Re: A Possible Mathematical Structure for Physics
I've seen John Baez suggest that On 17 Aug, 15:23, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: arxiv.org:0908.2063v1 Any comments? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 17 Aug, 20:49, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Peter Jones wrote: On 17 Aug, 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Aug 2009, at 11:11, 1Z wrote: Without Platonism, there is no UD since it is not observable within physical space. So the UDA is based on Plat., not the other way round. Are you saying that without platonism, the square root of 2 does not exist? Yes, the square root of two has no ontological existence. Prime number does not exist? Yes, prime numbers have no ontological existence What do you mean by ontological existence? Real in the Sense that I am Real. The modern perspective among analytic philosophers is to tie ontology to the notion of objective truth--if we imagine a book containing an exhaustive set of *all* objective truths about reality, then the minimal set of entities that we would need to refer to in such a book, in such a way that we could not remove all reference to them by coming up with a paraphrase of all statements involving them, would be the ones that must be part of our ontology. That acount ties ontology to objective truth AND reality. We anti- Platonists think the truths of mathematics are objective but without any necessary connection to reality. This idea goes back to Quine, it's discussed athttp://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/ontology.htmland there's also a discussion in the introduction to the book The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, which says: Quine's criterion of ontological commitment is understood to be something like this: If one affirms a statement using a name or other singular term, or an initial phrase of 'existential quantification', like 'There are some so-and-sos', then one must either (1) admit that one is committed to the existence of things answering to the singular term or satisfying the description, or (2) provide a 'paraphrase' of the statement that eschews singular terms and quantifications over so-and-sos. We anti-Platonists do the latter. So interpreted, Quine's criterion can be seen as a logical development of the methods of Russell and Moore, who assumed that one must accept the existence of entities corresponding to the singular terms used in statements one accepts, unless and until one finds systematic methods of paraphrase that eliminate these terms. Most philosophers today who identify themselves as metaphysicians are in basic agreement with the Quinean approach to systematic metaphysics The paraphrase condition means, for example, that instead of adopting a statement like unicorns have one horn as a true statement about reality and thus being forced to accept the existence of unicorns, you could instead paraphrase this in terms of what images and concepts are in people's mind when they use the word unicorn; and if you're an eliminative materialist who wants to avoid accepting mental images and concepts as a basic element of your ontology, it might seem plausible that you could *in principle* paraphrase all statements about human concepts using statements about physical processes in human brains, although we may lack the understanding to do that now. As the quote says, most philosophers (analytic philosophers anyway) adopt this point of view when dealing with metaphysical questions. For instance, if you believe there are objective truths about mathematics which cannot be reduced to statements about the physical world using an appropriate paraphrase, then in Quine's scheme you'd have committed yourself to some form of mathematical platonism. Likewise, if you believe there is an objective truth about what it is like for a human to experience the color blue which could not be deduced from an exhaustive set of facts about their physical brain, as suggested by the Mary's room thought-experiment (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_room), then you've committed yourself to an ontology where qualia have some sort of nonmaterial existence (even if they are entirely determined by the physical arrangements of matter and the physical world is 'causally closed', as proposed by David Chalmers). Yep. I have no problem with any of that --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 02:47, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/18 Jesse Mazer wrote: AFAICS the assumption of primary matter 'solves' the white rabbit problem by making it circular: i.e. assuming that primary matter exists entails restricting the theory to just those mathematics and parameters capable of predicting what is observed; since white rabbits are not in fact observed, it follows that no successful mathematics of primary matter has any business predicting them. This is not to say that such circularity is necessarily vicious; its proponents no doubt see it as virtuously parsimonious. Nonetheless, one of the chief arguments for the pluralistic alternatives is that - by not applying a priori mathematical or parametric restrictions - they may thereby be less arbitrary. This of course leaves them with the problem of the white rabbits to solve by other means. David Yes. It pretty well comes to a trade-off between cotingency and saving appearances. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 01:53, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Peter Jones wrote: On 17 Aug, 14:46, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: 1Z wrote: But those space-time configuration are themselves described by mathematical functions far more complex that the numbers described or explain. But what is this primary matter? If it is entirely divorced from all the evidence from physics that various abstract mathematical models of particles and fields can be used to make accurate predictions about observed experimental results, then it becomes something utterly mysterious and divorced from any of our empirical experiences whatsoever (since all of our intuitions regarding 'matter' are based solely on our empirical experiences with how it *behaves* in the sensory realm, and the abstract mathematical models give perfectly accurate predictions about this behavior). Primary matter is very much related to the fact that some theories of physics work and other do not. It won't tell you which ones work, but it will tell you why there is a difference. It solves the white rabbit problem. We don't see logically consistent but otherwise bizarre universes because they are immaterial and non-existent--not matter instantiates that particualar amtehamtical structure. But then it seems like you're really just talking about consciousness and qualia--of all the mathematically possible universes containing possible self-aware observers, only in some (or one) are these possible observers actually real in the sense of having qualia (and there qualia being influenced by other, possibly nonconsious elements of the mathematical universe they are a part of). No.. I don't need the hypothesis that WR universes are there but unobserved. There's no need to have a middleman called primary matter, such that only some (or one) mathematical possible universes are actually instantianted in primary matter, and only those instantiated in primary matter give rise to qualia. There is no absolute need, but there are advantages. For instance, the many-wolder might have to admit the existence of zombie universes -- universes that containt *apparent* intelligent lige that is nonetheless unconscious-- in order to account for the non-obseration of WR universes. If you *are* going to add unobservable middlemen like this, I don't concede that PM is unobservable. What exists is material, what is immaterial does not exist. There is therefore a large set of facts about matter. Moreover, the many-worlders extra universes *have* to be unobservable one way or the other, since they are not observed! there's no real logical justification for having only one--you could say only some mathematically possible universes are instantiated in primary asfgh, and only some of those give rise to qwertyuiop, and only the ones with quertyuiop can give rise to zxcvbn, and only ones with zxcvbn can give rise to qualia and consciousness. Single-universe thinking is a different game from everythingism. It is not about explaining everything from logical first priciples. It accepts contingency as the price paid for parsimony. Pasimony and lack of arbitrariness are *both* explanatory desiderata, so there is no black-and-white sense in which Everythingism wins. In that case you might as well call it primary ectoplasm or primary asdfgh. You might as well call 2 the successor of 0. All symbols are arbitrary. My point was just that I think it's *misleading* to use the word matter which already has all sorts of intuitive associations for us, when really you're talking about something utterly mysterious whose properties are completely divorced from our experiences, more like Kant's noumena which were supposed to be things-in-themselves separate from all phenomenal properties (including quantitative ones). I don't accept that characterisation of PM. (BTW, phenomenal properties could be accounted for as non-mathematical attributes of PM) And are you making any explicit assumption about the relation between this primary matter and qualia/first-person experience? If not, then I don't see why it wouldn't be logically possible to have a universe with primary matter but no qualia (all living beings would be zombies), or qualia but no primary matter (and if you admit this possibility, then why shouldn't we believe this is exactly the type of universe we live in?) The second possibility is ruled out because it predicts White Rabbits. I don't agree, there's no reason you couldn't postulate a measure Yes there is: you have to justify from first principles and not just postulate it. The problem is that if all possible maths exists, all possible measures exist... you can't pick out one as being, for some contingent reason the measure on the set of mathematical possibilities which determined the likelihood they would actually be
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 00:41, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/17 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Yep. I have no problem with any of that Really? Let's see then. The paraphrase condition means, for example, that instead of adopting a statement like unicorns have one horn as a true statement about reality and thus being forced to accept the existence of unicorns, you could instead paraphrase this in terms of what images and concepts are in people's mind when they use the word unicorn; and if you're an eliminative materialist who wants to avoid accepting mental images and concepts as a basic element of your ontology, it might seem plausible that you could *in principle* paraphrase all statements about human concepts using statements about physical processes in human brains, although we may lack the understanding to do that now. I presume that one could substitute 'computation' for 'unicorn' in the above passage? If so, the human concept that it is 'computation' that gives rise to consciousness could be paraphrased using statements about physical processes in human brains. So what may we now suppose gives such processes this particular power? Presumably not their 'computational' nature - because now nous n'avons pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là (which I'm sure you will recall was precisely the point I originally made). That's completely back to front. Standard computaitonalism regards computation as a physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware. It doesn't exist at the fundamental level like quarks, and it isn't non-existent like unicorns. It is a higher-level existent, like horses. Standard computationalism is *not* Bruno's claims about immaterial self-standing computations dreaming they are butterflies or whatever. That magnificent edifice is very much of his own making. He may call it comp but don't be fooled. It seems to me that what one can recover from this is simply the hypothesis that certain brain processes give rise to consciousness in virtue of their being precisely the processes that they are - no more, no less. Am I still missing something? It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true and computationalism false. That is to say that the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computaitonal processes. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 01:43, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/17 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I am trying to persuade Bruno that his argument has an implict assumption of Platonism that should be made explicit. An assumption of Platonism as a non-observable background might be justifiiable in the way you suggest, but it does need to be made explicit. Yes, this is why I felt it might help the discussion to make the possibility of such an assumption explicit in this way. Bruno's theory may well be falsifiable. But then it is hardly a disproof of materialism as it stands. Agreed - not as a knockdown blow - although as you know his argument is that materialism is incompatible with the computational theory of mind; and of course I've also been arguing for this, although my alternative (i.e. a theory, rather than an intuition) wouldn't necessarily be the same as his. I think the core of the problem is a tendency to mentally conjure platonia as a pure figment; I am not sure what you mean by that. Anti-Platonic philsoophies of maths, such as formalism, are considered positons supported by arguments, not vague intuitions. Yes, I don't dispute that. But aside from this, perhaps one could say that we tend to assume that ideas about 'platonias' have sense but no reference. I don't see why However, some physicists - Julian Barbour for one - use the term in a way that clearly has reference, as I think does Bruno. Any Platonists thinks there is a real immaterial realm, that is the whole point One should perhaps recall that the appeal to number as a causal principle (to use the logic of 'paraphrase') can't be met by any merely human concept of number. IOW for reality to emerge from number, whatever the putative referents of human number terminology may be, they must at some level be uniquely cashable in terms of RITSIAR. I would have hoped that was obvious. this will not do; nor is it presumably what Plato had in mind. Rather, platonia might be reconceived in terms of the preconditions of the observable and real; its theoretical entities must - ultimately - be cashable for what is RITSIAR, both 'materially' and 'mentally'. On this basis, some such intuition of an 'immaterial' (pre-material?) - but inescapably real - precursory state could be seen as theoretically inevitable, whether one subsequently adopts a materialist or a comp interpretative stance. I don;t see why it is necessay at all, let alone why it was inevitable. You were earlier comparing it to a hypothetical background ontology. How did it jump form (falsifiable) hypotheiss to necessary and inevitable truth? It didn't. I was just suggesting that embracing some more 'agnostic' ?!?!?! background schema of this kind might actually be helpful in appreciating the scope and limits of explanation. For example, just how far down the explanatory hierarchy do we have to go before it starts making less and less sense to insist on characterising the explanatory entities as 'material'? It hasn't happened yet. Are superstrings material? Is quantum foam material? Are whatever-are-conceived-as-the-pre-conditions for their appearance in the scheme of things material? What is surely at issue is not their 'essential' materiality but their properties as appealed to by theory (i.e. the ones to which we would resort by paraphrase). Any physcial theory is distinguished from an Everythingis theory by maintaining the contingent existence of only some possible mathematical structures. That is a general statement that is not affected by juggling one theory for another. I have further defined PM in *terms* of such contingency. Perhaps our ultimate explanatory entities need be conceived as no more 'material' than necessary for us to depend on them as plausible pre-cursors of the more obviously material; but of course, no less so either. While I've got you here, as it were - I don't see why this wouldn't apply equally to the mental: IOW our explanatory entities need be conceived as no more 'mental' than necessary for us to depend on them as plausible precursors of the more obviously mental; but no less so either. David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 09:12, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Aug 2009, at 19:28, Flammarion wrote: On 17 Aug, 11:17, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Aug 2009, at 11:11, 1Z wrote: Without Platonism, there is no UD since it is not observable within physical space. So the UDA is based on Plat., not the other way round. Are you saying that without platonism, the square root of 2 does not exist? Yes, the square root of two has no ontological existence. All what matters with comp is that things like the square root of 2 has a notion of existence independent of me. that's what I meant. Prime number does not exist? Yes, prime numbers have no ontological existence I guess you make a material ontological commitment. One of my goal is to explain, notably with the comp hyp, that a term like matter has no referent. One of my goals is to explain that you cannot convince me tha matter doesn't exist without first convincing me that numbers do. You may be able to eliminate matter in favour of numbers, but that doesn;'t stop me douing the converse. This would explain why physicist never use such ontological commitment explicitly. Physicists write reams about matter. To say that matter exists simply is a non rational act of the type don't ask. UDA makes just this precise by reudcing the mind body problem to a body problem. The UDA doesn't even start without Platonism That mathematical existence is a meaningless notion? Sense but no refence. Mathematical statements have truth values but do not refere to anything outside the formal system. Then they have no truth value. That statement requires some justification What you say is formalism, and this has been explicitly refuted by mathematical logicians. False. From previous conversations, you conflate fomalism with Hilbert's programme. I am not referring to the claim that there is a mechanical proof-porcedure for any theorem, I am referring to the claim that mathematics is a non-referential formal game. Note that Platonism vs. Formalism is an open quesiton in philosophy. We know, mainly by the work of Gödel that the truth about numbers extends what can be justified in ANY effective formal systems (and non effective one are not really formal). Irrelevant. Platonism vs. Formalism is a debate about *existence* not about truth. But I know that there are still some formalists in the neighborhood, and that is why I make explicit the assumption of arithmetical realism. It is the assumption that the structure (N, +, x) is well defined, despite we can't define it effectively. Mathematics would be a physical illusion? A referentless formal game, distinguished from fiction only by its rigour and generality You evacuate the whole approach of semantics by Tarski and Quine. Maybe. Evidently I prefer Frege I will not insist on this because I will explain with some detail why Church thesis necessitate arithmetical realism, and why this leads directly to the incompleteness and the discovery that arithmetical truth cannot be captured by any effective formal system. The formalist position in math is no more tenable. But physics use mathematics, would that not make physics illusory or circular? No, because it uses mathematics empirically. The same language that can be used to write fiction can be used to write history. The difference is in how it used. not in the langauge itself I don't see any difference in the use of analytical tools in physics and in number theory. I've done both and I do. The distribution of the prime numbers is objective, and this is the only type of independent objectivity needed in the reasoning. Nothing more. Truths about prime numbers are objective truths,. That says nothing about existence. It's a perfectly consistent assumption. THere is no disproof of materialism that doesn't beg the quesiton by assuming immaterialism Well, I do believe in the natural numbers, and I do believe in their immateriality (the number seven is not made of quantum field, or waves, or particle). Then you are a Platonist, and you argument is based on Platonism. I believe that the truth of arithmetical statement having the shape ExP(x) is independent of me, and you and the physical universe (if that exists). To get a claim of existence out of that claim of truth, you have to take the exists to have a single uniform meaning in all contexts,. This, we formalists dispute. You can call that Platonism, if you want, but this is not obviously anti-physicalist. Show me where these numbers are phsycially, then Non-physicalism is the conclusion of a reasoning (UDA). Unfortunately, it is also the assumption Given that Plato's conception of reality is closer to the conclusion, I prefer to use the expression Arithmetical realism for this (banal) assumption, and Platonism or non
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 10:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 17 Aug 2009, at 22:48, Flammarion wrote: What do you mean by ontological existence? Real in the Sense that I am Real. What does that mean? Do you mean real in the sense that 1-I is real? or do you mean real in the sense that 3-I is real? The 1-I reality (my consciousness) is undoubtable, and incommunicable in any 3-ways. The 3-I reality (my body, identity card, ...) is doubtable (I could be dreaming) and communicable in 3-ways, yet always with interrogation mark. This makes a big difference. It's an epistemological difference. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 10:51, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:55:35 -0700 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com However, some physicists - Julian Barbour for one - use the term in a way that clearly has reference, as I think does Bruno. Any Platonists thinks there is a real immaterial realm, that is the whole point What does real mean? ITSIAR Once again it seems to be a synonym for existence, but you aren't defining what notion of existence you're talking about, you speak as though it has a single transparent meaning which coincides with your own notion of physical existence. There is a basic meaning to existence, the Johnsonion one. On the contrary, I think most modern analytic philosophers would interpret mathematical Platonism to mean *only* that mathematical structures exist in the Quinean sense, i.e. that there are truths about them that cannot be paraphrased into truths about the physical world (whatever that is). I don't think any additional notion of existence is normally implied by the term mathematical Platonism (and many philosophers might not even acknowledge that there are any well-defined notions of of 'existence' besides the Quinean one) It is absolutely clear from the above that if they are a) existent and b) not physcially accountable then they are c) immaterically existent. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 16 Aug, 16:34, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Aug 2009, at 14:34, 1Z wrote: On 14 Aug, 09:48, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You are dismissing the first person indeterminacy. A stuffy TM can run a computation. But if a consciousness is attached to that computation, it is automatically attached to an infinity of immaterial and relative computations as well, There's your Platonism. Not mine. The one which follows from the comp assumption, if UDA is valid. If nothing immaterial exists (NB nothing, I don't make exceptions for just a few pixies or juse a few numbers) there is nothiign for a cosnc. to attach itself to except a propbably small, probabuily singular set of stuiffy brains and computers. I can understand how easy for a materialist it is, to conceive at first sight, that numbers and mathematical objects are convenient fiction realized as space-time material configuration, perhaps of brains. But those space-time configuration are themselves described by mathematical functions far more complex that the numbers described or explain. This leads to major difficulties, i dont; see why. THe neural underpinnings of the concept horse are probably more complex than the concept horse. If you folow that reasonng through consistently, Plato's heaven is going to be densely populated and the brain will have no woro to do at all even before approaching the consciousness problem. mathematical stucture+matter gives you more to tackle the consciousness problem with than mathematical structure alone This shows that a purely physicalist explanation of numbers could lead to difficulties. But the same for a description of any piece of material things, by just that token. By what token? You think there is some complex undepiining to quarks? So, I am not sure that physicist can be said to have solved the matter problem either, and some physicists are already open, independently of comp, to the idea that physical objects are relative mathematical (immaterial) objects. Which of course are no material. Wheeler, Tegmark, for example. But then with comp, you are yourself an immaterial object, of the kind person, like the lobian machine. You own a body, or you borrow it to your neighborhood, and you as an immaterial pattern can become stable only by being multiplied in infinities of coherent similar histories, which eventually the physicists begin to talk about (multiverse). I tend to believe in many immaterial things. Some are absolutely real (I think) like the natural numbers. Some may be seen as absolutely real, or just as useful fiction: it changes nothing. I can't take a ride on pagasus. and I can;t be computed by a convenient fiction This is the case for the negative number, the rational, a large part of the algebraic and topological, and analytical. Some are both absolutely real, and physically real, they live in platonia, and then can come back on earth: they have a relatively concrete existence. For example, the games of chess, the computers, the animals, and the persons. But the concreteness is relative, the 'I' coupled with the chessboard is an abstract couple following normality conditions (that QM provides, but comp not yet). Some could have an even more trivial sense of absolute existence, and a case could be made they don't exist, even in Platonia, like the unicorns, perhaps, and the squared circles (hopefully). Each branch of math has its own notion of existence, and with comp, we have a lot choice, for the ontic part, but usually I take arithmetical existence, if only because this is taught in school, and its enough to justified the existence of the universal numbers, and either they dreams (if yes doctor) or at least their discourse on their dreams (if you say no the doctor and decide to qualify those machines are inexistent zombies). Platonism is not taught in schools. You are conflatin existence with truth There is a sense to say those universal machines do not exist, but it happens that they don't have the cognitive abilities to know that, and for them, in-existence does not make sense. And for a mathematicans, they exists in a very strong sense, which is that, by accepting Church Thesis, they can prove the existence of universal digital (mathematical) machine from 0, succession, addition and multiplication. Both amoebas colony (human cells), and engineers are implementing some of them everyday in our neighborhood, as we can guess. