeit with distinctive derivations) of a more primitive (in this case, by assumption, computational) ontology. The relevant distinction, then, is between this set of relations and the alternative, in which both consciousness and computation are assumed to be derivative on a more basic (hence primitive) formulation of matter. I can agree with that. It is consistent with my point that primitive matter is undefined and could be anything if we just called it ur-stuff instead of matter. Good. Perhaps that's all a little clearer, then. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 03:52, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think you are assuming the point in question, i.e. that all the physical interactions of brains with the painting and the rest of the world are irrelevant and that the physical description of the painting is *just* the pigment on the canvas. You take all that other interaction, which also has both physical and psychological description and leave it out and then you say the physical description leaves out something essential. That seems to imply that you believe philosophical zombies are possible? No, I think it just means that I pushed this particular metaphor beyond its breaking point. You are, of course, correct to say that an adequate physical description must include the relevant context. And I agree that what is relevant in context may be moot. However, my basic point was that, under physicalism, the ultimate goal is to be able to give an exhaustive, contextualised account of a given system exclusively in terms of its *physical relations*. And this is the case whether or not we wish to distinguish one descriptive level as ontological and another as epistemological. In the final analysis it's all - ex hypothesi - physics. We seem to have agreed that physicalism and computationalism rely on different assumptions about what one might call the hierarchy of derivation. So, under physicalism, both computation and mind are assumed to derive from (in the sense of being alternative descriptions of) some ultimately basic formulation of matter (to whatever depths that might have to descend). Under computationalism, by contrast, both matter and mind are assumed to derive from some ultimately basic formulation of computation. The crucial dissimilarity is then that mind is not appealed to, under physicalism, in accounting for the origin of matter (which is basic). This makes it coherent, at least in principle, to ask for an exhaustive physical accounting of any given state of affairs. In the final analysis *everything* must be reducible, by assumption, to one or another description of some basic set of underlying physical relations. Under computationalism, by contrast, the epistemological logic is absolutely central in differentiating the lawful appearances of matter from the exhaustive redundancy of the computational base. Hence on these assumptions, even in principle, no state of affairs above the level of the basic ontology could ever be exhaustively accounted for by any catalogue of descriptions, however sophisticated or multi-levelled, of its merely physical dispositions, absent the selective logic of its epistemology. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 20:44, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: under physicalism, in accounting for the origin of matter (which is basic). This makes it coherent, at least in principle, to ask for an exhaustive physical accounting of any given state of affairs. In the final analysis *everything* must be reducible, by assumption, to one or another description of some basic set of underlying physical relations. Under computationalism, by contrast, the epistemological logic is absolutely central in differentiating the lawful appearances of matter from the exhaustive redundancy of the computational base. Hence on these assumptions, even in principle, no state of affairs above the level of the basic ontology could ever be exhaustively accounted for by any catalogue of descriptions, however sophisticated or multi-levelled, of its merely physical dispositions, absent the selective logic of its epistemology. ?? Too dense for me. I think logic can be accounted for in 3p and can be observed in brains, as in computers. I'm sorry if it's hard to follow my drift, but I'm also a little flummoxed that we're still flogging this particular horse. Why is such a fundamental distinction between physicalism and computationalism still so contentious after all the to-ing and fro-ing on this very point on this list over the years? We are not debating the correctness of either of the theories under discussion, but rather the distinctively different role that is played by their various conceptual elements. To summarise, then: physicalism is the hypothesis that an exhaustively reduced account of any state of affairs whatsoever can, in principle, be rendered by reference to a particular, restricted class of fundamental entities and relations. Given this scope, it must be true, ex hypothesi, that any and all higher-order derivatives, for example computational or neurological states, are re-descriptions (known or unknown) of the basic entities and relations and hence always fully reducible to them. Consequently such higher-order concepts, though explanatorily indispensible, are ontologically disposable; IOW, it's the basic physics that, by assumption, is doing all the work. By contrast, computationalism, as formulated in the UDA, leads to the hypothesis of an arithmetical ontology resulting in a vastly redundant computational infinity. This being the case, there is a dependency from the outset on a fundamental selective principle in order to justify the appearance of a lawlike observational physics; IOW before it can advance to the stage that physicalism has already assumed at the outset. That selective principle is a universal observational psychology, based on the universal digital machine, whose primary role is to justify the singularisation of a particular, lawlike physics that comports with observation. It should be clear, therefore, that the psychology of observation is not itself reducible to basic physics in this scheme of things. That would be an egregious confusion of levels. Moreover, it is not straightforwardly reducible to the underlying arithmetical entities and relations, because the selective principle in question *depends on complex, computationally-instantiated epistemological states and their relation to modes of arithmetical truth. Absent those states and modes, there would be no physics, no observer and nothing to observe. Consequently, neither computation, nor the epistemological states it emulates, are dispensable (i.e. fully reducible) in this schema. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 23:01, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: and their relation to modes of arithmetical truth. Absent those states and modes, there would be no physics, no observer and nothing to observe. At least that's Bruno's theory. Well yes, it was Bruno's theory that I originally commented on. I said that it had originally troubled me that it seemed as vulnerable to the reduction/elimination impasse as any other ism based on purportedly fundamental entities but, on further reflection, I thought it might be able to escape that impasse, essentially for the reasons encapsulated in my remark above. It seemed to me that this was, at least, an important conceptual distinction. Wasn't that what we were discussing? Anyway, I think I've said my piece for now. I'm sure there will be other occasions ;-) David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 12 June 2014 04:09, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Of course most physicists think the mind/body problem is too ill defined a problem to tackle right now. But this is Bruno's whole point and aim, isn't it? Given that the whole subject area is indeed a quagmire of confusion, he sets out his stall to formulate the problem in a way that is sufficiently well-defined, unambiguous, and mathematically precise to be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. As you know, he originally expected it to break immediately under the resulting strain, but in practice it hasn't yet done so. That said, I think your remarks about primitive matter rather miss the point. The UDA starts with the most general assumption of a computational theory of mind: i.e. the brain is some sort of mechanism and that the relation between consciousness and this mechanism depends on some (unknown) set of computational relations obtaining between some (unknown) finite collection of its physical components. One might then say of this state of affairs that the mechanism itself is physically instantiated, whereas the resultant conscious states are computationally instantiated (aka consciousness qua computatio). Step 8 is then intended, on this assumption, to make explicit the (in retrospect, rather obvious) point that any given net physical behaviour of such a mechanism (i.e. the disposition of its components through any given set of physical states) can be fortuitously preserved even after every trace of its original, purportedly computational, architecture has been evacuated. If this be the case, it would seem to make little sense to continue in the view that any conscious states correlated with the net physical behaviour of the mechanism are still *computationally instantiated*. Consequently, either consciousness qua computatio is false (Maudlin's conclusion), or it is at least persuasive that both conscious states and their correlative physical mechanisms alike depend on computation in some rather deeper and more general formulation. This is what opens the conceptual gap for the reversal to bite and the UD to exert its baleful influence. It should be clear then, under such assumptions, that neither a conscious state, nor any local physical mechanism through which it is manifested, can any longer be considered basic; rather, *both* must (somehow) be complex artefacts (albeit with distinctive derivations) of a more primitive (in this case, by assumption, computational) ontology. The relevant distinction, then, is between this set of relations and the alternative, in which both consciousness and computation are assumed to be derivative on a more basic (hence primitive) formulation of matter. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 00:23, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/12/2014 8:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That said, we might still at this stage wish to point out - and indeed it might seem at first blush to be defensible - that such fictions, or artefacts, could, at least in principle, be redeemable in virtue of their evident epistemological undeniability. Indeed this is FAPP the default a posteriori strategy, though often only tacitly. It might even be persuasive were it not that no first-person epistemological consequence has ever been shown to be predictable or derivable from basic relations defined strictly physically, as distinct from computationally, nor indeed is any such consequence appealed to, ex hypothesi, in accounting rather exhaustively for any state of affairs that is defined strictly physically. (The single candidate I can adduce as a counter example to the latter, by the way, is the collapse hypothesis which, far from being such a consequence, is rather an ad hoc interpolation.) But that's an instructive example. It shows that there is no absolute barrier to such explanation. And with the further development of decoherence theory it not be so ad hoc. I think the barrier itself is an illusion engendered by criteria of explanation that are not met even by the most widely accepted theories. Actually I wrote the above remarks, not Bruno. I assume you mean that a singularised conscious state might be taken to be a consequence of decoherence. If so, one could indeed consider singularisation to be an epistemological consequence of a state of affairs defined strictly physically. But that isn't quite what I intended. What I meant was that, in this view, the epistemological consequences, singularised or not, must always be inessential to the basic accounting of the strictly *physical* state of affairs. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 12 June 2014 16:03, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Well, I guess that's my stab for now. Wow! Thanks (I think) ;-) David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 13 June 2014 02:42, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Simply because you can give something you call a basic accounting of a painting by specifying the placement of pigments on a canvas doesn't preclude also describing it as a Monet of water lillies. You've chosen a level and called it basic and then complain that it leaves something out. I'd say it's just incomplete. You're right, it doesn't preclude it, but neither does it demand it. The painting wouldn't be any the less what it is *physically* were it to remain uninterpreted in perpetuity. The point is that the completion (i.e. the interpretation of the pigments on canvas as a particular work by Monet) is a supernumerary epistemological consequence that is not required (in the strict terms of this view) to singularise or otherwise determine the physical state of affairs. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
rather exhaustively for any state of affairs that is defined strictly physically. (The single candidate I can adduce as a counter example to the latter, by the way, is the collapse hypothesis which, far from being such a consequence, is rather an ad hoc interpolation.) Well, I guess that's my stab for now. David On 6/10/2014 4:22 PM, David Nyman wrote: But to reiterate once more, if we are tempted to see this as a sign that the search for further explanation is futile, we should first reflect whether we have hit the buffers of a particular explanatory strategy, rather than the limits of explanation tout court. I do see it as futile, and I think that it is futile under any explanatory strategy whatsoever. And this is why it is referred to as 1p. I think you're asking for an explanation that can't exist. But I'm willing to be shown wrong. Can you say what form such an explanation might take? That is apparently what you refer to in writing: That is, the emulation of computation and hence the universal machine in arithmetic could motivate the missing relation to a distinctively supernumerary domain - the modes of arithmetical truth - that is both irreducible to its base and (possibly) demonstrably coterminous with the specifics of 1p phenomena. But I don't understand it. distinctively supernumerary sounds to me like an explanation in terms of something not 1p and hence having the same failing in satisfying the demand for explanation as the explanation in terms of brain physics. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 11 June 2014 00:36, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: PS I'm not trying to take any credit for anything here, just saying I had a vague hunch that was in the same area. You've done all the hard work of thinking through what it actually implies. Thanks Liz and too kind. But it's always a boost to know when I've managed somehow to get my point across. :-) David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
On 10 June 2014 04:09, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: They're along for the ride like temperature is alftr on the kinetic energy of molecules. Before stat mech, heat was regarded as an immaterial substance. It was explained by the motion of molecules; something that is 3p observable but the explanation didn't make it vanish or make it illusory. I would argue that, at the ontological level, the explanation *does indeed* make heat, or temperature, illusory. The whole point of the reduction is to show that there could not, in principle, be any supernumerary something left unaccounted for by an explanation couched exclusively at the primordial level, whatever one takes that to be. Given that this is the specific goal of explanatory reduction, what we have here is a precise dis-analogy, in that there *is indeed* a disturbingly irreducible something left behind, or unaccounted for, in the case of consciousness: i.e. the 1p experience itself. By contrast, there is no need to grant the phenomena of temperature or heat any such supernumerary reality. One could indeed argue with some force that all such phenomena are themselves, in fine, specific artefacts, or useful fictions, of consciousness. That is, they are epistemologically or explanatorily, as distinct from ontologically, relevant. Primordial matter, as it were, in its doings, need take no account of such intermediate levels, which, by assumption, reduce without loss to some exhaustive set of primordial entities and relations. This was the entire point of the argument (focused on steps 7 and 8 of the UDA) that Liz excerpted: that there is a reduction/elimination impasse that needs somehow to be bridged by any theory seeking to reconcile consciousness and any primordial substratum (or, pace Bruno, hypostase) with which it is supposed to be correlated. And hence we have an unavoidable problem, up to this point, with theories based on primordially-explanatory material entities and processes. The problem is that, in the final analysis - and it is precisely the *final* analysis that we are considering here - such theories need take no account of any intermediate level of explanation in order to qualify as theories of everything, since any phenomenon whatsoever, on this species of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: TRONNIES - SPACE