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 11:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Aug 2009, at 10:55, Flammarion wrote: Any physcial theory is distinguished from an Everythingis theory by maintaining the contingent existence of only some possible mathematical structures. That is a general statement that is not affected by juggling one theory for another. I have further defined PM in *terms* of such contingency. That is actually very nice, because it follows the Plato-Aristotle- Plotinus definition of matter which I follow in AUDA. And this is enough for showing we don't have to reify matter (nor numbers). If you are not reifying anything. then there is nothing, hen there is no UD. I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from contingent structures and still pretend that matter is primitive. I am saying that material existence *is* contingent existence. It is not a structure of anything. Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the existence of primitive matter. Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each other. All the Peter Jones which are generated by the UD, in the Tarski or Fregean sense, (I don't care), will pretend that primitive matter does not exist, and if your argument goes through, for rational reason and logic (and not by mystical apprehension), those immaterial Peter Jones will prove *correctly* that they are material, and this is a contradiction. It's not a contradiction of materialism. If there are no immaterial PJ's, nothing is believed by them at all. So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your consciousness of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature. No. I just have to deny immaterial existence. You keep confusing the idea that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs with the actual existence of those entities and beliefs. Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease to give referents to such Peter Jones. False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or AR. I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it, no-one can see it, so it ain't there. Fregean sense is enough to see that those Peter Jones would correctly (if you are correct) prove that they are material, when we know (reasoning outside the UD) than they are not. So? That doesn't man I am wrong, because it doesn't mean I am in the UD. The fact that we can see that a BIV has false beliefs doesn't make us wrong about anything. Your argument should be non UD accessible, and thus non Turing emulable. No, it just has to be right. The fact that a simulated me *would8 be wrong doesn't mean the real me *is* wrong. If you feel being primitively material, just say no to the doctor. Why can't I just get a guarantee that he will re-incarnate me materially? Even if matter doesn't exist, I won't lose out. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 15:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Aug 2009, at 12:14, Flammarion wrote: Each branch of math has its own notion of existence, and with comp, we have a lot choice, for the ontic part, but usually I take arithmetical existence, if only because this is taught in school, and its enough to justified the existence of the universal numbers, and either they dreams (if yes doctor) or at least their discourse on their dreams (if you say no the doctor and decide to qualify those machines are inexistent zombies). Platonism is not taught in schools. You are conflatin existence with truth Platonism is not taught in schools, I agree. But I have never said that. I am not conflating existence with truth, I am conflating mathematical existence with truth of existential arithmetical statements. You have to be doing more than that, because you cannot agree with me that mathematical existence is no existence at all. mathematical stucture+matter gives you more to tackle the consciousness problem with than mathematical structure alone The mind-body problem comes from the fact that we have not yet find how to attach consciousness to matter. No, it comes from no being able to attach *phenomenal* consciousness to mathematical structures. There is no problem attaching *cognition* to matter at all. If the matter of your brain is disrupted, so are your though processes. At least with comp, after UDA, we know why. No. it is equivalent to the conjunction of that stament with and the mathematicians Ex is a claim of ontological existence. You are the one making that addition. So, again, show where in the reasoning I would use that addition. Where you want me to be running on a UD. I cannot be running on a merely conceptual UD any more than I can be a character in fiction. If you really believe that the number 7 has no existence at all, then the UDA reasoning does not go through, at last! Read or reread the SANE paper, I explicitly assume Arithmetical Realism. Then you are explicitly *not* assuming standard computaitonalism This is hardly new. I really don't follow you. UDA is an argument showing that comp (yes doctor + CT) = non physicalism. (CT = Church thesis) The sane paper says Classical Digital mechanism, or Classical Computationalism, or just comp, is the conjunction of the following three sub- hypotheses: You mentioned two. The third is AR/Platonism A weaker version of CT is provably equivalent with Ex(x = universal number). It makes no sense without AR. All mathematics makes sense without Platonism. You are conflating truth and existence again. Ex(x = universal number) can be true without x being RITSIAR http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 01:51, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: David Nyman wrote: On 19 Aug, 00:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Note that I have never said that matter does not exist. I have no doubt it exists. I am just saying that matter cannot be primitive, assuming comp. Matter is more or less the border of the ignorance of universal machines (to be short). There is a fundamental physics which capture the invariant for all possible universal machine observation, and the rest is geography-history. Assuming comp the consistent- contingent obeys laws. AFAICS the essence of Bruno's dispute with Peter consists in: 1) ***If you accept the computational theory of mind (CTM)*** then matter can no longer be primitive to your explanations of appearances of any kind, mental or physical. 2) ***If you assert that matter is primitive to your explanation of appearances of any kind, mental or physical (PM)*** it is illegitimate to appeal to CTM. Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia). I've also argued this, in a somewhat different form. Peter's position I think is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are compatible). Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form - seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic currently generating so much heat. UDA-8 sets out to be provable or disprovable on purely logical grounds. I for one am unclear on what basis it could be attacked as invalid. Can anyone show strong grounds for this? David I think you are right that the MGA is at the crux. But I don't know whether to regard it as proving that computation need not be physically instantiated or as a reductio against the yes doctor hypothesis. Saying yes to the doctor seems very straightforward when you just think about the doctor replacing physical elements of your brain with functionally similar elements made of silicon or straw or whatever. But then I reflect that I, with my new head full of straw, must still interact with the world. So I have not been reduced to computation unless the part of the world I interact with is also replaced by computational elements If you were a programme interacting with the world before, you still will be after a function-preserving replacement is made. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course. But then your reasoning has to be false too. The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not Turing-emulable, Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated? It seems that your argument uses MGA to conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing- emulable=Turing-emulated. It seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have a correct argument showing they are material. But this is already well known from brain in a vat thought experiments. OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning leading to our primitive materiality. If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the UD*. I did not use MGA here. That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued with the full force of necessity -- although your own argument does not have that force. In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM is not impacted much --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia). I've also argued this, in a somewhat different form. Peter's position I think is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are compatible). Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form - seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic currently generating so much heat. UDA-8 sets out to be provable or disprovable on purely logical grounds. I for one am unclear on what basis it could be attacked as invalid. Can anyone show strong grounds for this? Of course, no argument can validly come to a metaphysical conclusion-- in this case, that matter does not exist --without making a single metaphysical assumption. The argument is therefore invalid, or not purely logical --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 00:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Aug 2009, at 22:43, Flammarion wrote: On 18 Aug, 11:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Aug 2009, at 10:55, Flammarion wrote: Any physcial theory is distinguished from an Everythingis theory by maintaining the contingent existence of only some possible mathematical structures. That is a general statement that is not affected by juggling one theory for another. I have further defined PM in *terms* of such contingency. That is actually very nice, because it follows the Plato-Aristotle- Plotinus definition of matter which I follow in AUDA. And this is enough for showing we don't have to reify matter (nor numbers). If you are not reifying anything. then there is nothing, hen there is no UD. I think you have a magical conception of reality. I don't need to reify number to believe in them. I just need to play with them. I think *you* believe in magic. You believe that if you write down hypothetical truths about what an immaterial machine would believe, you can conclude that everything has been conjured up by an immaterial machine. It's like saying you can go from making a theoretical study of the aerodynamics of Pegasus to taking a ride on Pegasus's back. I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from contingent structures and still pretend that matter is primitive. I am saying that material existence *is* contingent existence. It is not a structure of anything. Plotinus says that too! Me too. With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not- computable or not-provable, or some relativizations. You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number. It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box.. Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the existence of primitive matter. Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each other. In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below. In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve them. All the Peter Jones which are generated by the UD, in the Tarski or Fregean sense, (I don't care), will pretend that primitive matter does not exist, and if your argument goes through, for rational reason and logic (and not by mystical apprehension), those immaterial Peter Jones will prove *correctly* that they are material, and this is a contradiction. It's not a contradiction of materialism. If there are no immaterial PJ's, nothing is believed by them at all. Once you say yes to the doctor, there are immaterial Peter Jones. All your doppelganger emulating you, and being emulated at your level of substitution and below relatively occuring in the proof of the Sigma_1 sentences of Robinson Arithmetic. (The arithmetical version of the UD). There is no immaterial existence at all, and my agreeign to have my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is. So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your consciousness of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature. No. I just have to deny immaterial existence. You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions, which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum). No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that mathematical existence is ontological existence. As I have been You keep confusing the idea that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs with the actual existence of those entities and beliefs. You underestimate the dumbness of the DU, or sigma_1 arithmetic. It contains the emulation of all the quantum states of the milky way, with correct approximation of its neighborhood. Since it does not exist, it does not contain anything. It is hard to recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and huge numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain. Same mistake All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist. In computations enough similar than our own most probable current one, it is a theorem that those entities have such or such beliefs, and behave in such and such ways, developing such and such discourses. Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease to give referents to such Peter Jones. False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or AR. I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it, no-one can see it, so it ain't there. Standard comp says nothing about Plato's Platonism, but once you take the digitalness seriously enough
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 22:46, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/18 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: The paraphrase condition means, for example, that instead of adopting a statement like unicorns have one horn as a true statement about reality and thus being forced to accept the existence of unicorns, you could instead paraphrase this in terms of what images and concepts are in people's mind when they use the word unicorn; and if you're an eliminative materialist who wants to avoid accepting mental images and concepts as a basic element of your ontology, it might seem plausible that you could *in principle* paraphrase all statements about human concepts using statements about physical processes in human brains, although we may lack the understanding to do that now. I presume that one could substitute 'computation' for 'unicorn' in the above passage? If so, the human concept that it is 'computation' that gives rise to consciousness could be paraphrased using statements about physical processes in human brains. So what may we now suppose gives such processes this particular power? Presumably not their 'computational' nature - because now nous n'avons pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là (which I'm sure you will recall was precisely the point I originally made). That's completely back to front. Standard computaitonalism regards computation as a physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware. It doesn't exist at the fundamental level like quarks, and it isn't non-existent like unicorns. It is a higher-level existent, like horses. I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware. The paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that *any* human concept is *eliminable* No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction. (my original point) after such reduction to primary physical processes. So why should 'computation' escape this fate? How would you respond if I said the brain is conscious because it is 'alive'? Would 'life' elude the paraphrased reduction to physical process? I don't see your point. Either claim may or may not be true and may or may not be paraphraseable. BTW, let's be clear: I'm not saying that physicalism is false (although IMO it is at least incomplete). I'm merely pointing out one of its consequences. Which is what? It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true and computationalism false. That is to say that the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computaitonal processes. Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake. Here's the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computational processes. Physicalist theory of mind urgently required. QED I am arguing with Bruno about whether the eliminaiton of matter makes things easier for the MBP. I think it just give you less to work with. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 18 Aug, 22:46, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/18 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake. Here's the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computational processes. Physicalist theory of mind urgently required. QED Why does it have to be spelt out? No-one in this discussion has spelt out a CMT, it is taken off the shelf. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 10:28, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: There is no immaterial existence at all, and my agreeign to have my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is. And you saying so doesn't prove there isn't. So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your consciousness of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature. No. I just have to deny immaterial existence. You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions, which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum). No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that mathematical existence is ontological existence. As I have been Then you're missusing 'existence'. Because using your language existence = no existence at all ! for mathemetical existence... Why bother using the word existence when you don't even mean it. People do. People agree that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221b Baker Street even though he lived at all. If you want to start a project to eliminate metaphorical and other non-literla uses from langauge, you have a long way to go. You keep confusing the idea that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs with the actual existence of those entities and beliefs. You underestimate the dumbness of the DU, or sigma_1 arithmetic. It contains the emulation of all the quantum states of the milky way, with correct approximation of its neighborhood. Since it does not exist, it does not contain anything. You say so, but you could repeat it ad infinitum, it won't render it truer. *If* it does not exist, it does not contain anything. Now show that it exists. It is hard to recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and huge numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain. Same mistake All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist. In computations enough similar than our own most probable current one, it is a theorem that those entities have such or such beliefs, and behave in such and such ways, developing such and such discourses. Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease to give referents to such Peter Jones. False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or AR. I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it, no-one can see it, so it ain't there. Standard comp says nothing about Plato's Platonism, but once you take the digitalness seriously enough, and CT, it is just standard computer science. That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence. You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is ontological RITISAR existence. So you would accept to be turned into a program as long as you're running on a physical implementation... ok it's fair enough. My question is *in that precise case*... What are you ? the program written in whatever language it was written ? the functionnaly equivalent program written in brainfuck ? the same written in the machine language of the physical machine you're running on ? the bytecode that would be JIT in a VM ? the transistor of the physical machine ? What IS RITSIAR when you'll be digitalized ? Whatever combination of hardware and software I am in fact running on. Juggling combinations of h/w and s/w is not going to make me immaterial. If you're running, and I suspend the program ? Do *you* still exists ? no If I restart it ? Do you still exists ? yes If I never restart it do you still exists ? no If I destroy every copy of the program that is you do you still exists ? no See conscience mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too. So? It hasn't been. Fregean sense is enough to see that those Peter Jones would correctly (if you are correct) prove that they are material, when we know (reasoning outside the UD) than they are not. So? That doesn't man I am wrong, because it doesn't mean I am in the UD. The fact that we can see that a BIV has false beliefs doesn't make us wrong about anything. This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is material. So? If you develop a correct argument that you are running on a computer when actually you are a BIV
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware. The paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that *any* human concept is *eliminable* No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction. Not in this instance. The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept can be *eliminated* from the explanation. You can do this with 'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'. Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination. Substituting H2O for water does not show that water is non-existent, just that is is non-fundamental. (my original point) after such reduction to primary physical processes. So why should 'computation' escape this fate? How would you respond if I said the brain is conscious because it is 'alive'? Would 'life' elude the paraphrased reduction to physical process? I don't see your point. Either claim may or may not be true and may or may not be paraphraseable. My point is that claiming - *a priori* - that 'life' caused consciousness would shed as little light as saying that computation did so. I don't think anyone is doing that. For one thing, there is quite a body of research on computationalism. For another, it is being discussed as a hypothesis, which is different from assuming its truth. In either case, a successful paraphrase must be capable of pointing out precisely *which* specific physical entities - in precisely *what* relation - to precisely *which* other specific physical entities - are deemed responsible for the paraphrased concept in any specific case. I freely concede that - *if* it turned out a posteriori that a reduced physical theory capable of explicitly attaching specific mental descriptions to specific physical processes could be shown, in all cases FAPP, to be equivalent to some explicitly specifiable program interpreted purely in terms of functional relations of its physical instantiation - I would indeed be impressed. But this would be a world away from a brute a priori assumption. IOW, the justification for any paraphrased concept is posterior, not prior. Err...yeah. I'm not particularly commited to the CTM as a categorical truth. I just don't think it has the implications Bruno thinks. In the context of the foregoing, MGA makes a direct attack on CTM + PM = true via reductio: i.e. by demonstrating at least one class of physical reduction of a computation where any physical attachment theory must evaporate. To emphasise: it isn't per se an attack on PM, only on the a priori conjunction of PM and CTM. At what step do you say it is invalid? Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at all. I don't see any evidence for that BTW, let's be clear: I'm not saying that physicalism is false (although IMO it is at least incomplete). I'm merely pointing out one of its consequences. Which is what? That PM theory isn't justified in making an a priori claim to a 'computational' theory of mind, No-one has maintained that CTM is an implication of PM or indeed *any* a priori claim to organising principles transcending Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter. the underlying physical processes. All conceptual overlays in this context must be, and indeed - with the outstanding exception of CTM - in practice always are, accepted as requiring justification a posteriori. Have you read *any* of the literature on the CTM? It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true and computationalism false. That is to say that the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computaitonal processes. Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake. Here's the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper subset of the class of computational processes. Physicalist theory of mind urgently required. QED I am arguing with Bruno about whether the eliminaiton of matter makes things easier for the MBP. I think it just give you less to work with. MBP?? Mind body problem At this stage, I'm really unclear on the basis of the above whether or not you actually wish to defend CTM + PM = true on a priori grounds. Would you please clarify? CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work. CTM might still be false though. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 15:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Flammarion wrote: On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia). I've also argued this, in a somewhat different form. Peter's position I think is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are compatible). Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form - seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic currently generating so much heat. UDA-8 sets out to be provable or disprovable on purely logical grounds. I for one am unclear on what basis it could be attacked as invalid. Can anyone show strong grounds for this? Of course, no argument can validly come to a metaphysical conclusion-- in this case, that matter does not exist --without making a single metaphysical assumption. I completely agree with that point, but I don't see the relevance. Comp, alias CTM, CTM does not have Platonism tacked on as a sub-hypothesis Classical Digital mechanism, or Classical Computationalism, or just comp, is the conjunction of the following three sub-hypotheses: 1) The yes doctor hypothesis: It is the assumption, in cognitive science, that it exists a level of description of my parts (whatever I consider myself to be[2]) such that I would not be aware of any experiential change in the case where a functionally correct digital substitution is done of my parts at that level. We call that level the substitution level. More simply said it is the act of faith of those willing to say yes to their doctor for an artificial brain or an artificial body graft made from some description at some level. We will see such a level is unknowable. Note that some amount of folk or �grand-mother psychology� has been implicitly used under the granting of the notion of (self) awareness[3]. 2) Church Thesis. A modern version is that all digital universal machines are equivalent with respect to the class of functions (from the natural numbers to the natural numbers) they can compute[4]. It can be shown that this entails such machines compute the same functions, but also they can compute them in similar ways, i.e. following similar algorithm. So, the thesis says, making abstraction of computation time, all digital universal machine can simulate each other exactly (I will say emulate each other). 