of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. Or in Bruno's theory, to the basic arithmetical relations. Sure, but I don't know why you are ignoring the specific remarks that I made about this very point. I took pains to explain that it used to trouble me, as you say above, that the same reduction/elimination critique could be applied to arithmetical relations. I think somebody once called this nothing butting. But on further consideration it now seems to me that there could be a distinctive and potentially game-changing difference. That is, the emulation of computation and hence the universal machine in arithmetic could motivate the missing relation to a distinctively supernumerary domain - the modes of arithmetical truth - that is both irreducible to its base and (possibly) demonstrably coterminous with the specifics of 1p phenomena. Of course I claim no technical competence in any such demonstration. But I can see at least the outline of a re-contextualisation that might permit the extrapolation of explanation beyond what may well appear, under different assumptions, as some sort of absolute limit. David On 6/10/2014 4:37 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 10 June 2014 04:09, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: They're along for the ride like temperature is alftr on the kinetic energy of molecules. Before stat mech, heat was regarded as an immaterial substance. It was explained by the motion of molecules; something that is 3p observable but the explanation didn't make it vanish or make it illusory. I would argue that, at the ontological level, the explanation *does indeed* make heat, or temperature, illusory. The whole point of the reduction is to show that there could not, in principle, be any supernumerary something left unaccounted for by an explanation couched exclusively at the primordial level, whatever one takes that to be. Given that this is the specific goal of explanatory reduction, what we have here is a precise dis-analogy, in that there *is indeed* a disturbingly irreducible something left behind, or unaccounted for, in the case of consciousness: i.e. the 1p experience itself. You're simply assuming it's unaccounted for. The hypothesis was that there might be a theory which was successful in reading minds and predicting thoughts based on physical observation of a brain. I'd say that is all that can be done; to ask for more is just anthropic prejudice about what an explanation should look like - it's like asking, But why does gravity want to pull things together? By contrast, there is no need to grant the phenomena of temperature or heat any such supernumerary reality. Grant? There's no need to grant anything reality. It's sort of an honorific we give to theories we believe (or at least seriously entertain). One could indeed argue with some force that all such phenomena are themselves, in fine, specific artefacts, or useful fictions, of consciousness. That is, they are epistemologically or explanatorily, as distinct from ontologically, relevant. Primordial matter, as it were, in its doings, need take no account of such intermediate levels, which, by assumption, reduce without loss to some exhaustive set of primordial entities and relations. That sounds very anthropomorphic and psychological - as though primordial matter was Mother Nature and took account or ignored things. In a straight forward mathematical description you can look at a certain integral and say, That's the temperature. and there isn't any formulation in which such a value does not appear, it's a necessary aspect. This was the entire point of the argument (focused on steps 7 and 8 of the UDA) that Liz excerpted: that there is a reduction/elimination impasse that needs somehow to be bridged by any theory seeking to reconcile consciousness and any primordial substratum (or, pace Bruno, hypostase) with which it is supposed to be correlated. And hence we have an unavoidable problem, up to this point, with theories based on primordially-explanatory material entities and processes. The problem is that, in the final analysis - and it is precisely the *final* analysis that we are considering here - such theories need take no account of any intermediate level of explanation in order to qualify as theories of everything, since any phenomenon whatsoever, on this species of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. Or in Bruno's theory, to the basic arithmetical relations. Brent In the first sense, to be a realist about quantum mechanics is simply to think that we should believe in the entities and structures that subserve its explanatory hypotheses. Put simply, belief goes along with explanatory success. And must be tempered by explanatory failure. --- Adrian Heathcote, Quantum Heterodxy, Science and Education, April
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
of the screen, an external interpreter is necessary for any dramatic truth whatsoever to be accessible. To complete the analogy one must rather imagine something that is both self-interpreting and self-filtering (at this point one also importing The Library of Babel into the picture!). Et voila - the UDA! David On 07 Jun 2014, at 17:23, David Nyman wrote: On 12 February 2014 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: At step seven, the primitive materialist can still invoke a physicalist form of ultrafinitism, to prevent the comp reversal between physics and arithmetic (or number theology). If I've grasped this, it's that one could attempt to avoid the reversal by claiming that the physical universe isn't (or mightn't be) sufficiently robust (i.e. physically extended?) to instantiate a physical UD that would run forever. If so, this would presumably side-step the need to take the consequent infinities of computations into account. Yees, that the whole point. However, I've never felt fully in command of this step, actually. For example, why couldn't one argue that the physical universe is indeed sufficiently robust, in the sense intended, to support the infinite running of a UD, but it simply be the case that - in fact - *there is no such UD in existence*? Yes, that certainly exists too. But it is not an interesting protocol to get the partial reversal of step seven: if there is a concrete UD* then the laws of physics = the hunting of the arithmetical rabbits. Then in step eight we quasi-eliminate moves like small universe, or your robust but without UD, etc. I seem to have missed the force of the implication (at step 7) that a physically instantiated, infinitely-running