3) Arithmetical Realism (AR). This is the assumption that arithmetical proposition, like �1+1=2,� or Goldbach conjecture, or the inexistence of a bigger prime, or the statement that some digital machine will stop, or any Boolean formula bearing on numbers, are true independently of me, you, humanity, the physical universe (if that exists), etc. It is a version of Platonism limited at least to arithmetical truth. It should not be confused with the much stronger Pythagorean form of AR, AR+, which asserts that only natural numbers exist together with their nameable relations: all the rest being derivative from those relations. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: It doesn't. It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual reduction. MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the conjunction of CTM and PM. Of course, CTM on the basis of arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification. Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation. The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering, I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true. Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim? OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal activity. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 13:48, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 Aug, 09:36, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia). I've also argued this, in a somewhat different form. Peter's position I think is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are compatible). Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form - seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic currently generating so much heat. UDA-8 sets out to be provable or disprovable on purely logical grounds. I for one am unclear on what basis it could be attacked as invalid. Can anyone show strong grounds for this? Of course, no argument can validly come to a metaphysical conclusion-- in this case, that matter does not exist --without making a single metaphysical assumption. The argument is therefore invalid, or not purely logical Again, with respect, you appear to assume that MGA I was refering to the UDA argues that matter doesn't exist. In fact it argues that CTM + PM = false, which is not the same thing at all. It is possible to retain matter as primitive (which I for one don't rule out, dependent on a more complete understanding of mind-body) whilst relinquishing an a priori hypothetical :CTM. What would be needed, as I've said elsewhere, would be an alternative theory of mind which - like any other 'transcendent' a posteriori analysis - would be capable of direct elucidation in terms of of primary physical processes. Bruno has argued separately against the plausibility of finding such a theory, but this isn't implicit in MGA, AFAICS. David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 16:41, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from contingent structures and still pretend that matter is primitive. I am saying that material existence *is* contingent existence. It is not a structure of anything. Plotinus says that too! Me too. With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not- computable or not-provable, or some relativizations. You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number. It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box.. If you believe that a deduction is not valid, you have to say where, and why. 1. Somehting X is non-computable 2. Everything is mathematical 3. Therefore X is a non-computable number. The conclusion is valid. But (2) is a belief of yours that I don't share. Hence *I* don't agree PM is a non-computable number Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the existence of primitive matter. Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each other. In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below. In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve them. If comp is assumed, some computation correspond to dream, and their existence can be proved in arithmetic. Mathematics cannot prove metaphysical claims. Backwards-E is metaphysically non-commital. And the MGA argument shows that no machine can make the difference between real, virtual and arithmetical. There is no immaterial existence at all, and my agreeign to have my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is. Meaning: UDA is non valid. I am still waiting your argument. I don't grant step 0 -- the immaterial existence of a UD or any other mathematical structure. You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions, which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum). No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that mathematical existence is ontological existence. I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence, It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny except physical existence, but this beg the question. If you don't deny the arithmetical truth, you accept arithmetical realism, and you cannot deny the UD, so you should be able to follow the argument. And if you believe the conclusion is wrong, you should say where. I have explained this over and over. I accept that true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E means ontological existence. Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything. UD exists like PI exists. That doesn't exist ontologically either The rest is taken into account in the argument that I am referring to. Don't say that PI and circle does not exists. Say that PI and circles does not exist physically. It is quite different. Even Platonists regard them as existing non-physcially. If you don't understand what the debate between Platonists, formalists , intuiotionists (etc) is about, you need to read the literature. That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence. You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is ontological RITISAR existence. I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first person is real or real as my body is real. You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning of RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body. After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies (like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger. UDA proves nothing without an argument of the actual, if non-physical, existence of numbers. See conscience mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too. So? It hasn't been. It has been implemented, and it has run for a week in 1991. This is anecdotical. Just to say that the UD is a concrete program. But it is hardly going to contain vast infinities after a week. The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest plausibility. I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive argument. A proof, that COMP = physics has to emerge from numbers. But I have also evidences for comp, in the sense that the physics which emerge from numbers is a multiversial physics, and the quantum reality makes many people to consider that
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 21:49, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:19 -0700 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware. The paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that *any* human concept is *eliminable* No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction. Not in this instance. The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept can be *eliminated* from the explanation. You can do this with 'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'. Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination. Of course it is--*according to the Quinean definition of ontology*. The strange thing about your mode of argument is that you talk as though a word like existence has some single true correct meaning, and that anyone who uses it differently is just wrong--do you disagree with the basic premise that the meaning of words is defined solely by usage and/or definitions? If so, do you agree that there are in fact different ways this word is defined by real people, even if we restrict our attention to the philosophical community? Note that I actually argued the point that paraphrase is not elimination Provided you agree with that, your posts would be a lot less confusing if you would distinguish between different definitions and state which one you meant at a given time--for example, one might say I agree numbers have Quinean existence but I think they lack material existence, or existence in the sense that intelligent beings that appear in mathematical universes are actually conscious beings with their own qualia. We might call these three notions of existence Q-existence, M- existence and C-existence for short. My argument with you has been that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, M-existence is an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all we need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence. The M-existence hypothesis is supported by the whole of science, and, unlike the C-existence hypothesis, is in line with the scientific claim that there was a long period when there was no consciousness in the universe. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 02:23, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: It doesn't. It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual reduction. MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the conjunction of CTM and PM. Of course, CTM on the basis of arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification. Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation. The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering, I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true. Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim? OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal activity. But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA proposes. MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going on', then it can't be attached to physical activity. Are you questioning that MGA constitutes a valid instantiation of a physical TM? What about Olympia? I should have added that you can;t have computaton with zero computational activity. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 13:30, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 Aug, 10:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point - I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for* eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know this). But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely the honest way that you attribute to Dennett. The trouble is, that Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem', still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts as though nothing had happened! In other words, his position is inconsistent and incoherent. It's dualism for free! Nope. He is a reductionist, not an eliminativist. So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion of computation and of computability. I would say - per Dennett, but understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself is eliminable per Qine. That isn't elimination in the sense of eliminativism. Don't misunderstand me - this is what is *wrong* with material monism - because to be consistent, one is either honestly forced to such an eliminativist conclusion (but then you must deny your own consciousness and all mental concepts), or you tacitly accept a form of dualism (but again without noticing!) So I suppose that when you say with primitive matter that you don't mean **only** with primitive matter, but rather with primitive matter + computation - which is in effect a dualistic assumption. Again, please don't misunderstand me - I regard comp as a coherent *monistic* approach to both mind and matter that seeks to 'eliminate' neither, and which brings the mind-body issues into full focus. But the assumption of PM *in addition* would transform it into a type of epiphenomenal dualism. You are still confusing reduciton/identity with elimination -- Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different notions of the sort of elimination that the term eliminative materialism entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account of the workings of the mind will not employ terms that refer to common- sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science.[4][5] But critics immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the identity theory of mind.[1][13] Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all: “ Is physicalism a repudiation of mental objects after all, or a theory of them? Does it repudiate the mental state of pain or anger in favor of its physical concomitant, or does it identify the mental state with a state of the physical organism (and so a state of the physical organism with the mental state)? [14] ” On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common- sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes or they do not.[1][13] Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.[3] - WP --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote: Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at all. I don't see any evidence for that I am explaining this right now. Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter. The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory. The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a different thesis. Of course you can have theoretical truths about computation But show me something that has been computed by an immaterial computer. CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work. CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA, including MGA, shows why this fails. What is in MGA which does not work? It's a reductio of the idea that mental states supervene on computational states. CTM must be cast as the claim that mental activity supervenes on computational activity. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 01:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/19 Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com: So someone else noticed Peter dodging the consequences of what he originally claimed with respect to Quinean paraphrase! Thanks. What consequence was that? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 00:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:59, Flammarion wrote: On 19 Aug, 15:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Flammarion wrote: On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia). I've also argued this, in a somewhat different form. Peter's position I think is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are compatible). Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form - seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic currently generating so much heat. UDA-8 sets out to be provable or disprovable on purely logical grounds. I for one am unclear on what basis it could be attacked as invalid. Can anyone show strong grounds for this? Of course, no argument can validly come to a metaphysical conclusion-- in this case, that matter does not exist --without making a single metaphysical assumption. I completely agree with that point, but I don't see the relevance. Comp, alias CTM, CTM does not have Platonism tacked on as a sub-hypothesis Classical Digital mechanism, or Classical Computationalism, or just comp, is the conjunction of the following three sub-hypotheses: 1) The yes doctor hypothesis: It is the assumption, in cognitive science, that it exists a level of description of my parts (whatever I consider myself to be[2]) such that I would not be aware of any experiential change in the case where a functionally correct digital substitution is done of my parts at that level. We call that level the substitution level. More simply said it is the act of faith of those willing to say yes to their doctor for an artificial brain or an artificial body graft made from some description at some level. We will see such a level is unknowable. Note that some amount of folk or grand-mother psychology has been implicitly used under the granting of the notion of (self) awareness[3]. 2) Church Thesis. A modern version is that all digital universal machines are equivalent with respect to the class of functions (from the natural numbers to the natural numbers) they can compute[4]. It can be shown that this entails such machines compute the same functions, but also they can compute them in similar ways, i.e. following similar algorithm. So, the thesis says, making abstraction of computation time, all digital universal machine can simulate each other exactly (I will say emulate each other). 3) Arithmetical Realism (AR). This is the assumption that arithmetical proposition, like 1+1=2, or Goldbach conjecture, or the inexistence of a bigger prime, or the statement that some digital machine will stop, or any Boolean formula bearing on numbers, are true independently of me, you, humanity, the physical universe (if that exists), etc. It is a version of Platonism limited at least to arithmetical truth. It should not be confused with the much stronger Pythagorean form of AR, AR+, which asserts that only natural numbers exist together with their nameable relations: all the rest being derivative from those relations. Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that indeed platonism is not part of it. It is a version of Platonism Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all. The CT thesis requires some mathematical claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist This should be made clear in the seventh step series thread. You told us that you are OK with AR some post ago, but now I have no more clue at all about what do you assume or not. I may well have subscribed to some truth claims Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a proposition like the statement that there is no biggest prime number has something to do with physics. In which physical theory you prove that statement, and how? Its truth is not a physical truth. The existence or non-existence asserted is not any kind of real existence Actually the most you go deep in fundamental physics, the more you need deep results in number theory. I am not denying nay truths, only the interpretation of backwards-E as actual existence --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 02:23, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: It doesn't. It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual reduction. MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the conjunction of CTM and PM. Of course, CTM on the basis of arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification. Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation. The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering, I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true. Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim? OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal activity. But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA proposes. MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going on', then it can't be attached to physical activity. I don't; want to claim there is computation still going on --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 20 Aug, 11:31, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Aug 2009, at 10:46, Flammarion wrote: Indeed, you don't believe in the number seven. But sometimes you seem to believe in their mathematical existence, and that is all what I need. No. I always qualify mathematical existence as a mere truth claim that adds up to nothing ontologically. The UD exists in the same sense than the number seven. If you don't believe in the mathematical existence of the number seven, I believe in backwards-E 7. I don't believe that is enough to generate RITSTIAR. THat would be like a fictional character coming to life then indeed you cannot go farther than step zero. I let you know you are the first person on this planet who does not believe in the mathematical existence of the number seven. I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence, It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny Formalist accept arithmetical existence. They reject set theoretical existence. They need arithmetical existence to define their formal systems. Not at all. That is more like intuitionism or something I have explained this over and over. I accept that true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E means ontological existence. When science tackle fundamental question, it is better to be agnostic and abandon any ontological commitment. Your ontological, and philosophical commitment, seems to prevent you to even read the reasoning. You have as much ontological commitment as I. Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything. UD exists like PI exists. That doesn't exist ontologically either The point is that the proof goes on with such form on not necessarily ontological existence, or you have to show where in the reasoning things get wrong. 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or generated by something else that does 2. I ontologically exist 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist. Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards to here That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence. You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is ontological RITISAR existence. I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first person is real or real as my body is real. You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning of RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body. After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies (like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger. UDA proves nothing without an argument of the actual, if non-physical, existence of numbers. I need the usual mathematical existence of number. There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology of mathematics. You are aware. are you not, that philosophers and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking and defending Platonism and other approaches? There is of course a standard set of backwards-E claims By comp, the ontic theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson Arithmetic is already enough. I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist. The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest plausibility. I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive argument. A proof, that COMP = physics has to emerge from numbers. But I have also evidences for comp, in the sense that the physics which emerge from numbers is a multiversial physics, and the quantum reality makes many people to consider that we may live in a multiversial reality. And I have also more technical evidences coming from the Arithmetical UDA. That are evidence for comp. I can't be in something that has merely mathematical existence, any more than I can be in Nanrnia ... then CTM (comp) is false, and you should help us to find the error comp is false because comp=CTM+CTT+AR CTM is not falsified. comp = CTM. It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in your SANE paper. You may repeat the contrary as much as you want, but comp is CTM. You are the one who has invented a sequence of notion like seven needs to have actual or ontological existence for the reasoning to go through, but you have never show where in the reasoning I am using such actuality or ontologicalness. in UDA, instead of just denying existence for what almost everybody accepts
Re: Dreaming On
On 15 Aug, 02:40, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/14 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I think need to take a hard line on RITSIAR. I feel that the key lies in what Bruno terms the certainty of the ontological first person (OFP): i.e. the sine qua non of reality as it is uniquely available to us. Since this is inescapably the foundation of any and all judgements whatsoever, it is simultaneously both the both point of departure and the 'what-is-to-be-explained' of RITSIAR. In this light it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities - physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the domain of epistemology. IOW - as Bruno says above - they are theoretical constructions. That doesn't follow at all. A theoretical construct can have a real referent. eg, if the theory of quarks is true , quarks exist. What else would theory X is true mean? Yes, of course, I agree with you that we take our references to have real referents. Part of our problem in discussion I think is that you tend to attribute views to me that - if I held them - would indeed be fatuous. Now, you are within your rights to say that it's my fault for giving you this impression. But I can only reply that my intention is to draw attention to something more subtle, and this is difficult. I think if I had to sum up the point of departure for more or less everything I've been saying, it would be that I question the assumption that everything we can discover or know about the world can be exhausted by describing its observable behaviour - whatever the model. This is I think what has been called the 'view from nowhere' and - wonderfully useful though it undoubtedly is, and prone as I am myself to rely on it much of the time - I'm not alone in criticising it in the context of mind-body issues. And this is because it seems to me - though I think not to you - that in this domain alone we're forced out of our view from nowhere and confronted with the fact that what we're trying to explain by observation is the very phenomenon we're using to make the observation. And this is the problem. It might be. It isn't obviously the case that cosnciousness wouldn't be able to account for itself. So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially - solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap', and it seems to me that its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and epistemology. I don;t know what explanatory gap you are talking about, but is doesn't sound like Levine's one. Well, as I imply above, I'm using ontology in the sense of 'what it is to be' - not 'what it is to describe' - so maybe we need another term to avoid confusion. So the gap is the one between these two things. What is Ontological certainty? Certainty belongs to epistemolgoy, so onotlogical can't bve qualifying certainty. Do you mean something like the one certain fact about ontology/existence? My rhetorical question was how do we reach a state of certainty about 'what it is to be' on the basis of 'what it is to describe'. Why do we need certainty? To which my response is that we can't, because in the area of the first person we have indubitable acquaintance with at least some aspect of the former. That doesn't support the conclusion by itself. You also need to argue for lack of certainty in descriptions And in my view, this acquaintance is so alien to 'what is described' with regard to consciousness , or generally? that the assumption of the gap being bridged on the basis of *any* model of observability can only be a brute apriori assumption. Now I know that many people aren't troubled by this, and some just are. Frankly, by this stage I'm ready to put it down to differences in imaginative style, what we're trying to achieve personally with our thinking, or something equally idiosyncratic. I don't really believe it can be resolved entirely by persuasion. Do you concede that many aspects of mind -- cognition, memory and so on -- are not part of any Hard Problem? Realism doesn;t need the existence of a non-mental world to be a certainty, it just needs it to be more plausible than the alternatives. Yes, in general I agree with you. Then what is the significance of Ontological Certainty? But I suppose on the mind-body question, the various positions that I've successively tried to hold on to (and I think I've traversed most of them over the last 30 years or so) having become less and less plausible to me. I don't want to be a mysterian, but I think that the assumption that with a bit more effort we've got the mind sorted on the basis of current theories will turn out to be more like Lord Kelvin's notorious dicta on black-body radiation and the ether wind.
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 21 Aug, 17:25, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 Aug, 09:37, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Yes, of course you're right - perhaps I didn't phrase my response to Jesse clearly enough. In my discussion with Peter about Quinean 'eliminative paraphrasing', I was pursuing the same conclusion that you attribute to Dennett as an 'honest materialist'. That is, under materialism, that persons, consciousness - and computation - must in the end be explained away, or conceptually *eliminated*. Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as explaining away qua elimination. Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out below. But it's a false distinction, as I point out below. But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point - I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for* eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know this). But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely the honest way that you attribute to Dennett. The trouble is, that Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem', still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts as though nothing had happened! The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind (with the possible exception of qualia) in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the sense of Reductive materialism. What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia! The whole point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of the account you're an eliminativist. Qualia are precisely what is being eliminated. He is a selective eliminativist. He is not being inconsistent. Having eiminated qualia, he deosn;t continue to talk about them. He does continue to talk about memory, thought and perception, but then he hasn't eilminated them. In other words, his position is inconsistent and incoherent. It's dualism for free! In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is. What do you mean? Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto- dualist? Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative reductive materialism is something different than either of these? he is eliminativist about qualia and reductionist about everything else. So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion of computation and of computability. I would say - per Dennett, but understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself is eliminable per Qine. No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it). EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept eliminated should never subsequently be used even as a place-holder or shrothand Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be paraphrased as a specific physical process. This means that this computation is identical to that physical process. 'Computation' is therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense). Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever. Yes, yes, and yes. Why would that be a problem? Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that 'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this. Uh-huh. And where are you getting your information on eliminativism from? This would be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would be struck dumb. Only if we eliminated everything,. and only if we did not have substitute theory. Elimiativists think terms like thought will simply be abandoned as part of a failed theory, (like phlosgiston), rather than continuing as convenient but not entirely accurate shorthand. But they don't expect this to happen until the replacement theories are perfected. So they don't expect to be struck dumb. There is no problem with using the 'eliminated' concept as a shorthand (indeed this is explicitly proposed in the Quinean excerpt you commented). Says who? Eliminativists argue that there is. You may not agree, but you cannot conclude that no-one holds those views. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminativism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 19 Aug, 15:16, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:33, Flammarion wrote: On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course. But then your reasoning has to be false too. The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not Turing-emulable, Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated? It seems that your argument uses MGA to conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing- emulable=Turing-emulated. It seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have a correct argument showing they are material. But this is already well known from brain in a vat thought experiments. OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning leading to our primitive materiality. If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the UD*. I did not use MGA here. That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued with the full force of necessity -- I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so. Where? Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find a trace. Other than that. all pointing out that I might be in a UDA and therefore wrong doesn't mean I am wrong now. only that I am not necessarily right. If you don't think the UDA is meant to show that I am not necessarily right, maybe you could say what it is meant to show although your own argument does not have that force. If there is a weakness somewhere, tell us where. The conclusion of your argument *is* a necessary truth? In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM is not impacted much ? Ex(x = UD) is a theorem of elementary arithmetic. backwards-E x=UD is indeed true. Schools should not be teaching that backwards-E means ontological existence, since that is an open question among philosophers. I have been taught elementary arithmetic in school, and I don't think such a theory has been refuted since. You will tell me that mathematical existence = non existence at all. You are the first human who says so. I am not the first formalist. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 24 Aug, 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Aug 2009, at 21:10, Brent Meeker wrote: But you see Brent, here you confirm that materialist are religious in the way they try to explain, or explain away the mind body problem. I can imagine that your consciousness supervene on something uncomputable in the universe. But we have not find anything uncomputable in the universe, except the quantum indeterminacy, but this is the kind of uncomputability predicted by the comp theory (and AUDA suggested it is exactly the uncomputable aspect of the universe predicted by comp). So you are postulating an unknown property of matter just to make the comp theory false. This is really a matter-of-the gaps (cf god-of-the gaps) use of matter. No uncomputable property is needed. If it is a fact that consc. supervenes directly on matter, then no immaterial machine or virtualisation can be conscious. That does not prove CTM false, but it does disprove the argument that if physics is computible, then the CTM is true --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 26 Aug, 01:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Just so. To recapitulate the (approximate) history of this part of the discussion, Peter and I had been delving into the question - posed by him - of whether a complete scan of a brain at the subatomic level could in principle capture all the available 'information'. So my rider about brain-mind correlation was in the context of that specific question posed in that specific way. As to your more general musings John, I suppose the line I've been pursuing is questioning the applicability of the soi-disant 'view from nowhere' - i.e. the notion of 'information' as being comprehensible in any totally extrinsic, abstracted, uninterpreted sense. Because we can't help being fish, we can't help but swim in our interpretations. And we can only guess what oceans alien fish may swim in. That is really rather tangential to the original claim. The original claim was that all the information in subjective awareness is also in the phsycial brain. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 27 Aug, 01:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/27 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: The idea of 'being' somebody (or thing) else already assumes dualism. It assumes some 'I' that could move to be Stathis or a bat and yet retain some identity. But on a functionalist view 'I' already am Stathis and a bat - in other words there is no 'I', it's the creation of viewpoint by each functional entity. In that case being someone else in incommunicable in principle because the concept in incoherent. Well, I completely agree with all of that, but what made you think that what I was saying was anything to do with being somebody else? I think I did a bad job of articulating my line of argument. As I've said, I can't make any sense of a functionalist view on the basis of PM. To be coherent, functionalism must treat physical entities as mere relational placeholders, I can't see why. Note that funcitonalism is only a claim about minds. not a claim that everyhting si a function and hence the supplementary assumption of PM or any other primitively non-functional ontology is either simply redundant or weirdly dualistic AFAICS. PM is not redundant if it introduces contingencty and thereby solves the WR problem. I thought this before ever encountering Bruno's ideas, but his articulation of comp has given me another angle of attack on this key intuition. To be clear: I'm not per se arguing against functionalist accounts, but like Bruno I believe that their task is to explain the *appearance* of the material, not their own spooky emergence from it. But beyond even that, what I was articulating was my own version of strict eliminativism. IOW if we sincerely want to be monists we must be ready in principle to reduce *all* our various conceptual accounts to one in terms of the differentiables of a single ontic context. Yes--NB reduce And unless we're eliminativists about personal existence, that had better be the one we already occupy. Why.? Since reduction does not *remove* what is reduced, but only identifies it with a reduction base. Physical reductionists just have to say their minds are their brains, not that their minds are non- existent. There's a tendency to argue this context away as merely epistemic and not ontic, I stil don't know what you mean by that but this distinction can be shown to collapse with very little logical effort. I know not everyone accepts this view, especially in the 'hard' sciences, but there are very notable exceptions, some of them amongst its most distinguished practitioners. Obviously, for this to have any chance of success as a programme, all the other accounts must be in principle paraphraseable as aspects or modalities of this single contextual account, but again IMO the standard arguments against this seem to miss the point. David David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/26 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I don't see that. I conjectured that with sufficient knowledge of the environment in which the alien functioned and input-outputs at the corresponding level, one could provide and account of the alien's experience. I was my point that simply looking at the alien's brain, without the context of its function, would not suffice. I can't tell what you mean by provide an account. Do you mean that one could provide some account of all this in functional terms that *we could interpret* in ways that made contextual sense *for us* - standing in, as it were, for the alien? If so, this is what I meant when I said to Stathis that it really becomes equivalent to the problem of other minds, in that if we can coax the data into making sense for us, we can extrapolate this by implication to the alien. But that would tend to make it a rather human alien, wouldn't it? The question is whether PM is sufficient to describe the system. Language is almost certainly inadequate to describing what it is like to 'be' the system - you cannot even fully describe what it is like to be you. I'm questioning something more subtle here, I think. First, one could simply decide to be eliminativist about experience, and hold that the extrinsic PM account is both exhaustive and singular. In this case, 'being' anything is simply an extrinsic notion. But if we're not in this sort of denial, then the idea of 'being' the system subtly encourages the intuition that there's some way to be that simultaneously satisfies two criteria: 1) Point-for-point isomorphism - in some suitable sense - with the extrinsic description. 2) An intrinsic nature that is incommunicable in terms of the extrinsic description alone. Even if there PM and functionalism is true, (1) and (2) are dubious. Extrinsic descriptions are necessarily in terms of shared experiences and so may not be complete. Incommunicable is ambiguous. It could mean impossible in principle or it could mean we haven't
Re: Dreaming On
On 21 Aug, 16:39, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/21 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
Do you concede that many aspects of mind -- cognition, memory and so
on --
are not part of any Hard Problem?
Yes, absolutely. But I think our basic divergence is that I say you
can't end up at these destinations unless you buy the ticket at the
point of departure - the ticket being what I've called self-access
(i.e. as a characteristic of the situation as a whole, not of parts
taken in isolation).
I don't think self-access is part of the Hard Problem either. It isn't
difficult to get a computer to report on its internal state.
Look, when I asked you how far down in our
analysis of the material do we have to go before the entities are no
longer material? your reply was in effect all the way down.
Note that in these discussions there is a distinction between Primary
Matter and Emprirical
Matter. Empirical Matter is known through its properties and
behaviour. PM isn't,
hence the suspicion that it is redundant. The link between PM an
contingency itself is the
response to that, and it ensures that no contingent discvoery can
elimnate PM.
I think physicalism has been generally succesful and as much
of it should be retained as possible. hence the need to focus
on the key issues in the MBP
Yes, I wouldn't disagree with the spirit of that. But I also say we
must continue to be alert to the possibility of gaps in some of our
basic assumptions. I think part of the trouble is that to be
successful at anything, one has to push like mad, and this inevitably
leads - most especially when a particular approach has been very
successful - to the tendency to push it beyond usefulness. It probably
can't be avoided. All I'm saying is that there is a long-standing
metaphysical corrective that has always stood to one side of
physicalism, and from time to time it's worth carefully reconsidering
it.
And what is this corrective? You think a small amount
of anti-relaism can be mixed in with materialism? You think
a small amount of idealism can be mixed in?
Yes, but my view is that mind-body shows us that to consider the
referent of a theoretical statement to be something 'external' is in
fact the category error - i.e. the view from nowhere again.
Referents are external by definition. So you must be sayign that no
theory ever has a referent. But you have not said why.
I'm drawing attention to the fact that 'external' and 'internal' are
epistemic polarisations
Well, when the terms are taken literally they are spatial...
which, in terms of any consistent monism, must
be seen as aspects of a unique ontic continuum. When we carefully
examine what is entailed in conscious 'observation' we find that the
very act of qualitatively reifying or embodying local representations
This is most unclear. Is a “local representation” meant to
be a mental representation? Is reifying it supposed to be
taking it to have referent?
entails the draining of proper ('internal') qualities from their
putative referents, thus 'externalising' them and abandoning them to
the realm of the 'non-conscious'. So the 'red apple' is embodied
'redly' in my consciousness, but the qualitative embodiment of the
referent is not thereby locally realised. This is the fons et origo
of the MBP, IMO. More below.
I couln't make any sense of that at all.
Someone
(can't remember who) put it like this: what is the external world
supposed to be external to?
My head
Yes, but try to see that in the context of what I said above. What
I'm saying requires a shift in viewpoint. If you don't make it - even
experimentally - what I'm saying will inevitably sound like gibberish.
OTOH, trying it for size doesn't commit you to the purchase.
Maybe it requires me to make a shift in viewpoint, maybe it
requires you to use more normal vocabulary.
YOu still haven't said about how you got into contact with the inner--
or at least any inner other than your own.
Well, I'm not arguing for solipsism, so I reason on the basis that my
inner isn't that much different to yours.
That just gives you more than one noumenal self. What about
the noumena of chairs and tables?
As for getting into
contact, perhaps this is the crux. I think that your view of
consciousness is that it is mere epistemology,
No. (I don't even use “epistemology” that way. Nothing “is”
epstemology
except discussions of truth and knowledgeamongst philosophers).
and hence that it can't
in and of itself tell us anything fundamental about ontology.
I don't think it revelas it sown ontology. OTOH, it must somehow
be taken accounto fi in any succesful ontology because everything
must.
Well
you know of course that this is disputed - Bishop Berkeley, Vedanta,
the perennial philosophy, etc - and on what I think are good logical
grounds. If I assume that my experience is a matter *merely* of
observation, I can't help getting
Re: Dreaming On
On 21 Aug, 21:01, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: Do you think that if you scanned my brain right down to the atomic level, you still wouldn't have captured all the information? That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However, those concerned about the hard problem, will point out that this misses the fact that the information represents or means something. To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with meaning, which means within a certain context of action. But figuring out stored sensory information should be about the easiest part of the task. If you can trace a pathway from a red sensor to a storage unit, the information in the unit has to mean this is red. What is hard about the Hard Problem is *not* interpretation or context. It is easier to write a book on the van Gogh's iconography than it is to explain how The Sunflowers *looks*. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 21 Aug, 20:40, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Aug 2009, at 17:39, David Nyman wrote: With UDA alone, of course not. But AUDA does provides a a theory of qualia which explains why no 1- person can and will ever explain the qualitative feature of its qualia. It treats qualia as *cognitive* blind spots. But having quale which you can't expalin is a perceptual experience , it is not like being unable to recall a fact. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 26 Aug, 17:58, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 26 Aug 2009, at 17:58, Brent Meeker wrote: What about lower levels? Surely it doesn't matter whether 10,000 K+ cross the axon membrane or 10,001 cross. So somehow looking at just the right level matters in the hypothesis of functionalism. Maybe that level corresponds to the level at which the organism acts; the functions evolved to support and direct actions. Rocks don't act so they don't have any functional level. You are right. A simpler example is a dreamer and a rock, and the whole universe. They have locally the same input and output: none! So they are functionally identical, On the most coarse-grained view possible. yet very different from the first person perspective. This is why in comp I make explicit the existence of a level of substitution. It is the only difference with functionalism which is usually vague on that point. It is a key point. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov). And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the independance of implementation if computations are not real ? Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says real instances of computation are identical to physical processes. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 27 Aug, 20:11, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/27 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: and hence that it can't in and of itself tell us anything fundamental about ontology. I don't think it revelas it sown ontology. OTOH, it must somehow be taken accounto fi in any succesful ontology because everything must. I've considered the various comments you've made recently and I've been wondering how best to proceed in our discussion, to try to avoid going round in circles. I'd like to focus on the question of ontology. You say above that consciousness doesn't reveal its own ontology. If by this you mean that consciousness - in virtue of its mere presence - doesn't provide its own analysis, then of course this is obviously true. But this is not what I'm getting at here. I've said pretty clearly that I'm trying to articulate some of the implications of an 'eastern' metaphysics such as Vedanta. A typical statement in this tradition is something like everything is consciousness, and this is indeed broadly the sense in which I'm ascribing ontological primacy to this category. I'm more interested in grounds than implications. If consc. does not reveal its own ontology, some other grounds are needed for making it basic. The term consciousness carries so much freight that I'd prefer some more neutral expression such as primitive self-availability, but as you've said, non-standard vocabulary carries its own burden. Anyway, it's the uneliminable intrinsic availability that Chalmers is getting at in his zombie reductio. Any claim on this as the primitive ontic substrate, naturally entails that all other accounts must in principle be reducible or paraphraseable in terms of it, and I think that in fact Chalmers' own information-based dual-aspect approach has something useful to say on this score. Essentially, at the end of the short exposition in Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness, he summarises the problems pretty well, and comes up with more or less the same intuition, adjusting for vocabulary. Here's the quote: Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world. For example, it is often noted that physics characterizes its basic entities only extrinsically, in terms of their relations to other entities, which are themselves characterized extrinsically, and so on. The intrinsic nature of physical entities is left aside. Some argue that no such intrinsic properties exist, but then one is left with a world that is pure causal flux (a pure flow of information) with no properties for the causation to relate. If one allows that intrinsic properties exist, a natural speculation given the above is that the intrinsic properties of the physical - the properties that causation ultimately relates - are themselves phenomenal properties. We might say that phenomenal properties are the internal aspect of information. This could answer a concern about the causal relevance of experience - a natural worry, given a picture on which the physical domain is causally closed, and on which experience is supplementary to the physical. The informational view allows us to understand how experience might have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the intrinsic nature of the physical. This metaphysical speculation is probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite suggestive. IOW, he proposes - with charming professional tentativeness - that experience is the intrinsic nature of the physical - i.e. in Quinean terms, everything is reducible to experience. This allows him to paraphrase the extrinsic physical account as 'pure causal flux' - i.e. the abstractable relational properties of what exists. It is of course this abstractability or extrinsicality that makes it at the same time shareable and incomplete. Completing the account - adding back the interpretation of the causal flux - then depends on *being* the 'instantiation' of the flux - i.e. the intrinsic properties in the specified relation. It would interest me to see how the foregoing squares with the criticisms you've recently made, and whether we can at least see exactly where the divergence is situated. David 1. It seems reasonable that relations must have relata. However, relata need not have a rich set of properties. You could build a physical universe out a single type of particle and various relations. 2. Someone's perceptual data are already encoded relationally in the matter of their brain, so if qualia are intrinisc properties of relata, something needs to arrange that they encode the same information, so some novel laws ar required in addition to novel properties, 3,. The Grain problem