UD *must* be taken into account, given the simple fact of a physical universe sufficiently robust, *in principle*, to support its existence. At step 7, it is not in principle. Like in the preceding protocol, we just assume the existence of an infinite running of the UD in our infinite (then) space-time structure. The proposition is that if that is the case, and don't see white rabbits, it means some computations are multiplied, and exploit (perhaps) the random oracle inherent in that multiplication. IOW, even given the comp assumption, why couldn't one still argue that all relevant computations - *absent actual physical evidence* of an infinitely-running UD - in fact supervene on physical brains and/or other non-biological physical digital machines? By step 8. That moves above is shown introducing a god-of-the-gap to select a reality. It entails a sort of magic distinguishing a computation from all the others. You can do this, as step 8 talk about reality and thus can only suggest the implausibility of such a move. It is almost like using an ideology (the belief in a primary physical universe) to divert from a testable explanation of where the physical laws come from, and why the physical can hurt. It is the same than Omnes, who invoke literally the abandon of rationalism to select one universe in his otherwise clear description of a (QM) multiverse. The step 8 does not, and cannot, refute your point above, but it can explain how far it goes near a god-of-the-gap move, or a magic move. It is close to be proved, as to counteract to step 8 you are forced (in the transfinite) to provide a matter which is non Turing emulable, and non FPI recoverable. It looks like reifying a mystery to prevent a possible partial solution to a mystery. Someone might add that matter needs a Gods blessing, also. Bruno David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 8 June 2014 22:47, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Ready? Have you bought the Mendelson? OK, I give in. I just found a reasonably-priced second-hand copy of the Mendelson on Abebooks - should be here in a few days. Oh, and by the way, I'm presently reading and enjoying Hines's Return to the One. Thanks for the recommendation. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 12 February 2014 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: At step seven, the primitive materialist can still invoke a physicalist form of ultrafinitism, to prevent the comp reversal between physics and arithmetic (or number theology). If I've grasped this, it's that one could attempt to avoid the reversal by claiming that the physical universe isn't (or mightn't be) sufficiently robust (i.e. physically extended?) to instantiate a physical UD that would run forever. If so, this would presumably side-step the need to take the consequent infinities of computations into account. However, I've never felt fully in command of this step, actually. For example, why couldn't one argue that the physical universe is indeed sufficiently robust, in the sense intended, to support the infinite running of a UD, but it simply be the case that - in fact - *there is no such UD in existence*? I seem to have missed the force of the implication (at step 7) that a physically instantiated, infinitely-running UD *must* be taken into account, given the simple fact of a physical universe sufficiently robust, *in principle*, to support its existence. IOW, even given the comp assumption, why couldn't one still argue that all relevant computations - *absent actual physical evidence* of an infinitely-running UD - in fact supervene on physical brains and/or other non-biological physical digital machines? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Pluto bounces back!
On 31 May 2014 13:06, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hawking has all my sympathy for the warning against authoritative argument, but he lost all his credits by implying that theology or religion are the guilty one, when it is only human stupidity, that of course any institutionalized religion can enhance, but this includes atheism, as I have experimented, and I was not alone. Not sure what you intended here; perhaps the following will help: False cognates in French (F) and English (E) expérience (F) vs experience (E) Expérience (F) is a semi-false cognate, because it means both experience and experiment: J'ai fait une expérience - I did an experiment. J'ai eu une expérience intéressante - I had an interesting experience. Experience (E) can be a noun or verb referring to something that happened. Only the noun translates into expérience : Experience shows that ... - L'expérience démontre que... He experienced some difficulties - Il a rencontré des difficultés. expérimenter (F) vs experiment (E) Expérimenter (F) is a semi-false cognate. It is equivalent to the English verb, but also has the added sense of to test an apparatus. Experiment (E) as a verb means to test hypotheses or ways of doing things. As a noun, it is equivalent only to the first sense, given above, of the French word expérience. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Interesting Google tech talk on QM
On 23 April 2014 17:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Samuel Clemens? Was is not Mark Twain? I missed a post perhaps. Same guy, different name. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Universal Programming
On 17 March 2014 13:56, Gabriel Bodeen gabebod...@gmail.com wrote: If there isn't already, there needs to be some fiction about Buddhist comp-believers trying to escape immortality. To quote Wikipedia: In Indian religions, the attainment of nirvana is moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Not sure if this counts as fiction, though. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Tegmark and UDA step 3
On 10 March 2014 17:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: or to bet on normal higher level of simulation, like with Böstrom Could you elaborate? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Is information physical?