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 02:20, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world. For example, it is often noted that physics characterizes its basic entities only extrinsically, in terms of their relations to other entities, which are themselves characterized extrinsically, and so on. The intrinsic nature of physical entities is left aside. Some argue that no such intrinsic properties exist, but then one is left with a world that is pure causal flux (a pure flow of information) with no properties for the causation to relate. ?? Is momentum an intrinsic orextrinsicproperty of an electron? Yes, very much extrinisic since it is actually momentum relative to something else What about spin? Yes, again it has to be measured against a magnetic field. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 08:42, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 27 Aug 2009, at 19:21, Flammarion wrote: On 24 Aug, 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Aug 2009, at 21:10, Brent Meeker wrote: But you see Brent, here you confirm that materialist are religious in the way they try to explain, or explain away the mind body problem. I can imagine that your consciousness supervene on something uncomputable in the universe. But we have not find anything uncomputable in the universe, except the quantum indeterminacy, but this is the kind of uncomputability predicted by the comp theory (and AUDA suggested it is exactly the uncomputable aspect of the universe predicted by comp). So you are postulating an unknown property of matter just to make the comp theory false. This is really a matter-of-the gaps (cf god-of- the gaps) use of matter. No uncomputable property is needed. If it is a fact that consc. supervenes directly on matter, then no immaterial machine or virtualisation can be conscious. OK. But to be honest I have no clue what matter can be in that setting, nor what directly could possibly mean in consciousness supervenes *directly* on matter. I think that you are saying or meaning that for a computation to have consciousness, the computation needs to be implemented in a real material reality, but that is the point which MGA makes epistemologically inconsistant. That does not prove CTM false, but it does disprove the argument that if physics is computible, then the CTM is true We have both physics is computable entails my brain is computable which entails I can say yes to the doctor, which entails CTM. No we don't for the reasons given. And we have that physics is computable entails CTM is false (because by UDA, CTM entails that physics cannot be entirely computable, and it is an open problem if that non computability comes only from what is contingent in the computational histories). The white rabbit can be made *relatively* rare (in QM, or in comp) but can never disappear. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 02:27, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: On 21 Aug, 21:01, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: Do you think that if you scanned my brain right down to the atomic level, you still wouldn't have captured all the information? That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However, those concerned about the hard problem, will point out that this misses the fact that the information represents or means something. To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with meaning, which means within a certain context of action. But figuring out stored sensory information should be about the easiest part of the task. If you can trace a pathway from a red sensor to a storage unit, the information in the unit has to mean this is red. What is hard about the Hard Problem is *not* interpretation or context. I'm not so sure about that - maybe more is different applies. This is red is really a summary, an abstraction, of what the red sensor firing means to the alien. To a human it's the color of blood and has connotations of violence, excitement, danger. To an alien with green blood... from a planet with red seas...? If you knew all the associations built up over a lifetime of memories and many lifetimes of evolution maybe the 'hard problem' would dissolve. Not at all. That theory predicts that some entirely novel sensation-- one which has not built up any associations --should be easy to describe. But it isn;t. And in fact describing associations is a lot easier than describing the core phenomenal feel. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 09:50, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 28 Aug, 07:27, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/27 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov). And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the independance of implementation if computations are not real ? Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says real instances of computation are identical to physical processes. If everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations aren't real. That still doesn't follow. Water=H2O doesn't mean water is unreal. Also that doesn't answer how it account for the independance of implementation. A type of computation is an equivalence class of physical instances. They fall into the class by being susceptible to the same abstract definition, not by having the same extra phsyical property. This is no more mysterious than the fact that you can have quite a physcally varied class of cubic things. Shape is multiply realisable too. As the computation is not primary, how 2 different physical process could generate the same computation without abstract computations being the only thing that link the two processes having existence. You do need abstract computations, but you don't need Platonic computations. Not all abstracta are Platonic. Check out the difference between Platonic and Ariostotelean forms. How can you make sense of church-turing thesis if only realized computations make sense ? Non-Platonic bstracta can make sense. Platonism supplies reference, not sense. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 07:27, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/27 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov). And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the independance of implementation if computations are not real ? Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says real instances of computation are identical to physical processes. If everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations aren't real. That still doesn't follow. Water=H2O doesn't mean water is unreal. Also that doesn't answer how it account for the independance of implementation. A type of computation is an equivalence class of physical instances. They fall into the class by being susceptible to the same abstract definition, not by having the same extra phsyical property. This is no more mysterious than the fact that you can have quite a physcally varied class of cubic things. Shape is multiply realisable too. As the computation is not primary, how 2 different physical process could generate the same computation without abstract computations being the only thing that link the two processes having existence. You do need abstract computations, but you don't need Platonic computations. Not all abstracta are Platonic. Check out the difference between Platonic and Ariostotelean forms. How can you make sense of church-turing thesis if only realized computations make sense ? Non-Platonic bstracta can make sense. Platonism supplies reference, not sense. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 21 Aug, 20:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote: On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote: Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at all. I don't see any evidence for that I am explaining this right now. Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter. The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory. The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a different thesis. Of course you can have theoretical truths about computation But show me something that has been computed by an immaterial computer. A Schmidhuberian computationalist would probably answer: look around you. But I have explained why this is not enough, and why a prori comp makes the observable reality not the output of one program (but a view from inside from all execution of all programs). I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first person point of view). There is no UD. Comp, or CTM, leads to a many types no token view of reality. Token are seen as such by being appearances from the point of view of an abstract subject coupled to an (infinity of) abstract computations. CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work. CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA, including MGA, shows why this fails. What is in MGA which does not work? It's a reductio of the idea that mental states supervene on computational states. CTM must be cast as the claim that mental activity supervenes on computational activity. I agree. Consciousness is attached to computation (and not to computational states), even at the starting of the reasoning, and also when the physical supervenience is introduced in MGA for the reductio ad absurdum. Then, eventually, keeping CTM, and thus abandoning (weak) materialism, consciousness is related to, well not just a computation, but to an infinite sheaves of computations. Consciousness is a first person notion, and as such, is dependent on the first person uncertainty measure brought by the first person indeterminacy. This is why I take time to explain what is a computation, or a computational activity, in purely arithmetical terms. A computation is not just a sequence of computational states, it is a sequence of computational states related by at least one universal machine (and then an infinity of them, from the point of view of the conscious being, observably so when he/she looks below its substitution level). Classical physics become the study of our most probable computations, which emerge from the statistical interference of all computations going through my relevant states (the relevance being dependent of the observer's comp-substitution level). Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that indeed platonism is not part of it. It is a version of Platonism The wording is not important. Maybe you could flag the wording that we are supposed to take serioulsy. The point is that in the assumption of CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith), I am using that version of platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we have to abandon weak materialism or CTM. Nope. Assumptions about truth don't get you a UD which is capable of simulating me. You need a claim about existence. You argument is either based on Platonism or invalid Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all. The CT thesis requires some mathematical claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence or not of a material world. There is no usual interpretation, it is disputed. Formalists don't think backeards-E has any existential implications at all Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and aspatially true or false. Truth and falsehood don't buy you an immaterial computer simulating me and eveything I see. Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a proposition
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 12:53, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 10:52, Flammarion wrote: On 28 Aug, 08:42, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 27 Aug 2009, at 19:21, Flammarion wrote: On 24 Aug, 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 22 Aug 2009, at 21:10, Brent Meeker wrote: But you see Brent, here you confirm that materialist are religious in the way they try to explain, or explain away the mind body problem. I can imagine that your consciousness supervene on something uncomputable in the universe. But we have not find anything uncomputable in the universe, except the quantum indeterminacy, but this is the kind of uncomputability predicted by the comp theory (and AUDA suggested it is exactly the uncomputable aspect of the universe predicted by comp). So you are postulating an unknown property of matter just to make the comp theory false. This is really a matter-of-the gaps (cf god-of- the gaps) use of matter. No uncomputable property is needed. If it is a fact that consc. supervenes directly on matter, then no immaterial machine or virtualisation can be conscious. OK. But to be honest I have no clue what matter can be in that setting, nor what directly could possibly mean in consciousness supervenes *directly* on matter. I think that you are saying or meaning that for a computation to have consciousness, the computation needs to be implemented in a real material reality, but that is the point which MGA makes epistemologically inconsistant. That does not prove CTM false, but it does disprove the argument that if physics is computible, then the CTM is true We have both physics is computable entails my brain is computable which entails I can say yes to the doctor, which entails CTM. No we don't for the reasons given. The reason above concerns immaterial machine. Not material one, like in comp alias CTM. (Then MGA proves that matter emerges from number relation, once we assume CTM, but this is not relevant). Are you really saying that if the laws of physics are computable, then we have to say no to the doctor? No. The computability of physics does not entail either the truth or the falsehood of CTM This seems to contradict many statements you have made in preceding posts. Bruno --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 22 Aug, 00:38, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 Aug, 19:04, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as explaining away qua elimination. Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out below. But it's a false distinction, as I point out below. But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point - I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for* eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know this). But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely the honest way that you attribute to Dennett. The trouble is, that Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem', still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts as though nothing had happened! The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind (with the possible exception of qualia) in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the sense of Reductive materialism. What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia! The whole point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of the account you're an eliminativist. Qualia are precisely what is being eliminated. He is a selective eliminativist. He is not being inconsistent. Having eiminated qualia, he deosn;t continue to talk about them. He does continue to talk about memory, thought and perception, but then he hasn't eilminated them. In other words, his position is inconsistent and incoherent. It's dualism for free! In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is. What do you mean? Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto- dualist? Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative reductive materialism is something different than either of these? he is eliminativist about qualia and reductionist about everything else. In that case he's an eliminativist about consciousness.. So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion of computation and of computability. I would say - per Dennett, but understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself is eliminable per Qine. No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it). EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept eliminated should never subsequently be used even as a place-holder or shrothand Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be paraphrased as a specific physical process. This means that this computation is identical to that physical process. 'Computation' is therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense). Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever. Yes, yes, and yes. Why would that be a problem? Well, if now you think there's no problem, perhaps you'd like to reconsider what you meant by no above. I try my best to respond to your comments, but it seems to me that you react as though you had never made them. I mean it is false that: Under the assumption that there is *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be no appeal to such a notion as computation, Because instances of compuitation are not eleiminated, they are *identified* with physical processes. Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that 'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this. Uh-huh. And where are you getting your information on eliminativism from? This would be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would be struck dumb. Only if we eliminated everything,. and only if we did not have substitute theory. Elimiativists think terms like thought will simply be abandoned as part of a failed theory, (like phlosgiston), rather than continuing as convenient but not entirely accurate shorthand. But they don't expect this to happen until the replacement theories are perfected. So they don't expect to be struck dumb. In that case they're 'replacementists' rather than 'eliminativists', wouldn't you say? It doesn't help to re-arrange the vocabulary They just want to replace one shorthand with another
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 25 Aug, 08:22, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:38, Flammarion wrote: That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued with the full force of necessity -- I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so. Where? Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find a trace. I wake up this morning realizing this was not your usual statement that I am implicitly assuming what I am proving. So actually you may be right, I do believe that PM has to be argued. The key phrase is: with the full force of necessity --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 13:51, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Is functionalism monism, property dualism, or might it even be a form of substance dualism? Monism --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 17:07, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: On 28 Aug, 02:27, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: On 21 Aug, 21:01, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: Do you think that if you scanned my brain right down to the atomic level, you still wouldn't have captured all the information? That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However, those concerned about the hard problem, will point out that this misses the fact that the information represents or means something. To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with meaning, which means within a certain context of action. But figuring out stored sensory information should be about the easiest part of the task. If you can trace a pathway from a red sensor to a storage unit, the information in the unit has to mean this is red. What is hard about the Hard Problem is *not* interpretation or context. I'm not so sure about that - maybe more is different applies. This is red is really a summary, an abstraction, of what the red sensor firing means to the alien. To a human it's the color of blood and has connotations of violence, excitement, danger. To an alien with green blood... from a planet with red seas...? If you knew all the associations built up over a lifetime of memories and many lifetimes of evolution maybe the 'hard problem' would dissolve. Not at all. That theory predicts that some entirely novel sensation-- one which has not built up any associations --should be easy to describe. But it isn;t. And in fact describing associations is a lot easier than describing the core phenomenal feel. Does that theory refer to more-is-different? ISTM that more-is-different implies exactly what you point out. It's easier to describe a sensation that has lots of associations because describe it in terms of the associations; whereas a completely novel sensation is impossible describe. if that is so, it negates the claim that the HP is nothing more than the difficulty of describing meanings and associations --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 18:02, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 17:58, Brent Meeker wrote: If the physical laws are turing emulable, then whatever is responsible for my consciousness can be Turing emulable at some level (I assume some form of naturalism/materialism or computationalism).OK? If not, your brain (generalized or not) does not obeys to the laws of physics. That may buy you no more than mere simulation. The CTM is a stronger claim than the computability of physics. it means that you will get actual implementation (strong AI) and not just simulation (weak AI) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 18:15, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2009/8/27 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov). And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the independance of implementation if computations are not real ? Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says real instances of computation are identical to physical processes. If everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations aren't real. Also that doesn't answer how it account for the independance of implementation. As the computation is not primary, how 2 different physical process could generate the same computation without abstract computations being the only thing that link the two processes having existence. How can you make sense of church-turing thesis if only realized computations make sense ? Regards, Quentin Try substituting lengths for computations. Are lengths primary because the same length can occur in different physical objects? Brent Why would I ? It's not the same thing at all... You could have said substitute by 'red'... there are multiple physical red object. And there are multiple computaitons.. The thing is you can come up with an infinity of physical (possible) realisation for a given computation. And and infinity of red objects. So the question is what is linking the computation to the physical realisation if not the abstract rules (which don't exists with physicalism, because there exists only realized computations... no abstract thing) ? Physicalism doesn't reject abstract entities, it rejects immaterial entities. Abstracta are arrived at by ignoring irrelevant features of individual objects. The die and the sugar cube both fall under cubic once their material constitution is ignored --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 28 Aug, 22:47, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2009/8/27 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov). And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the independance of implementation if computations are not real ? Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says real instances of computation are identical to physical processes. If everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations aren't real. Also that doesn't answer how it account for the independance of implementation. As the computation is not primary, how 2 different physical process could generate the same computation without abstract computations being the only thing that link the two processes having existence. How can you make sense of church-turing thesis if only realized computations make sense ? Regards, Quentin Try substituting lengths for computations. Are lengths primary because the same length can occur in different physical objects? Brent Why would I ? It's not the same thing at all... You could have said substitute by 'red'... there are multiple physical red object. The thing is you can come up with an infinity of physical (possible) realisation for a given computation. So the question is what is linking the computation to the physical realisation if not the abstract rules (which don't exists with physicalism, because there exists only realized computations... no abstract thing) ? Lengths are abstract to, but we don't take them to be fundamental. Your reasoning is Platonism; you end up reifying every abstraction simply because they are common to multiple realizations. Brent I still disagree (about your wording game)... computation is not a property of a thing like a length is, it's a process. That's a difference that doesn't make a difference There are any number of examples of multiply instantiable processes--- photosynthesis, digestion and so on. And yes I assume abstract rules simply exists... that's what allows me to build concrete realisation of such computation. People who don't believe in the immaterial existence of abstract rules can do that too. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 30 Aug, 07:54, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 29 Aug 2009, at 20:34, Flammarion wrote: On 28 Aug, 18:02, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 17:58, Brent Meeker wrote: If the physical laws are turing emulable, then whatever is responsible for my consciousness can be Turing emulable at some level (I assume some form of naturalism/materialism or computationalism).OK? If not, your brain (generalized or not) does not obeys to the laws of physics. That may buy you no more than mere simulation. The CTM is a stronger claim than the computability of physics. it means that you will get actual implementation (strong AI) and not just simulation (weak AI) In that sense, I am OK here. Actually strong AI is even weaker than CTM. Be that as it may, neither is directly implied by the computability of physics My reconstitution can believe wrongly that he is me, yet conscious. But I was assuming some naturalism here, and if the physical laws are computable, and I still say no to the doctor, then my identity is no more defined by the computation, but by the actual matter which constitutes me, That is one reason for saying no. Another is that your identity *is* given by the computation (in line with the idea that PM is propertiless), and that the computation needs to run on the metal (at 0 levelsof virtualisation) to be genuinely conscious and not just an ersatz functional equivalent. and then comp (CTM) is no more correct (although strong AI could still be correct). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 30 Aug, 22:21, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: Ok, so you want to solve the hard problem right at the beginning by taking conscious thoughts as the basic elements of your ontology. No I don't - that's why I said I'd rather not use the word consciousness. What I have in mind at this point in the argument is a primitive, not an elaborated, notion - like PM vis-a-vis materialism, or AR vis-a-vis comp. Then it is going to meet similar objections: we do not introspect a featureless Primary Consciousness, we introspect a kaleidoscope of thoughts sensations and moods. It's more an attempt to characterise our metaphysical *situation*: i.e. the intuition that it is enduring, immediate, self-referential and self-relative. Actually, reflecting on exchanges with Bruno, I wonder if one might well say that this position is globally solipsistic. That reads like a contradiction in terms to me Just as we intuit the first person as a stubbornly solipsistic, does that include the 99.99% of people who intuit that solipsism is crazy? self-referential, self-reflecting attractor in an otherwise unconscious flux, we can intuit the integration of all such perspectives as a truly global solipsism. ? The attribution of 'conscious' and 'unconscious' can then be seen relative to perspective. But if everything is conscious, then a lot of the attributions are false The solipsism is justified in each perspectives' assessment of itself as uniquely conscious, simply because this is true relative to its own self-reflection; what lies behind the mirror's surface is no longer self but 'other' (or IOW one's generalised 'unconscious'). Crikey! Look, if there is more than one consciousness then solipsism is false, and it is therefore unjustified. But the saving grace is that this can be intuited as equally true for all other perspectives. Aside from this though, there is more to be said on the subject of instantiation, which is what I think Chalmers is really driving at - see below. But you could suppose that all possible (logically consistent) monads exist and then try to solve the white rabbit problem, why do some things happen and others don't (at least apparently). I don't of course have any special insight here, other than the obvious comment that there appear to be two approaches: contingent and everythingist, each with its characteristic problems. We can only hope that there may in the end be an empirical resolution to this. Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, I don't know what that means. I'm afraid I must refer you to the original: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html ?? Is momentum an intrinsic or extrinsic property of an electron? What about spin? I'm not sure this 'extrinsic'/'intrinsic' distinction means anything. Well, you must be the judge. Either it doesn't mean anything, or it means everything. Of course words are not in themselves realities. Whatever exists presumably does not possess properties whether extrinsic or intrinsic. Why on earth not? But we may take 'intrinsic' as a bare solipsistic self-reference, That isn't even remotely what chalmers means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_properties_(philosophy) and 'extrinsic' to refer to any further conceptual attribution whatsoever. Under this characterisation, any description or formulation of spin is an extrinsic reference, but the implied solipsistic self-reference is intrinsic. In the philosophic tradition, I suppose intrinsic could also be seen - more or less - as referring to Kant's ding an sich selbst, as long as this is understood as encompassing appearance within its ambit. It just mean non-relational. When Chalmers characterises 'experiential properties' as intrinsic, I would translate this as a claim about instantiation, and indirectly about substitution level. What he's saying essentially is that the fundamental 'entities' of physics, characterised purely extrinsically, are content-less placeholders for algebraic relationships. For such extrinsically-defined relata to be instantiated solipsistically ??? necessitates translation through the filter of an appropriate theory into intrinsic differentiables (e.g. hypothesised as 'number' in the case of AR). The intrinsicality points to the fact that we lack the means to characterise such differentiables inter-subjectively, except ostensively. No, he's just talking about properties of individuals that are in fact entirely proper to those individuals and not a realtion to something else. They are the domain of the true but not provable precisely in that they *constitute* a level of instantiation. What can be abstracted from that level is restricted to its extrinsic relationships, but these can be re-instantiated, and consequently facsimiles of the original can
Re: Dreaming On
On 31 Aug, 00:21, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/28 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: 1. It seems reasonable that relations must have relata. However, relata need not have a rich set of properties. You could build a physical universe out a single type of particle and various relations. What we're trying to get to here, remember, is *many* intrinsically differentiable forms of instantiation. I thought we were trying to get at an analysis of Chalmers's theory. I can't make sense of the above (instantions of what?) Hence for what you say to meet the case (which I would certainly not reject out of hand), any unique intrinsic nature you envisage for the particle would need to be capable of emergence, purely in virtue of combination in terms of its various relations, into many such intrinsically differentiable forms. forms of what? Does that seem feasible on this basis? Let's work on comprehensible for the time being... 2. Someone's perceptual data are already encoded relationally in the matter of their brain, so if qualia are intrinisc properties of relata, something needs to arrange that they encode the same information, so some novel laws ar required in addition to novel properties, I'm not sure if I follow you. Nothing is 'already' encoded. Yes it is. That is fact, it is known from fMRI technology. As I said to Brent, we mustn't be misled into supposing that the state of affairs to which we refer literally 'possesses properties'. You have said it , but you haven't said why. That there are some sorts of things with some sorts of properties is about the least contentious claim I can think of. As I see it, the 'perceptual data' consist in; 1) An instantiation or substitution level which is self-referentially organised in terms of intrinsic differentiables in intrinsic relation. I don't have the faintest idea what that means. By perceptual data, I mean detectable changes in neurological activity, the kind of thing neuroscientists study. This is the qualitative 'causal level' and as such exists independent of any extrinsic characterisation. It makes no reference outside of itself. 2) Second-order 'extrinsic' accounts abstracted from and referring to level (1). These accounts are themselves also instantiated at level (1). In terms of the above, the 'laws' are simply whatever regularities are abstractable at the level of the extrinsic account (2). The instantiation level is not in itself abstractable, but can be nonetheless be referred to ostensively via the exchange of relational data. As Chalmers implies, the 'subtle causal effect'(!) of the instantiation is to provide a substrate of realisation without which the extrinsic account lacks any referent. Consequently any characterisation of level (2) accounts as independently 'causally closed' fundamentally mistakes the direction of inference. 3,. The Grain problem I really can't fathom why anybody thinks that there is a grain problem. ISTM that this is taking full-scale reflective consciousness altogether too much for granted. One might as well complain that there should be a grain problem with respect to matter - after all, why isn't the brain just explicable at the level of molecules, or atoms. It is. I think, to use Chalmers' notorious terminology, that the grain problem is susceptible to 'easy' solution. For example - and I emphasise that this is merely suggestive - conscious perception as we know it provides us with an experience of time which is utterly at odds with either flux or block temporal models - i.e. the notions that time at the 'objective' level is either utterly ephemeral or enduringly spatial. That we experience a specious present rather than an infinitely thin time-slice is very easily explained by data storage, which is itself easily explained itself as a by product of data-transmission latencies. I agree there is a problem with the block model. I have no idea what this has to do with the GP On the basis of this we might well suppose that any experience even approximating to subjective consciousness is very far from supervening directly on some process naively considered as a simple traverse 'through time'. But the claim that qualia per se are the intrisic properties of fundamental particles is a claim that cosnc. or that aspect of consc. *does* supervene directly on the fine-grained physical structure. You are not *resolving* the problem, you are just saying the initial claim is false. We should instead perhaps envision a) highly-evolved, multi-level, subject-relative processes of abstraction, synthesis and editing with b) high dependence on successions of (very) short-term memory-based gestalts that instantiate the qualitative temporal content of the 'specious present', c) whose adaptive function - to speak teleologically - is to mediate sophisticated discrimination of, and response to, co-evolving