On 27 February 2014 21:35, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: When I last took a look at constructor theory, it wasn't much of a theory. I know David's been working on it, when he's not doing the chat show circuit, but hadn't heard any major development in it announced, so haven't taken another look. Do you have any papers on it? This is the most recent, I think: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7439 He says the paper is philosophical rather than technical. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek a resolution of the dichotomy between apparently disparate accounts in a more powerful explanatory framework; one that could, for example, explain how *just this kind of infrastructure* might emerge as the mise-en-scène for *just these kinds of dramatis personae*. Comp is a candidate for that framework if one accepts at the outset that there is some functional level of substitution for the brain. If one doesn't, there is certainly space for alternatives, but it is fair to demand a similar reconciliatory account in all cases, rather than a distortion of particular facts to suit one's preference. What I conclude is that since the function of the limb is not interrupted, there is no plausible basis for the program which models the limb to add in any extra alarm for a condition of 'functional but not 'my' function'. AHS is the same as a philosophical zombie, except that it is at the level where physiological behavior is exhibited rather than psychological behavior. If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. See above. Hopefully that is clearer. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. I don't see that criticism without any details or rebuttals fit the bill either. Whenever the criticism is It seems to me that your argument fails', it only makes me more suspicious that there is no legitimate objection. I can't relate to it, since as far as I know, my objections are always in the form of an explanation - what specifically seems wrong to me, and how to see it differently so that what I'm objecting to is not overlooked. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. That's because you are only considering the modus ponens view where since functionalism implies that a malfunctioning brain would produce anomalies in conscious experience, it would make sense that AHS affirms functionalism being true. I'm looking at the modus tollens view where since functionalism implies that brain function requires no additional ingredient to make the function of conscious machines seem conscious, some extra, non-functional ingredient is required to explain why AHS is alarming to those who suffer from it. Since the distress of AHS is observed to be real, and that is logically inconsistent with the expectations of functionalism, I conclude that the AHS example adds to the list of counterfactuals to CTM/Functionalism. It should not matter whether a limb feels like it's 'yours',* functionalism implies that the fact of being able to use a limb makes it feel like 'yours' by definition*. This is the entire premise of computationalist accounts of qualia; that the mathematical relations simply taste like raspberries or feel like pain because that is the implicit expression of those relations. I think if you consider my comments
Re: Is information physical?
On 27 February 2014 22:22, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Only when interpreted by an observer. An electrical circuit has only voltages and currents, not bits. To an observer, a voltage on a data line might be interpreted as 1 if it is greater than 3V, and zero if it is less than 1V. In between those two thresholds, the voltage might be determinate, but the information is not. AFAICT observers don't seem central to constructor theory - it seems to be (or aims at being) an objective theory from which everything else of relevance will be emergent. From what I remember of the topic in FOR, David isn't an avowed eliminativist on consciousness but on the whole seems content to sideline it as a subsidiary problem for psychologists. That said, do you feel that his information-is-physical position, even in the case that physics-is-construction, is in effect crypto-eliminativism? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 3-1 views (was: Re: Better Than the Chinese Room)
On 26 February 2014 17:04, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi David, On 24 Feb 2014, at 17:32, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 15:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 24 Feb 2014, at 02:41, David Nyman wrote: On 24 February 2014 01:04, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: *This is the same as saying that I will experience all possible futures in the MWI - but by the time I experience them, of course, the version of me in each branch will be different, and it always seems to me, retrospectively, as though I only experienced one outcome.* Each duplicate will only experience one outcome. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. The problems occur when considering what the person duplicated will experience and then what probability he should assign to each outcome and that seems to me to depend on what identity criterion gets imposed. Its a consideration I've gone into at length and won't bore you with again. But I will say that where you think that what Bruno wants is just recognition that each duplicate sees one outcome, I think that he actually wants to show that 3p and 1p probability assignments would be asymmetric from the stand point of the person duplicated. Certainly for me he doesn't manage that. Correct me if I'm misremembering Chris, but I seem to recall proposing to you on a previous occasion that Hoyle's pigeon hole analogy can be a useful way of tuning intuitions about puzzles of this sort, although I appear to be the sole fan of the idea around here. Hoyle's idea is essentially a heuristic for collapsing the notions of identity, history and continuation onto the perspective of a single, universal observer. From this perspective, the situation of being faced with duplication is just a random selection from the class of all possible observer moments. Well, the just might be not that easy to define. If the universal observer is the universal machine, the probability to get a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you. But how would you remember that? By noting it in my diary, by inquesting my past, and hacking data banks, or reading book on my origin. Well, I'm not sure if it makes sense to say the Hoyle's universal observer is the universal machine. I don't know to what extent his idea is compatible with comp. But to be clear, you suggested above that a computational history involving windows or MacOS might be more probable than being me or you, so I asked you how Bruno, for example, could remember that, meaning to suggest that of course you could not. I suppose it would be some sort of problem for Hoyle's idea if one suspected not simply that certain classes of non-human observer vastly out-numbered human ones, but that they were likely to be asking themselves similar sorts of questions. IOW, what might constitute an appropriate equivalence class for ourselves? I am not sure that the notion of observer moment makes sense, without a notion of scenario involving a net of computational relative states. I think the hypostases describe a universal person, composed from a universal (self) scientist ([]p), a universal knower ([]p p), an observer ([]p p), and a feeler ([]p p p)). But I would not say that this universal person (which exist in arithmetic and is associated with all relatively self-referential correct löbian number) will select among all observer moment. Well, perhaps eventually it will select all of them, if we can give some relevant sense to eventually in this context. Is this not done by simple 3p arithmetical realism? Not, I think, in the 1p sense, without a certain amount of equivocation. There is a sense God select them all, but they inter-relations are indexicals. Yes, but the inner God cannot select them all simultaneously, without the equivocation to which I refer. And I suppose Hoyle's point is that if one imagines a logical serialisation of all such moments, its order must be inconsequential because of the intrinsic self-ordering of the moments themselves. That is the mathematical conception of an order, and there are dualities between those ways of considering a structure. You can already see that with the modal logic, where properties of accessibility will characterize modal formula and theories. Essentially he is saying that the panoptic bird view is somehow preserved at the frog level, at the price of breaking the simultaneity of the momentary views. I am not sure I understand. I think he is saying (as did Schroedinger) that the frog must see every indexical reality, but cannot see them all simultaneously. The hypostatic universal person is more like a universal baby, which can split in a much larger spectrum of future 1p histories, but from its first person perspective it is like it has still to go through the histories to get the right relative statistics on his
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 28 February 2014 16:44, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday, February 28, 2014 8:29:52 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 16:43, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, February 27, 2014 9:47:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien?When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). You are unable to draw the same conclusion because you aren't considering any part of what I have laid out. I'm looking at CTM as if it were true, and then proceeding from there to question whether what we observe (AHS, blindsight, etc) would be consistent with the idea of consciousness as a function. Yes, but functionalism doesn't necessarily force the claim that consciousness *just is* a function: that is the eliminativist version. More usually it is understood as the claim that consciousness *supervenes on* (or co-varies with) function (i.e. the epiphenomenalist or crypto-dualist versions). That's even more eliminativist IMO. I wouldn't disagree. You should have read on a bit further. To say that consciousness is identical to the function of a machine at least acknowledges that phenomenology is causally efficacious. Not really. Only in a crypto-eliminativist sense, which is to say no sense at all. To add in supervenience to non-computational epiphenomena is not really functionalism or digital functionalism or computationalism. What is overlooked is that supervenience and emergence both depend themselves on consciousness to provide a perspective in which some phenomena appear to 'emerge' from the supervening substrate. From the point of view of computation, surely computationalism cannot allow that consciousness comes as a surprise. From any comp perspective, we humans can define consciousness as emergent or supervenient, but surely arithmetic itself would not define its own conscious functionality as non-computational. Slipping surely into a sentence doesn't make a contention any the more plausible. It is certainly not obvious how one can begin from arithmetic and arrive at consciousness. I have already argued that the assumption of a first-personal reality, transcending any third-personal description of it, is necessitated from the outset in any theory that purports to take consciousness seriously (and that includes comp, by definition). The theory must then show how this reality comes to be discoverable under the appropriate conditions, but it doesn't thereby pull it out of a hat by magic. I think it would be foolish to expect that the consequences of any theory dealing with such fundamental questions