Re: Against Physics
On 9 Aug, 06:55, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage. If that's what the future held for me, then that's exactly what I would do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that, since it wouldn't be in my future. If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to make your mind up in the present --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Against Physics
On 31 Aug, 19:15, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Flammarionpeterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 9 Aug, 06:55, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage. If that's what the future held for me, then that's exactly what I would do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that, since it wouldn't be in my future. If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to make your mind up in the present Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my mind up for me, Asssuming physcialism, your brain is you and not some external force pulling your strings based on the initial conditions of the universe plus the laws of physics. Given those two things, my choice is a forgone conclusion. Assuming the laws of the universe are deterministic Assuming UDA/platonism...the same holds true. My experience of choosing exists eternally amongst the infinities of computational relations between all the numbers. Either way, there is only the epiphenomenal experience of making my mind up...not the actuality of doing so. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 28 Aug, 16:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote: On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote: 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or generated by something else that does 2. I ontologically exist 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist. Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards to here 5. But the UD exists only mathematically. Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence. There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology of mathematics. For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a general mathematical agreement. No there isn't. What is the disagreement? The age old debate about whether numbers exist There may be no philosophical argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non philosophical reasoning. Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons with mathematical proofs. Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive- science/philosophy/theology. No. *CTM* is. Comp* is your own fusion of CTM with Platonism It is an assumption that a form of reincarnation is possible. This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not purely mathematical. It is not going anywhere without some ontological assumptions either. since it has an ontological conclusion. You are aware. are you not, that philosophers and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking and defending Platonism and other approaches? Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as something far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all mathematicians agree. I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist. So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise a doubt about the existence of seven? No. A doubt about the ontological existence of seven leads to a doubt about the rest. I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist. Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues of showing what they miss in the argument. Hmm. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you. My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician, computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!). But it is a philosophical thesis, since its conclusion is the nature of existence. The point remains: there *is* a debate so there is *not* a standard ontology. It is believed explcitly by many physicists too, like David Deutsch, Roger Penrose, and those who use math in physics. I never said no-on beliieves Platonism. I said some people belive other things. Therefore it is contentious, therefore it is needs jsutification. It is more efficacious to see if the consequence of comp, believed by many, are verified by nature. It's the consequences of CTM+Platonism By comp, the ontic theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson Arithmetic is already enough. I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist. This may be the root of your problem. comp = CTM. It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in your SANE paper. All right. As I said: comp is CTM + 2 + 2 = 4. Nope, mere truth does not buy the immaterial existence of a UD But from 2+2 = 4 and CT, you can derive the existence of UD. Only the mathematical existence. Classical logic is just a formal rule. It depends on the realm in which you apply classical logic. In computer science people admit that a running program will either halt, or not halt, even in case we don't know. This is a non formal use of classical logic. It still does not demonstrate the immaterial existence of computers no-one has built. No one has ever build the prime numbers. No. They were not built. they did not spontaneously spring into being, they do not exist at all. Bivalence is not Platonism Exactly. This is one more reason to distinguish carefully arithmetical realism (bivalence in the realm of numbers), and Platonism (something huge in philosophy and theology). Even more reason to distinguish between AR qua truth and AR qua existence. Yes, and I use only AR qua truth. Then you cannot come to any valid conclusion about my existence. I may ask you what are your evidence for a primary matter, or for your notion of AR qua physical existence. You dismiss matterial existence assuming Platonic existence I dismiss Platonic existene assuming material existence. I may
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 28 Aug, 15:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 13:47, Flammarion wrote: On 21 Aug, 20:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote: I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first person point of view). There is no UD. You are meaning no physical UD. I don't need a physical UD in the reasoning. I mean no existent UD, material or immaterial Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that indeed platonism is not part of it. It is a version of Platonism The wording is not important. Maybe you could flag the wording that we are supposed to take serioulsy. I have explained to you why it is preferable to avoid the term Platonism for the belief that classical logic can be applied in arithmetic I think the term Arithmetical Realism should be avoided when it is not clear whether it is a claim about truth or about existence. . Even mathematicians does not call that Platonism, which they use for the general idea that classical logic applies to a much larger part of math. Arithmetical realism is better: it is the belief that the truth of arithmetical sentence exists independently of any means (humans, theories, machines, universes, ...) to study them. The point is that in the assumption of CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith), I am using that version of platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we have to abandon weak materialism or CTM. Nope. Assumptions about truth don't get you a UD which is capable of simulating me. You need a claim about existence. You told me this before, and I did explain that I am use the truth of the existential statement in arithmetic, as my unique claim about existence. And I put forward the counterargument that you can have true statements about existence, where the existence in question is not literal ontological existence. You need to argue that backwards- E means RITSIAR, and not just existence in some fictional or formal structure. You argument is either based on Platonism or invalid Yes, it based on Turing theorem, which with CT can be sump up by universal digital machines exist. Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all. The CT thesis requires some mathematical claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence or not of a material world. There is no usual interpretation, it is disputed. For set theoretical realism. Not for the natural numbers. Yes, for natural numbers. Even the existence of the number one is disputed among philosophers I mean nobody, except you and ultrafinitist, doubt about the mathematical existence of natural numbers. They can doubt about deeper existence of those numbers, but I am not using this. Are you criticizing all theories using natural numbers (from economy to physics)?. As I have pointed out endlessly, I think the standard backwads-E statements of arithmetic are *true* , I just don't think backwards-E *means* ontological existence. Formalists don't think backeards-E has any existential implications at all Formalist does not believe in primary matter either. I think most of them do. That claim requires some support at least. And they do believe in formal systems, which *doesn't* mean immaterial systems. Formal systems exist in mathematician's brain, books, and blackboards for materialists+formalists. which have sense only through naïve arithmetic. This dodge the issue, nevertheless, because you can add formal to all existential quantifier in the reasoning without changing the conclusion: formal physics has to be reduced to formal number theory. It does change the conclusions. If the UD does not exist immaterially, or materially, it does not exist, and therefore I and physics are not being simulated on it. You cannot valldly derive an existential conclusion without making existential assumptions. Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and aspatially true or false. Truth and falsehood don't buy you an immaterial computer simulating me and eveything I see. Fortunately numbers and math are still free. If CTM is correct, you are emulated infinitely often in the UD*. It exists (mathematically) like PI and square-root of two. Which is to say, it does not really exist at all, and is merely said to exist in a formal game. Get the feeling you have change your mind
Re: Dreaming On
On 31 Aug, 17:57, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/31 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: If the lower level is discarded, the qualia aren't there. So where are they? Since you find this mode of thought so uncongenial, let's focus on this single issue for now. I don't want to say that lower levels are completely discarded, since that of course would not meet the case. I'm saying that they are qualitatively discarded *at their own level* (i.e. 'forgotten') though still contributive to levels constructed in terms of them. What I'm trying to steer you towards is that postulating either brute qualitative 'consciousness' or brute qualitative 'unconsciousness' gets us nowhere, and for the same reason: ex nihilo nihil fit, and hence on this basis either everything is conscious or nothing can be. Rather I'm suggesting that we wonder about what could be 'memorable' (or not) *in context*. In this way we could start to think about how contexts could emerge in terms of which specific contents could be retained or discarded. I think that a little introspection shows that what is not remembered in context is as good as unconscious. David That says nothing about qualia at all. Do you think Chalmers suggestion that qualia are intrinsic properties of fundamental particles is feasible or not? On 31 Aug, 00:21, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/28 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: 1. It seems reasonable that relations must have relata. However, relata need not have a rich set of properties. You could build a physical universe out a single type of particle and various relations. What we're trying to get to here, remember, is *many* intrinsically differentiable forms of instantiation. I thought we were trying to get at an analysis of Chalmers's theory. I can't make sense of the above (instantions of what?) Hence for what you say to meet the case (which I would certainly not reject out of hand), any unique intrinsic nature you envisage for the particle would need to be capable of emergence, purely in virtue of combination in terms of its various relations, into many such intrinsically differentiable forms. forms of what? Does that seem feasible on this basis? Let's work on comprehensible for the time being... 2. Someone's perceptual data are already encoded relationally in the matter of their brain, so if qualia are intrinisc properties of relata, something needs to arrange that they encode the same information, so some novel laws ar required in addition to novel properties, I'm not sure if I follow you. Nothing is 'already' encoded. Yes it is. That is fact, it is known from fMRI technology. As I said to Brent, we mustn't be misled into supposing that the state of affairs to which we refer literally 'possesses properties'. You have said it , but you haven't said why. That there are some sorts of things with some sorts of properties is about the least contentious claim I can think of. As I see it, the 'perceptual data' consist in; 1) An instantiation or substitution level which is self-referentially organised in terms of intrinsic differentiables in intrinsic relation. I don't have the faintest idea what that means. By perceptual data, I mean detectable changes in neurological activity, the kind of thing neuroscientists study. This is the qualitative 'causal level' and as such exists independent of any extrinsic characterisation. It makes no reference outside of itself. 2) Second-order 'extrinsic' accounts abstracted from and referring to level (1). These accounts are themselves also instantiated at level (1). In terms of the above, the 'laws' are simply whatever regularities are abstractable at the level of the extrinsic account (2). The instantiation level is not in itself abstractable, but can be nonetheless be referred to ostensively via the exchange of relational data. As Chalmers implies, the 'subtle causal effect'(!) of the instantiation is to provide a substrate of realisation without which the extrinsic account lacks any referent. Consequently any characterisation of level (2) accounts as independently 'causally closed' fundamentally mistakes the direction of inference. 3,. The Grain problem I really can't fathom why anybody thinks that there is a grain problem. ISTM that this is taking full-scale reflective consciousness altogether too much for granted. One might as well complain that there should be a grain problem with respect to matter - after all, why isn't the brain just explicable at the level of molecules, or atoms. It is. I think, to use Chalmers' notorious terminology, that the grain problem is susceptible to 'easy' solution. For example - and I emphasise that this is merely suggestive - conscious perception as we know it provides us with an experience of time which
Re: Against Physics
On 11 Aug, 16:38, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/11 Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com: Standard physicalism, on the other hand, by banishing self-access from its fundamental notions of causal adequacy (though arrogating the right to whisk a mysteriously powerless ghost of it back later by sleight of intuition) is clearly false (incomplete is the more politic term). Why can't self-access be existent but non-fundamental? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 01:25, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/31 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Peter, surely you must see that in saying abstracta are arrived at by ignoring irrelevant features of individual objects you are simply agreeing with Quentin that if everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations aren't real. The instances are real, the kind is not. His argument clearly shows that by not real he means that under PM there is no final appeal to some 'abstract causal structure' beyond the physical. Who needs it? It certainly isn't needed for anything in Computer Science But since I've never detected anything of this sort in your own views, what precisely are you disputing? No coherent causal account in terms of PM is at liberty to ignore irrelevant features in perpetuity. Who says it does? The deal with PM is that, though such abstracted schemata are indeed borrowed promiscuously, such loans are made on the strict understanding of their being ultimately repayable in fully reduced physical coin. Every instance is 100% physical. Abstraction is a process performed by minds which are then cashed out as brains. Otherwise ignoring their material constitution is tantamount to ignoring their existence. It is not ingnored when dealing with the instance/token, only when dealing with the class/type Consequently, CTM in the context of PM is simply not a *physical* explanation - in fact, it treats PM as *irrelevant* to the attribution of consciousness. That doesn't remotely follow from anything you have said. What it would take to make it a physical explanation would be a method of showing exactly how each specific instantiation of a putatively invariant computational consciousness is separately reducible to a justified physical causal account of consciousness. Huh? The whole point of CTM is that physical details are unnecessary to explain consciousness beyond their ability to implement the right software. Hence it doesn't matter what a person had fro breakfast or what colour an AI's casing is. But this is infeasible for two reasons. Firstly CMT under PM is a brute apriori assumption that makes no direct reference to physical causality, and hence eludes any justification in terms of it. That's a non-sequitur. Just about any claim has an implicit background structure. CTM can rest on a standard account of how computers work physically. That is just engineering and not really the same are if concern. not explicitly mentioning does not mean inexplicable in terms of Secondly, it is precisely this non-physical postulate of CMT that masks what is a direct contradiction in terms. What non-physical postulate? Under strictly physical analysis, the equivalence it postulates - i.e. that arbitrarily many heterogeneous PM dispositions (a) instantiate the same homogeneous physical state (b) It doesn't postulate physcial equivalence, it postulates computatioal equivalence. - simply evaporates, since in making any plausible appeal to direct physical explanation (a) and (b) could only coherently be characterisations of identical physical systems. David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 01:21, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 31 Aug, 15:14, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would not put AR on the same par as PM(*). I know that Peter have problem with this, but AR does not commit you ontologically. It is just the idea that arithmetical propositions are either true or false. Yes, I think I finally understand your view on this. It relies on the denial of CTM+PM as a theory of mind, I thought it was supposed to be a disproof Anyone can deny something but does not thereby rule out the conceivability of a level of zero-virtuality supervening on PM. Rather it shows that, for any putative computational realisation of mind, any such attribution is both absolutely unknowable and causally irrelevant. I have argued that it is unknowable in the sense that sceptical hypotheses sucha s the BIV are undisprovable, We generally disregard them anyway, since, for one thing, we would have no idea which to accept. This clearly unmasks any such notion of PM as a superfluous assumption with respect to CTM, and Occam consequently dictates that we discard it as any part of the theory. Au contraire, occam requires us to throw away the assumptions that we are 1 level deep, 2 levels deep... in a virtualisation. Real reality is the simplest assumption IOW it is the prior assumption of CTM itself that drives the chain of inference, as you have always claimed. And I further agree that *on the basis of CTM* it then follows that no meaning of 'exist' should be taken literally. It is very much to your credit that you have laid bare these hidden implications of CTM, as I think they are central to most of the myriad confusions that surround it. If people have a complaint about the implications, they cannot now dodge the fact that this disquiet is unavoidably entailed by CTM itself. David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 00:46, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/31 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: It's more an attempt to characterise our metaphysical *situation*: i.e. the intuition that it is enduring, immediate, self-referential and self-relative. Actually, reflecting on exchanges with Bruno, I wonder if one might well say that this position is globally solipsistic. That reads like a contradiction in terms to me Etc, etc Peter, I must say that I sometimes find your style of commenting unhelpful. Any attempt to set out one's ideas - however inadequate the result may be - must rely on some sequencing of thought in which an earlier statement may depend on a later. Consequently when you interpolate the flow of the narrative with constant expostulations of this sort I have to wonder how much time you permit to elapse before concluding that what I say must be incoherent, deluded, or simply wrong. Does that mean you gave an explanation of global solipsism somewhere? Any of the foregoing might indeed be true, but since I don't force you to make comments on what I write, we might both gain more from the exercise if you made it more readily apparent that you reach your conclusions a little less precipitately. I think you should be more concerned about the long passages I am not commenting on. That is becuase I find them completely incomprehensible. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 00:09, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/31 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: That says nothing about qualia at all. It would be helpful if we could deal with one issue at a time. Most of the passage you commented on was intended - essentially at your provocation - as a contextual exploration of possible conditions for recallable consciousness experience, not an explication of qualia per se. But the context of the thread was you asking me about Chalmer's theory of intrinsic qualia. I answered that relevantly. You appear to have drifted off. But you haven't commented on this. OK. Memory is relevant to consciousness. It is relevant specifically to access consciousness. it is also easily explained physically and not therefore part of the HP and not therefore of much philosophical interest. By the way, if you have a simple extrinsic account of the phenomena of the specious present, I'd be genuinely interested in more detail. I think I gave one. Slow communications in the brain=short term information storage=specious present You could hardly *not* have one. As to qualia, I've said before that I believe qualitative instantiation to be beyond extrinsic explanation (though not beyond indirect reference) for the simple reason that all explanation takes place in terms of it That couldn't be more wrong. Mathematical/structural/functional thinking is qualia-free, and the HP is the problem of recovering qualia from a description in those terms (if you're wondering what this means I trust a little introspection will suffice). Done that, came to opposite conclusion. Do you think Chalmers suggestion that qualia are intrinsic properties of fundamental particles is feasible or not? I doubt, despite standard usages suited to technical ends, that talk of properties is helpful in this regard. Are you ever going to say what this problem with properties is? There are fundamental problems with any attempt to attach first-person consciousness to matter, PM or material structures and processes? for the obvious reason that matter cannot be reduced to individually identifiable entities. PM or material structures and processes? Consequently, the self-referential I is attachable only contextually to some overall schema in which fundamental differentiation - physical or otherwise (e.g. 'computational') can then play a processual role. Can't matter have processes? I've remarked before that 'knowledge' must be regarded in the final analysis as ontic - i.e. we *instantiate* what we know - the subject-object distinction in mentality is merely a metaphor inferred from the polarisation of roles. When I've said this in other contexts you've usually reacted with bewilderment, so if this still seems opaque perhaps you could specify what is unclear. Anyway, on this basis we might think of qualitative instantiation as consisting in peculiarly differentiated ways-of-being, as distinct from the unbroken symmetry of the undifferentiated context. As an aid to intuition, you could think of this distinction in broadly similar terms to those you have proposed for 'property-less' materiality as an enduring existential substrate for extrinsic physical properties. Err yeah. How about you explain this property issue. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 10:58, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I think you should be more concerned about the long passages I am not commenting on. That is becuase I find them completely incomprehensible. In that case you may wish to reconsider whether there is any point in your commenting at all. I don't see how it helps anyone's understanding - mine, yours or any other reader's - if you seize on fragments isolated from a background of incomprehension. Well, not commenting at all is indeed the only other option -- or the only other one I can initiate. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 11:09, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: This clearly unmasks any such notion of PM as a superfluous assumption with respect to CTM, and Occam consequently dictates that we discard it as any part of the theory. Au contraire, occam requires us to throw away the assumptions that we are 1 level deep, 2 levels deep... in a virtualisation. Real reality is the simplest assumption Peter, you need to keep firmly in mind that the superfluity of PM follows on the *assumption* of CTM. The razor is then applied on the basis of that assumption. If you prefer a theory of mind based on real reality, fair enough, but then you must face the conclusion that CTM is no longer tenable in that role. No, none of that follows from CTM alone. Bruno is putting forward the Sceptical Hypothesis that I am being simulated on a UD. However, if I am entiteld to assign a very low likelihood to that SH along with all the many others, alowing me to know in a good-enough way that matter is real, reality is real etc. It is very important in these arguments to distinguish between certain knowledge and good-enough knowledge. BTW--why doens't O's R cut away Platonia in favour of a smaller material universe? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 11:16, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Exactly, if mind is a computational process, there is no way for it to know it is being simulated on the level 0 of the real (if there is one). There would be *no difference* for it if it was simulated on virtual machine running on a virtual machine running on a virtual machine running on this level 0. Peter claims that level 0 is needed... but why ? I claim that that is a *possiblity* and as such is enough to show that CTM does not necessarily follow from the computability of physics. If mind is computation, level 0 plays no role in consciousness. If CTM is true, I could run Peter with an abacus and that Peter would still forcelly argues that HE IS ON LEVEL 0... which is totally untrue in that case. And if I were a wizard I could trapsort you to Narnia and make you believe you were still in France. The CTM does indeed have hypotetical implciations about virtualisation, but nothing follows from that. There is no implication from I might be virtualised to I am virtualised any more than from I might be BIV.. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 11:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 10:49, Flammarion wrote: Can't matter have processes? But in that line of discussion, the question should be: can primary matter have processes. You said yourself that primary matter is propertyless. How something without property can implement processes, with or without qualia? PM has no essential properties, but is the bearer of all otther properties. It can implement a computation in just the same way it can be red. (Althoguh the combinatin PM+red is of course not PM. It is only PM as a bare substrate). I begin to think that your primary matter is even incompatible with physicalism. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 11:19, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Peter, I've considered whether anything is to be gained from my responding further, and much as I regret coming to this conclusion, I don't think we can make any further progress together on this topic. If such were possible, I suspect it would require a great deal more patience and willingness to consider world-views more comprehensively, probably on both our parts, rather than reciprocal logic-chopping that strikes me as fundamentally at cross-purposes. Yeah. Or you could just answer my questions. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 12:26, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Peter, you need to keep firmly in mind that the superfluity of PM follows on the *assumption* of CTM. The razor is then applied on the basis of that assumption. If you prefer a theory of mind based on real reality, fair enough, but then you must face the conclusion that CTM is no longer tenable in that role. No, none of that follows from CTM alone. Bruno is putting forward the Sceptical Hypothesis that I am being simulated on a UD. However, if I am entiteld to assign a very low likelihood to that SH along with all the many others, alowing me to know in a good-enough way that matter is real, reality is real etc. It is very important in these arguments to distinguish between certain knowledge and good-enough knowledge. Well, the either the Olympia/MGA reductios entail this consequence, or they don't. You imply that they don't, but you still haven't put forward a clear refutation in a fully explicit form that could be considered here on its merits. No-one's put forward a clear statement of it either. Until you can do this, it isn't a question of certain or good-enough knowledge, but rather about the logical entailment of CTM itself. It's about both. It can have entail possibilities that are very unlikely. This is an extremely non-trivial point: the burden of the argument is that CTM entails a reversal in world-view; it is fundamentally incompatible with a materialist metaphysics. BTW--why doens't O's R cut away Platonia in favour of a smaller material universe? That is a tenable view. But not with the simultaneous assumption of CTM. Because? That is the point. I should say that my starting position before encountering Bruno's views was against the tenability of CTM on the basis of any consistent notion of physical process. Bruno hasn't yet persuaded me that an explicitly non-computational theory of mind on some such basis is actually untenable. But he has awakened me to the reverse realisation that a non-materialist world-view can tenably be founded on CTM coupled with Platonism. David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 31 Aug, 15:38, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 31 Aug 2009, at 15:47, Flammarion wrote: On 30 Aug, 07:54, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 29 Aug 2009, at 20:34, Flammarion wrote: On 28 Aug, 18:02, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 17:58, Brent Meeker wrote: If the physical laws are turing emulable, then whatever is responsible for my consciousness can be Turing emulable at some level (I assume some form of naturalism/materialism or computationalism).OK? If not, your brain (generalized or not) does not obeys to the laws of physics. That may buy you no more than mere simulation. The CTM is a stronger claim than the computability of physics. it means that you will get actual implementation (strong AI) and not just simulation (weak AI) In that sense, I am OK here. Actually strong AI is even weaker than CTM. Be that as it may, neither is directly implied by the computability of physics We agree on this. My reconstitution can believe wrongly that he is me, yet conscious. But I was assuming some naturalism here, and if the physical laws are computable, and I still say no to the doctor, then my identity is no more defined by the computation, but by the actual matter which constitutes me, That is one reason for saying no. But then biology makes you at most seven years old. We do have evidence that our body molecules are replaced rather quickly. Another is that your identity *is* given by the computation (in line with the idea that PM is propertiless), and that the computation needs to run on the metal (at 0 levelsof virtualisation) to be genuinely conscious and not just an ersatz functional equivalent. But then you say no the digit-doctor and CTM is abandoned. Yes, it is supposed to be a reason for sayign no. The point is that it si a reason compatible with teh computability of physics. People who say no do not have to be assuming uncomputatiblity as you keep insisting. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 31 Aug, 15:14, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 30 Aug 2009, at 23:21, David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: Ok, so you want to solve the hard problem right at the beginning by taking conscious thoughts as the basic elements of your ontology. No I don't - that's why I said I'd rather not use the word consciousness. What I have in mind at this point in the argument is a primitive, not an elaborated, notion - like PM vis-a-vis materialism, or AR vis-a-vis comp. I would not put AR on the same par as PM(*). I know that Peter have problem with this, but AR does not commit you ontologically. if it doesn't, there is no UD, and no existential conclusions follow from your arguments. It is just the idea that arithmetical propositions are either true or false. It is an initial segment of all theories capable to prove the existence of universal machine (be it quantum mechanics, Newtonian Physics, real numbers + trigonometry, etc.). Only philosopher of mathematics can doubt it, and even here, few doubt it. A slightly variant of AR works for intuitionism. I really think you have to be an ultrafinitist to believe that AR is false. AR is used implicitly by formalist, and formalist can use formal version of AR, except the day they do say consciopusly (aware of the risk) yes to a digitalist doctor Bivalence (AR qua truth) is indeed used by a lot of people, but it doesn't buy you an ontologically exisiting UD. PM is a metaphysical commitment that a primary substance exists. It is already part of a theology, in the large sense of the word. AR is used by everyone, PM is argued by theologians and philosophers. PM does not really appears in the theories by physicists. AR is explicitly used by them. AR is used when you say that sin2pix = 0 has an infinity of solutions, for example. You can doubt it, of course, but then you have to accept ultra-finitism, or something like that. CT is a principle already far stronger and far more counter-intuitive than AR. yet I have never met someone doubting CT, and as I will show in detail soon enough, CT just makes no sense at all without AR. Bruno (*) AR = Arithmetical realism, PM = primary substance exists CT = Church's Thesis (Post's law, Turing's thesis, Church-Turing's thesis, etc.). http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 15:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 13:08, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: That is the point. I should say that my starting position before encountering Bruno's views was against the tenability of CTM on the basis of any consistent notion of physical process. Bruno hasn't yet persuaded me that an explicitly non-computational theory of mind on some such basis is actually untenable. But he has awakened me to the reverse realisation that a non-materialist world-view can tenably be founded on CTM coupled with Platonism. With respect, Peter, you continue to miss the point. What Bruno has demonstrated is that CTM as a mind-body theory (which is what UDA-8 shows it must be) makes no ontological commitment *by its very virtuality*. Or rather, any such commitment is shown to be vacuous. There's got to be somehting at the bottom of the stack. Bruno wants to substitue matetr with Platonia as the substrate. If there is nothing at the bottom of the stack, there are no virtualisations running higher up. Consequently under CTM, one is committed to RITSIAR=virtual, not RITSIAR=platonic. CTM only suggests that I *could* be virtualised. Alternatively I could be running on the metal. I do wish you guys would undertand that Possible X = actually X is a fallacy. Now, one obviously has the option *precisely in virtue of this* to dismiss CTM as itself vacuous. But this is the value of the insight: its force is to commit you to these explicit choices, and hence to cease vacillating between incompatible theoretical conjunctions. No incompatibility has been demonstrated. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 14:40, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 12:04, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Yeah. Or you could just answer my questions. The problem is the world of assumption contained in your use of just. Really? There is no possibility of a context-free 'objective' exchange of views. There must be some sympathetic matching of contexts of understanding, even if only for the honourable purpose of comprehending a viewpoint as intended in order to discount it with a clear conscience. it is standard practice for lecturers to ask for quesitons when they have finished. They do that because it works -- it clears up misudnerstandings. Assuming that miscommunication has to be the audiences fault doesn;t work. I have never seen that in a professional settign but it is quite common on usenet. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 15:50, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 1 Sep, 15:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 13:08, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: That is the point. I should say that my starting position before encountering Bruno's views was against the tenability of CTM on the basis of any consistent notion of physical process. Bruno hasn't yet persuaded me that an explicitly non-computational theory of mind on some such basis is actually untenable. But he has awakened me to the reverse realisation that a non-materialist world-view can tenably be founded on CTM coupled with Platonism. With respect, Peter, you continue to miss the point. What Bruno has demonstrated is that CTM as a mind-body theory (which is what UDA-8 shows it must be) makes no ontological commitment *by its very virtuality*. Or rather, any such commitment is shown to be vacuous. There's got to be somehting at the bottom of the stack. Bruno wants to substitue matetr with Platonia as the substrate. If there is nothing at the bottom of the stack, there are no virtualisations running higher up. There's no bottom. Why would you need one ? It's turtle all the way down ! That's another version of Platonia and therefore still an ontological commitment. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 16:32, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 16:32, Flammarion wrote: On 1 Sep, 15:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 13:08, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: That is the point. I should say that my starting position before encountering Bruno's views was against the tenability of CTM on the basis of any consistent notion of physical process. Bruno hasn't yet persuaded me that an explicitly non-computational theory of mind on some such basis is actually untenable. But he has awakened me to the reverse realisation that a non-materialist world-view can tenably be founded on CTM coupled with Platonism. With respect, Peter, you continue to miss the point. What Bruno has demonstrated is that CTM as a mind-body theory (which is what UDA-8 shows it must be) makes no ontological commitment *by its very virtuality*. Or rather, any such commitment is shown to be vacuous. There's got to be somehting at the bottom of the stack. Bruno wants to substitue matetr with Platonia as the substrate. If there is nothing at the bottom of the stack, there are no virtualisations running higher up. Consequently under CTM, one is committed to RITSIAR=virtual, not RITSIAR=platonic. CTM only suggests that I *could* be virtualised. Alternatively I could be running on the metal. I do wish you guys would undertand that Possible X = actually X is a fallacy. So you have a problem with the indexical approach of time, and space. i don't know what you mean by that. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 16:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 17:46, Flammarion wrote: On 1 Sep, 16:32, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 16:32, Flammarion wrote: On 1 Sep, 15:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 13:08, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: That is the point. I should say that my starting position before encountering Bruno's views was against the tenability of CTM on the basis of any consistent notion of physical process. Bruno hasn't yet persuaded me that an explicitly non-computational theory of mind on some such basis is actually untenable. But he has awakened me to the reverse realisation that a non-materialist world-view can tenably be founded on CTM coupled with Platonism. With respect, Peter, you continue to miss the point. What Bruno has demonstrated is that CTM as a mind-body theory (which is what UDA-8 shows it must be) makes no ontological commitment *by its very virtuality*. Or rather, any such commitment is shown to be vacuous. There's got to be somehting at the bottom of the stack. Bruno wants to substitue matetr with Platonia as the substrate. If there is nothing at the bottom of the stack, there are no virtualisations running higher up. Consequently under CTM, one is committed to RITSIAR=virtual, not RITSIAR=platonic. CTM only suggests that I *could* be virtualised. Alternatively I could be running on the metal. I do wish you guys would undertand that Possible X = actually X is a fallacy. So you have a problem with the indexical approach of time, and space. i don't know what you mean by that. The indexical approach of time is that now, is any moment as see as from that moment point of view. Similar ideas have been used by Galilee, Everett, Einstein, and there is a modern movement in philosophy of physics which vindicates a more general use, like the one I am using where actuality is possibility or consistency as seen from inside. All block universe approaches are based on that idea. See for example: I don't see what that has to do with the possible=actual fallacy Now, Time, and Quantum Mechanics, edited by Michel Bitbol and Eva Ruhnau, Frontière, Paris, 1994. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 17:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 09:49, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: There are two points you make that I'd like to comment specifically on: OK. Memory is relevant to consciousness. It is relevant specifically to access consciousness. it is also easily explained physically and not therefore part of the HP and not therefore of much philosophical interest. I agree that this is not part of the HP. It is however highly relevant to the grain issue and the apparent conscious-unconscious dichotomy, which are two of the things you have been pressing me on. Well, it might explain why we have a coarse-grained something-or- other, but it doesn't explain why that something-or-other would be qualia. Hence given such relevance I can hardly agree that it lacks philosophical interest. By the way, if you have a simple extrinsic account of the phenomena of the specious present, I'd be genuinely interested in more detail. I think I gave one. Slow communications in the brain=short term information storage=specious present You could hardly *not* have one. Yes, I thought this was probably what you had in mind. This is what I meant by the assumption of a simple traverse through time, and hence your proposal is at odds with either flux or block models of time. The slow communications you refer to, under the flux interpretation, would simply decompose into multiple slices, which taken individually could not plausibly constitute the specious present. Not at all. Slow communications would mean that any time-slice of the brain contained information that arrived at the periphery of the nervous system at an earlier time slice. I am leanign on the idea that we access the past trhough records existing in the present. You seem to be resing on the idea that we have to have some sort of direct access to the past. Hence short term information storage outside such individual slices already presupposes some form of integration 'through time' - i.e. across slices. It presupposes that one moment of time *causes* what happens in later moments. What's wrogn with that? This points to the fact that there is something deeply counter intuitive about our actual experience of the 'present moment' with respect to either of the standard temporal analyses. I stil don't see any real problem with the specious present. My strong suspicion (and be clear I'm not putting it any higher than this) is that the same mechanism that synthesises and presents integrated temporal experience (think of melody as opposed to pitch) is also central to the qualitative aspect of self-conscious states. IOW there's something going on that both integrates and differentiates the internal worlds we inhabit, in this characteristic way, that is not analysable in terms of simple linear process through the standard time dimension of physics. You mean the specious present specifically isn't capable of physical analysis? That is very far from demonstrated. I would also suspect that this is relevant to why qualia have been so elusive on the basis of such analyses. The basic 'temporal' notion bears some family resemblance to ideas such as Barbour's time capsules, although in discussion he did not commit definitively on the precise relationship between this conception and the full duration of the specious present. David time capsules are just what I am talking about. Why would you need anythign more for the specious present than a snapshop some of which is out of date? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 17:29, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 18:11, Flammarion wrote: On 1 Sep, 16:34, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Sep 2009, at 16:53, Flammarion wrote: That's another version of Platonia and therefore still an ontological commitment. No, it is the same arithmetical truth, but from the first person perspective. A bottomless stack that has no ontological existence is irrelevant. I can't be implemented by what doesn't exist. By comp, mainly by Church thesis only, you (in the third person sense) are implemented in the mathematical UD. OK? The mathemaitcal UD doesn't exist. The rest, that is that the first person-you-with-qualia appears also there, in a highly distributed form, follows from MGA. Bruno Either it is warmed-over Platonia or it is nothing. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Emulation and Stuff
On 31 Aug, 21:31, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 31 Aug 2009, at 19:31, Flammarion wrote: On 28 Aug, 16:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote: On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote: 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or generated by something else that does 2. I ontologically exist 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist. Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards to here 5. But the UD exists only mathematically. Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence. There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology of mathematics. For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a general mathematical agreement. No there isn't. What is the disagreement? The age old debate about whether numbers exist You confuse the use of number in physics, and in cognitive science, and in computer science, with metaphysical discussion I do avoid. When I say that there is no disagreement about the numbers, I mean that most scientist agree on the use of the classical tautologies in arithmetic. Nothing more. Or show me where. tautologies don't buy you a UD. Unicorns=unicorns doesn;t mean there are any unicorns. There may be no philosophical argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non philosophical reasoning. Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons with mathematical proofs. Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive- science/philosophy/theology. No. *CTM* is. Comp* is your own fusion of CTM with Platonism Comp is CTM + 2+2 is equal to 4 or 2+2 is not equal to 4. AR qua truth does nto buy you a UD either Wait I explain CT, you will see what I mean more easily. It is an assumption that a form of reincarnation is possible. This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not purely mathematical. It is not going anywhere without some ontological assumptions either. since it has an ontological conclusion. I am using the hypothesis that my consciousness will be relatively preserved by a transformation of my brain, and Church thesis. And the conclusion is epistemological: comp - physics is a branch of number theory, but with a gift: that physics is part of a larger thing (and splits into qualia and quanta). I don't make publicly ontological commitment. I give a theory, theorems, and a practical way to test the consequence of the theory. The fact that you don't majke your ontological assumptions explicit is just the problem. You are aware. are you not, that philosophers and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking and defending Platonism and other approaches? Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as something far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all mathematicians agree. I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist. So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise a doubt about the existence of seven? No. A doubt about the ontological existence of seven leads to a doubt about the rest. A doubt on seven, would destroy the argument. Indeed! I personally don't believe in ontological seven, as far as I can make a sense on that. Well, if the UD isn't ontological either, I am not being simulated on it. I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist. Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues of showing what they miss in the argument. Hmm. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you. I was thinking of you, and some old friends. But at least, you make the dodging in public, my friends never did. I thank you for that. My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician, computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!). But it is a philosophical thesis, since its conclusion is the nature of existence. Not at all. I see the bigness of the misunderstanding here. I just use the scientific way to proceed in theology. Theology is philosophy and then some This is what I like with the Church Turing thesis, it makes possible to keep the agnostic scientific attitude in very deep question, and to proceed by theories and verification, and this in a field that atheists like to relegate to religious crackpot. Atheists and other religious fundamentailist hates this work, but that is normal. My work shows atheism and some religion are very close compared to the abysse between atheism and agnosticism (be it on mind, matter, god
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 18:14, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/1 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: David Nyman wrote: 2009/9/1 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I claim that that is a *possiblity* and as such is enough to show that CTM does not necessarily follow from the computability of physics. It may be easy to lose sight, in the flurry of debate, that the argument is against CTM+PM. AFAICS nobody is claiming that the assumption of CTM is *forced* by the computability of physics, although the contrary would of course argue against it. Rather, *once CTM is assumed* the entailment on the basis of UDA-8 is that PM is false, or at best superfluous. If we can't get past this point, we're doomed to go round in circles. The CTM does indeed have hypotetical implciations about virtualisation, but nothing follows from that. There is no implication from I might be virtualised to I am virtualised any more than from I might be BIV.. On the contrary, the insight that Bruno points out is that the force of CTM consists precisely in the *assumption* that I am virtualised; else it has no force. This is the point. UDA-8 is then designed to expose the entailment that my generalised environment is virtualised is thereby also forced. Consequently the CTM is forced to be a theory of mind-body, or else nothing. How did we get from a hypothetical that I am virtualised to something being *forced*? This is like saying I might be virtualised entails I must be virtualised. Brent I don't see it this way... The level 0 has nothing that can be detected/tested if CTM is true by a computational observer (us if CTM is true). Level 0 plays no role. That is the repetition of the usual mistake. I can have good reason to believe I am on level 0 without having evidence. THe reason is given by Occam's razor -- which is also the reason I have to believe I am not a BIV etc etc etc. So I see no points in positing one in the first place. Simulation is relative to an UTM not to an innaccessible substrate. I see no point in positing immaterial UTMs --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 1 Sep, 23:48, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 17:46, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: time capsules are just what I am talking about. Why would you need anythign more for the specious present than a snapshop some of which is out of date? Well, as well as the question of what constitutes the qualitative character of such snapshots, one might also wonder about the curious fact that such 'frozen' capsules nonetheless appear to us as possessing internal temporal duration and differentiation. Easily explained if perceptual data are timestamped. This seems to appeal simultaneously to aspects of both flux and block models of time whilst being entirely consistent with neither. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Against Physics
On 2 Sep, 03:10, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:13 AM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I think his exploration of the constraints on our actions in Freedom Evolves is pretty much on the money. So I can't comment on Freedom Evolves, as I haven't read it. But I have read some of his articles and seen him debate and give interviews. So that sounds like Dennett alright - rearranging deck chairs, redefining words, whatever it takes. From the wikipedia article on Freedom Evolves: In his treatment of both free will and altruism, he starts by showing why we should not accept the traditional definitions of either term. So, as I said, you can't read quote of Dennett and accept it at face value, because Dennett doesn't restrict himself to traditional definitions of terms. You have to interpret Dennett's quotes within the context of his web of alternate, non-traditional compatibilist word definitions. Dennett's main goal is not to show that determinism is compatible with free will (which it isn't), actually it is, although I don't find it very convincing --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 2 Sep, 16:58, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/2 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: Well, as well as the question of what constitutes the qualitative character of such snapshots, one might also wonder about the curious fact that such 'frozen' capsules nonetheless appear to us as possessing internal temporal duration and differentiation. Easily explained if perceptual data are timestamped. Yes, that would appear to be the specification, more or less. What's the implementation? Is that a philosophical question? On 1 Sep, 23:48, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 Sep, 17:46, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: time capsules are just what I am talking about. Why would you need anythign more for the specious present than a snapshop some of which is out of date? Well, as well as the question of what constitutes the qualitative character of such snapshots, one might also wonder about the curious fact that such 'frozen' capsules nonetheless appear to us as possessing internal temporal duration and differentiation. Easily explained if perceptual data are timestamped. This seems to appeal simultaneously to aspects of both flux and block models of time whilst being entirely consistent with neither. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 2 Sep, 16:56, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/2 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: But the physical implementation (cause?) is invariant in it's functional relations. That's why two physical implementations which are different at some lower level can be said to implement the same computation at a higher level. I see nothing incoherent is saying that two physically different computers perform the same computation. So if mental states are certain kinds of computations (either physically realized or in Platonia) they can be realized on different, i.e. non-invariant physical processes. What's incoherent about that? I wonder what you mean by either physically realized or in Platonia? ISTM that there is not one assumption here, but two. If computation is restricted to the sense of physical realisation, then there is indeed nothing problematic in saying that two physically different computers perform the same computation. We can understand what is meant without ambiguity; 'different' is indeed different, and any identity is thus non-physical (i.e. relational). But 'realisation' of such relational identity in Platonia in the form of an invariant experiential state is surely something else entirely: i.e. if it is a supplementary hypothesis to PM it is dualism. Why would a believer in CTM need to make that additional step? (You seem to be talkign about the abstract computaitonal state having exitence independent from its concrete physcial isntantiations). The point of Bruno's argument is to force a choice between the attachment of experience to physical process or computation; but not both at the same time. I see no problem with mental states attaching to phsycial processes via the computaitons instantiated by them. AFAICS that is still CTM. Since every instance of a computation *is* an instance of a phsycial process as well, there is no either/or. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 2 Sep, 17:56, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/2 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: I wonder what you mean by either physically realized or in Platonia? ISTM that there is not one assumption here, but two. If computation is restricted to the sense of physical realisation, then there is indeed nothing problematic in saying that two physically different computers perform the same computation. We can understand what is meant without ambiguity; 'different' is indeed different, and any identity is thus non-physical (i.e. relational). But 'realisation' of such relational identity in Platonia in the form of an invariant experiential state is surely something else entirely: i.e. if it is a supplementary hypothesis to PM it is dualism. Why would a believer in CTM need to make that additional step? (You seem to be talkign about the abstract computaitonal state having exitence independent from its concrete physcial isntantiations). No, I was querying whether Brent was implying this by his reference to mental states realised in Platonia but nonetheless deemed to supervene on physical process. But without such dual supervention, where does that leave CTM+PM? Either we're appealing to experience=computation=invariant, or we're appealing to experience=physical process=variant. Well, I've asked before, but what does (in) variant mean here? If we seek refuge in both, then in what sense can we maintain an identity? Does invariant=variant? But if what is meant by this is that physical process is only relevant to experience *inasmuch as it functionally instantiates a computation* - i.e. only the non-physical aspects make any difference - then precisely what remains of experience that is physical? The term Bruno sometimes uses for any such sense of 'physical' is 'spurious', and I think that about sums it up. David i suspect you are mixing types and tokens. But I await an answer to the question --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Against Physics
On 2 Sep, 18:03, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Flammarion wrote: On 2 Sep, 03:10, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:13 AM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I think his exploration of the constraints on our actions in Freedom Evolves is pretty much on the money. So I can't comment on Freedom Evolves, as I haven't read it. But I have read some of his articles and seen him debate and give interviews. So that sounds like Dennett alright - rearranging deck chairs, redefining words, whatever it takes. From the wikipedia article on Freedom Evolves: In his treatment of both free will and altruism, he starts by showing why we should not accept the traditional definitions of either term. So, as I said, you can't read quote of Dennett and accept it at face value, because Dennett doesn't restrict himself to traditional definitions of terms. You have to interpret Dennett's quotes within the context of his web of alternate, non-traditional compatibilist word definitions. Dennett's main goal is not to show that determinism is compatible with free will (which it isn't), actually it is, although I don't find it very convincing I think Dennett's point is that compatibilist free-will has all the chracteristics of free-will that people usually think are important - it's all the free-will worth having. I'm not convinced by that either --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 2 Sep, 21:20, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/2 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: i suspect you are mixing types and tokens. But I await an answer to the question Well, a computation is a type, A type of computation is a type. A token of a type of computation is a token. and is thus not any particular physical object. A specific physical implementation is a token of that computational type, and is indeed a physical object, albeit one whose physical details can be of any variety so long as they continue to instantiate the relevant computational invariance. Hence it is hard to see how a specific (invariant) example of an experiential state could be justified as being token-identical with all the different physical implementations of a computation. I was right. A mental type can be associated with a computational type. Any token of a mental type can be associated with a token of the corresponding computational type. The difficulty comes from mixing types and tokens. It might appear that a defence against the foregoing is to say that only the appropriate functionally-distinguished subsets of the entire implementing substrate need be deemed tokens of the relevant computational type, and that actual occasions of experience can be considered to be token-identical with these subsets. But even on this basis it still doesn't seem possible to establish any consistent identity between the physical variety of the tokens thus distinguished and a putatively unique experiential state. The variety of the physical implementations is reduced by grouping them as equivalent computational types. Computation is abstract. Abstraction is ignoring irrelevant details. Ignoring irrelevant details establishes a many-to-one relationship : many possible implementations of one mental state. On the contrary, any unbiased a priori prediction would be of experiential variance on the basis of physical variance. Yes. The substance of the CTM claim is that physical differences do not make a mental difference unless they make a computational difference. That is to say, switching from one token of a type of computation to another cannot make a difference in mentation. That is not to be expected on an unbiased basis, just because it is a substantive claim. Hence continuing to insist on physically-based token-identity seems entirely ad hoc. Identity of what with what? The unique challenge facing us, on the assumption of primitive materiality, is the personally manifest existence of an experiential state associated with a physical system. The first person gives us a unique insight in this instance which is unavailable for other type-token analyses. Ordinarily, picking out functional invariance in physical systems is unproblematic, because the invariance is one of type, not of token. Uhhhexactly how does the first person insight break the invariance-of-type-with-variance-of-token thing? The token may vary but the type-token association is unharmed. So long as it is a token of the same type, yes. But, uniquely, this doesn't hold for a theory of mind based on primitive materiality, because now we have a unique token-identity - mind-body - and thus it is inconsistent to expect to substitute an entirely different type of body and expect no substantive change on the other side of the identical doublet. Why? I see nothing there except blunt dogmatic insistence. In general, randomly selecting another body will lead to another mind. But that is not different from saying that randomly selecting differently configured hardware will lead to a different computation. The point of CTM is that making a non-random substitution -- that is, picking another token of the same type of computation -- will also automatically amount to picking another token of the same type of mentation. I have no idea why you think introducing a first person would make a difference. The resort of desperation is of course to disregard this unique distinction, or worse to relegate experience to mere typehood; but in that case we eliminate it from concrete existence. David No, I was querying whether Brent was implying this by his reference to mental states realised in Platonia but nonetheless deemed to supervene on physical process. But without such dual supervention, where does that leave CTM+PM? Either we're appealing to experience=computation=invariant, or we're appealing to experience=physical process=variant. Well, I've asked before, but what does (in) variant mean here? And i still haven't found out. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http
Re: Dreaming On
On 3 Sep, 09:41, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/3 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: On 3 Sep, 01:26, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/2 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: and is thus not any particular physical object. A specific physical implementation is a token of that computational type, and is indeed a physical object, albeit one whose physical details can be of any variety so long as they continue to instantiate the relevant computational invariance. Hence it is hard to see how a specific (invariant) example of an experiential state could be justified as being token-identical with all the different physical implementations of a computation. I was right. A mental type can be associated with a computational type. Any token of a mental type can be associated with a token of the corresponding computational type. But what difference is that supposed to make? The type association is implicit in what I was saying. All you've said above is that it makes no difference whether one talks in terms of the mental type or the associated computational type because their equivalence is a posit of CTM. And whether it is plausible that the physical tokens so picked out possess the causal efficacy presupposed by CTM is precisely what I was questioning. question it then. what's the problem? But even on this basis it still doesn't seem possible to establish any consistent identity between the physical variety of the tokens thus distinguished and a putatively unique experiential state. The variety of the physical implementations is reduced by grouping them as equivalent computational types. Computation is abstract. Abstraction is ignoring irrelevant details. Ignoring irrelevant details establishes a many-to-one relationship : many possible implementations of one mental state. Again, that's not an argument - you're just reciting the *assumptions* of CTM, not arguing for their plausibility. you're not arguing against its plausibility The justification of the supposed irrelevance of particular physical details is that they are required to be ignored for the supposed efficacy of the type-token relation to be plausible. That doesn't make it so. why not? we already know they can be ignored to establish computational equivalence. On the contrary, any unbiased a priori prediction would be of experiential variance on the basis of physical variance. Yes. The substance of the CTM claim is that physical differences do not make a mental difference unless they make a computational difference. That is to say, switching from one token of a type of computation to another cannot make a difference in mentation. That is not to be expected on an unbiased basis, just because it is a substantive claim. Yes it's precisely the claim whose plausibility I've been questioning. You haven't said anything specific about what is wrong with it at all. The variety of the physical implementations is reduced by grouping them as equivalent computational types. Computation is abstract. Abstraction is ignoring irrelevant details. Ignoring irrelevant details establishes a many-to-one relationship : many possible implementations of one mental state. Yes thanks, this is indeed the hypothesis. But simply recapitulating the assumptions isn't exactly an uncommitted assessment of their plausibility is it? Saying it is not necessarily correct is not a critique That can only immunise it from criticism. There is no whiff in CTM of why it should be considered plausible on physical grounds alone. Hence counter arguments can legitimately question the consistency of its claims as a physical theory in the absence of its type-token presuppositions. If you mean you can criticise the CTM as offering nothing specific to resolve the HP, you are correct. But I *thought* we were discussing the MG/Olympia style of argument, which purportedly still applies even if you restrict yourself to cognition and forget about experience/qualia. Are we? Look, let me turn this round. You've said before that you're not a diehard partisan of CTM. What in your view would be persuasive grounds for doubting it? I'll explain below. But the claim I am interested in is that CTM somehow disproves materalism (Maudlin, BTW takes it the other way around-- materialism disproves CTM). I have heard not a word in support of *that* claim. ust an Artificial Intellence be a Computer ? An AI is not necessarily a computer. Not everything is a computer or computer-emulable. It just needs to be artificial and intelligent! Then it's no more *CTM*. (C means Computational) I know. I am not defending CTM against all-comers. I am trying to find out why some people think it is incompatible with mateialsim
Re: Yablo, Quine and Carnap on ontology
On 3 Sep, 17:12, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Peter, the Yablo-Carnac-Gallois-Quine compendium is an interesting reading - except for missing the crux: You, as a person, with knowledge about the ideas of the bickering philosophers, could do us the politesse of a brief summary about who is stating what (very few lines) which may increase the understanding of the innocent by-reader about the generalities mentioned back and forth. I for one looked at the 2 URL-s, long as one of them may be, and found further generalities as in a style of scientifically 'expert' discussions/arguments. One of my reasons for posting it was to illustrate that there is in fact a debate about ontology. Bruno has been arguign that numbers exist because there are true mathematical statements asserting their existence. The counterargument is that existence in mathematical statements is merely metaphorical. That is what is being argued backwards and forwards. I did not read so far and did not study these versions, so reading your (and their) papers was frustrating. I am fundamentally opposed to 'ontology', because I consider it explaining the partial knowledge we have about 'the world' as if it were the total. I am for epistemology, the growing information-staple we absorb. Most people stand on ontological grounds. I wanted to get a glimps. Could you help? John M On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:35 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Yablo and Gallois's paper Is ontology based on a mistake is quite relevant to the question of Platonism, specificall whether true matehmatical assertions of existence have to be taken literally. http://tinyurl.com/ldekg7 What is it? A paper criticising the Quinean view of ontology. Yablo does so by introduces a metaphorical/literal distinction as to when it is reasonable to posit the existence of entities. Thus in order to determine our ontological commitments we need to be able to extract all cases in which such entities are posited in a metaphorical way rather than a literal one. If there is no way to do this, then it is not possible to develop a Quinean ontology. Where does it fit in for me? For the thesis: if correct, it implies that Quine's fundamental approach to ontology is flawed and this may have negative implications for the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument. For the metaphysics paper: possibly details a way in which existence cannot be held to occur (which would be interesting to look at in terms of the relations proposed). At the very least it gives an example of particular existence claims which can then be analysed in a relational way. Reference Yablo, S., Does ontology rest on a mistake?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. LXXII (1998), 229-261. The Argument Carnap on existence Carnap argued that the realist existence question/assertion was meaningless. He did this by means of his concept of linguistic framework. A linguistic framework lays down rules for the use and meaning of some object term X in a linguistic sense. Thus there are two ways in which one can question/assert the existence of X: internal or external to the linguistic framework. If one questions the existence of X internal to the framework, one is almost certainly guaranteed a yes answer (thus the statement there is an X can pretty much be viewed as tautological when assessed internally to a framework involving X). Hence the realist must be making an external existence assertion. However, in this case the term X has no meaning, as the framework within which it gains such is not present. Thus the realist existence question/assertion is either tautological or impossible to answer/assess. Quine on Carnap Quine objected to Carnap's position in three ways: firstly, he held that his internal/external distinction was reliant on an analytic/ synthetic distinction (because the concept of a linguistic framework involves the rules inherent in that framework being viewed as indefeasible (i.e. analytic) within that particular linguistic practice). As Quine believed that the analytic/synthetic distinction could not be made, he held that Carnap's internal/external distinction breaks down: internal assessments are thus not just a matter of following inviolable linguistic rules, it is indeed possible for these rules to change in response to experience and thus for internal practice to change too. Secondly, Quine argues that the external choice between linguistic frameworks is much more influenced by observation than Carnap would have us believe. For Quine, the decision to adopt a rule governing the appropriate observational conditions under which one may assert the existence of X is itself in part an assertion that X exists (if such conditions obtain). He
Re: Yablo, Quine and Carnap on ontology
On 3 Sep, 17:12, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: I am fundamentally opposed to 'ontology', because I consider it explaining the partial knowledge we have about 'the world' as if it were the total. How much we don't know is somehting we don't know. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 9 Sep, 01:39, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 1. Computationalism in general associates that consciousness with a specific comptuer programme, programme C let's say. 2. Let us combine that with the further claim that programme C causes cosnciousness, somehow leveraging the physical causality of the hardware it is running on. 3. A corrolary of that is that running programme C will always cause the same effect. 4. Running a programme on hardware is a physical process with physical effects. 5. It is in the nature of causality that the same kind of cause produces the same kind of effects-- that is, causaliy attaches to types not tokens. 6. Running a programme on hardware will cause physical effects, and these will be determined by the kind of physical hardware. (Valve computers will generate heat, cogwheel computers will generate noise, etc). 7. Therefore, running programme C on different kinds of hardware will not produce a uniform effect as required by 1. 8. Programmes do not have a physical typology: they are not natural kinds. In that sense they are abstract. (Arguably, that is not as abstract as the square root of two, since they still have physical tokens. There may be more than one kind or level of abstraction). 9. Conclusion: even running programmes are not apt to cause consciousness. They are still too abstract. What you say above seems pretty much in sympathy with the reductio arguments based on arbitrariness of implementation. It is strictly an argument against the claim that computation causes consciousness , as opposed to the claim that mental states are identical to computational states. As you say above consciousness might depend on specific properties of hardware, of matter. If so, this would demand an explicitly physical theory of mind, and such a 'Searlian' project would consequently seek to associate a specific phenomenal state with specific physical events. But CTM is not engaged on such a project; in fact it entails the opposite conclusion: i.e. by stipulating its type-token identities purely functionally it requires that a homogeneous phenomenal state must somehow be associated with a teeming plurality of heterogeneous physical states. It doesn't suggest that any mental state can be associated with any phsycial state. It has been accused of overdoing Multiple Realisability, but MR can be underdone as well. Various arguments - Olympia, MGA, the Chinese Room etc. - seek to expose the myriad physical implausibilities consequential on such implementation independence. But the root of all this is that CTM makes impossible at the outset any possibility of linking a phenomenal state to any unique, fully-explicated physical reduction. That's probably a good thing. We want to be able to say that two people with fine-grained differences in their brain structure can both be (for instance) apprehensiveness. If nothing physical can in principle be ruled out as an explanation for experience, That isn't an implication of CTM. CTM can regard computers as a small subset of physical systems, and conscious computers as a small subset of computers. no uniquely-justified physical explanation need - or in practice could - be explicated. I don't think unique justification is a requirement The detailed implausibilities variously invoked all fall out of this. So if a physical theory of mind is what is needed, CTM would seem to fail even as a candidate because its arbitrariness with respect to physical realisation renders it incapable of grounding consciousness in any specific fundamental physical reduction. MR is not complete arbitrariness. Indeed defences of functionalism against its various critics never cite any physical grounds for the plausibility of conscious supervenience on the physical composition of, say, the Chinese room, but focus instead on defending the functional relevance of various features of the experimental setup. Hence, without an explicitly physical, as opposed to functional, criterion for what counts as a 'physical' explanation, it is hard to see how CTM is compatible with any intelligible notion of materialism. It is compatible with materialism because brains and computers are material. If CTM had the implication that one material system could realise more than one computation, then there would be a conflict with the phsyical supervenience principle. But CTM only has the implication that one computation system could be realised more on more than one material system. Indeed, its success could only be in direct opposition to the principles of materialist reductive theory. I don't think that follows at all. Isn't that a reasonable conclusion? David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: Dreaming On
On 10 Sep, 14:56, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/9 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com: What you say above seems pretty much in sympathy with the reductio arguments based on arbitrariness of implementation. It is strictly an argument against the claim that computation causes consciousness , as opposed to the claim that mental states are identical to computational states. I'm not sure I see what distinction you're making. If as you say the realisation of computation in a physical system doesn't cause consciousness, that would entail that no physically-realised computation could be identical to any mental state. That doesn't follow because causation and identity are different The realisation could be consciousness (fire IS combustion) without causing it (fire CAUSES smoke but it not smoke) This is what follows if one accepts the argument from MGA or Olympia that consciousness does not attach to physical states qua computatio. I find them both quite contestable But CTM is not engaged on such a project; in fact it entails the opposite conclusion: i.e. by stipulating its type-token identities purely functionally it requires that a homogeneous phenomenal state must somehow be associated with a teeming plurality of heterogeneous physical states. It doesn't suggest that any mental state can be associated with any phsycial state. It doesn't need to say that to be obscure as a physical theory. The point is that it can ex hypothesi say nothing remotely physically illuminating about what causes a mental state. To say that it results whenever a physical system implements a specific computation is to say nothing physical about that system other than to insist that it is 'physical'. ..and it implements a certain computation. That's kind of the point. It is not a criticism of the CTM that it doesn't work like a reductive physcial theory: it;s not suppposed to be. It just supposed to be a phsycialist theory that doesn't have ghosts in the machine It has been accused of overdoing Multiple Realisability, but MR can be underdone as well. I agree. Nonetheless, when two states are functionally equivalent one can still say what it is about them that is physically relevant. For example, in driving from A to B it is functionally irrelevant to my experience whether my car is fuelled by petrol or diesel. But there is no ambiguity about the physical details of my car trip or precisely how either fuel contributes to this effect. One can say what it is about physical systems that explains its ability to realise a certain computation. One can't say that there is anything that makes it exclusively able to. Equally one can explain various ways of getting from A to B, but one can't argue that there is only one possible way. Various arguments - Olympia, MGA, the Chinese Room etc. - seek to expose the myriad physical implausibilities consequential on such implementation independence. But the root of all this is that CTM makes impossible at the outset any possibility of linking a phenomenal state to any unique, fully-explicated physical reduction. That's probably a good thing. We want to be able to say that two people with fine-grained differences in their brain structure can both be (for instance) apprehensiveness. Yes, I agree. But if we're after a physical theory, we also want to be able to give in either case a clear physical account of their apprehensiveness, which would include a physical justification of why the fine-grained differences make no difference at the level of experience. THat would be because they make no computational difference, if CTM is correct. If nothing physical can in principle be ruled out as an explanation for experience, That isn't an implication of CTM. CTM can regard computers as a small subset of physical systems, and conscious computers as a small subset of computers. Yes, but we needn't push nothing physical to the extent of random association to make the point at issue. The relevant point is that, in picking out the subset of physical systems solely qua computatio, no kind of physical realisation is capable of being ruled out in principle. That is unproblematic in the usual case because our interest is restricted to the computational output of such systems, and we are unconcerned by the physical details that occasion this. But if we are seeking a physical explanation of consciousness, then it is precisely the coupling of the physical process and the mental process which requires explication in a physical theory, and this is now obscured from any general resolution by the computational posit. Obscured? It goes in two stages. Physical-.computational and computational-mental. Beyond that, your objectio to CTM seems to be (again) that it is not reductive physicalism. no uniquely-justified physical explanation need - or in practice could - be explicated. I