would be obvious and therefore criticisms on the grounds of its failure to meet uninformed expectation are beside the point. . But, if we take this latter view, the conundrum is more peculiar even than you seem to imply by these piecemeal pot-shots. Rather, the *entire story* of awareness / intention now figures only as a causally-irrelevant inside interpretation of a complete and self-sufficient functional history that neither knows nor cares about it. What self-sufficient functional history do you mean? The physical history of the systems in question, for example. When I use history I'm generally talking about a collection of aesthetic resources which have been accumulated through direct experience and remain present implicitly locally and explicitly in the absolute sense. You could hardly call that a functional history though. You remember my analogy of the dramatis personae instantiated by the pixels of the LCD screen? Semi remember. Well, the analogy was that fact that the pixels are an adequate infrastructure for the portrayal of any possible drama that will fit within their confines doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of those dramas. Analogously, the fact that we can give a functional account of the brain doesn't mean that this provides a sufficient account of consciousness. Since we can't appeal to an external source of interpretation as we can in the analogy, we must look for a schema that can make sense of internal interpretation. If comp is correct, that interpretation requires us to cast our net pretty wide. However it would be self-defeating if our response to such bafflement resulted in our misrepresenting its patent successes because it cannot explain everything. We should rather seek
Is information physical?
http://edge.org/conversation/constructor-theory I don't recall if the list has discussed these ideas of David Deutsch recently. The link is to an Edge interview in which he discusses his view that mathematicians are mistaken if they believe that information or computation are purely abstract objects. He says that both are in fact physical, but to justify that assertion we may need deeper principles of physics than the existing ones. He proposes constructor theory as a candidate. Implications for comp (or anything else for that matter)? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 27 February 2014 14:02, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? When you start by assuming that I'm always wrong, then it becomes very easy to justify that with ad hoc straw man accusations. I do not in fact start with that assumption and, if you believe that I do, I suggest you should question it. I do find however that I am unable to draw the same conclusion as you from the examples you give. They simply seem like false inferences to me (and to Stathis, based on his comment). If you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I wish you would find a way to give it in a clearer form. I can't see that what you say above fits the bill. You seem to regard rhetorical questions beginning why would we need..? as compelling arguments against a functional account, but they seem to me to be beside the point. They invite the obvious rejoinder that AHS doesn't seem in principle to present any special difficulties to functionalism in explaining the facts in its own terms. You recently proposed the example of tissue rejection which invited a similar response. None of this is to say that I don't regard functional / material accounts as problematic, but this is for a different reason; I think they obfuscate the categorical distinctions between two orthogonal versions of the facts: at the reduced level of function and at the integrated level of sensory awareness / intention. Comp, for example, seeks to remedy this obfuscation by elucidating principled correlations between formal notions of reduction and integration via computational theory. Hence, per comp, the principle of digital substitution is not the terminus of an explanation but the starting point for a deeper theory. ISTM that alternative theories cannot avoid a similar burden of explanation. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Alien Hand/Limb Syndrome
On 26 February 2014 12:58, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts. - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict functionalism. ? AFAICS it wouldn't even *seem* to contradict functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your sensations. I think it is generally understood that the relevant disruption to function is that of brain tissue, not that of the limb; hence the references in the passage to lesions in the corpus callosum and other areas of the *brain*. If the function of brain tissue is disrupted, then it would be consistent to expect some concomitant disruption of consciousness, per functionalism. This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic substitute. It's clear that's what you would expect, but to infer this much, purely on the basis of the passage you quoted, is grasping at straws. Actually it's not even that - it's a completely unsupported inference. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and merge with it. I don't see how starting from an unsupported inference helps your case. In fact, if you are proposing this as an example of the strength of your position in general, it can only serve to weaken it. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Digital Neurology
On 24 February 2014 11:27, ghib...@gmail.com wrote: Yo David, You said somewhere you had a thought for how consciousness might be. I'm into that one at the moment so I'd be interested to hear anything you have to say. Assuming it's not secret squirrel - which if it is mazel tov geezer you go for it Sorry, you're going to have to help me out here. What statements of mine are you referring to? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
