subject:"ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper"



On Mar 9, 7:24 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 08 Mar 2011, at 15:54, 1Z wrote:





  On Mar 8, 1:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:

  On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Reduction is not elimination

  snip

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

  Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
  ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
  dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
  insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The  
  point
  is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
  (if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that  
  exists
  is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.  
  That's
  literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
  fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
  observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless  
  choose to
  deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so  
  choose,
  we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard Problem in
  perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all  
  except an
  ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate  
  constituent of
  everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
  ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?

  Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
  computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever, and
  talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve nothing
  because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all  
  just
  quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
  about all these additional things, but then to claim that this talk
  can be materially identical to the quarks under some description
  is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging the
  conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and  
  simply
  begs the critical question in the most egregious way.

  The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that  
  I've
  understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND  
  integrative.
  That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational ultimate
  components and their relations, AND it further specifies the local
  emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers of
  composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
  synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
  duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic  
  deathtrap,
  and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
  categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
  entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time  
  and
  space themselves, is localised and personalised at the  
  intersection of
  these analytic and synthetic principles.

  I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle and
  difficult issue.

  The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does
  not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of
  mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal firing or
  quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non
  pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain with
  neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the
  conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism).

  Another option is open to them: it is a brute fact that the neuronal
  firing
  IS the pain, but physicalese descriptions of neuronal firing don't
  capture that because
  they are inadequate.

 Except that it is not a brute fact that the neuronal firing is the  
 pain. That does not make sense. A neuronal firing is entirely  
 descriptibe in a thrid person way, but a pain is not at all.

If it is entirely describable, the identification fails. If the
identification
is true as a brute fact, then it is the description that is failing.
Since
it fails, we can't grasp the brute fact, but brute facts aren't
necessarily
graspable...that is the point of the jargon term brute fact. In the
world of mathematics, ideas such as brute facts and unreachable
noumena don't make sense, because mathematical objects are fully
describable. Brute facts belong to realism, where certain things just
are
and there is no guarantee they will be comprehensible.

 You can  
 associate them, but you can't equate them. You can identify 3-heat  
 with molecular cinetic energy, but you cannot equate the sensation of  
 heat with neuronal firing in the same way. The problem is that *any*

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-09 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 08/03/11 12:29, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 8, 11:32 am, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:

On 06/03/11 15:06, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 5:46 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.comwrote:

The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse
occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs has
been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. It
appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse is
purely subjective,

It doesn't appear in an univocal way, since there are
such things as objective collapse theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_collapse_theory

OK, perhaps I stand corrected. But I am sure that no objective collapse
theory has been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance.


Subjective collapse theories, and no collapse theories have
not met with general acceptance either!

True of course. But there is definitely no need to posit physical collapse.

as Everett demonstrates.

MWI isn't usually presented as a subjective theory. Penrose
argues that it makes surreptitious assumptions about how
observers' minds work, but that is part of an argument against
it.

I would differentiate between Everett and MWI. MWI means to me many
worlds in some way separate.

That's vague. Worlds separate on decoherence but share the
same space time

A mixture

Everett is without question, in my view,
saying that there is one physical environment,

That's vague too.

The mixture

and that it is only
subjectively that there are different, determinate views of that
environment.

And that. Observers embedded in the system will see determinate
results to interaction
where in fact ever result occured. However, observer does not mean
human here, since observation is fundamentally entanglement for
Everett
Everett states that there is only the appearance of collapse, and hence 
change, with respect to the memory of the observer.

In this case, consciousness

is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and only consciousness,
which encounters this appearance of collapse and change.

It is only consciousness that consciously encounters everything else
too. However, that does not make consciousness *ontologically*
fundamental.

It does if the physical system is static.



If there is no change,
objectively, only subjectively, this points to consciousness -
phenomenal consciousness - being ontologically fundamental.

On the other hand, the appearance of change refutes the
static universe hypothesis.
Unless the universe is indeed objectively static, and there is only the 
subjective appearance of collapse and change.

We know there

is an effective collapse, or the appearance of collapse, because we
experience this subjectively. On the other hand, nothing in the physical
world, including the physical body and the physical brain, can account
for this.

Whoah! What he have is a profusion of theores, with no clear winner

What I mean is that if the physical domain is indeed static, as Davies,
Barbour, Deutsch and others explain, then nothing physical can account
for the appearance of change we encounter as observers.

Well, *they* don't think that,
Deutsch does. He states that the appearance of change is necessarily an 
illusion. Davies makes similar statements. Barbour simply leaves it at 
there is no time.

Coupled with the
inability to find any physiology corresponding to phenomenal
consciousness,

That's an odd thing to say. It is rather well known
that phenomenal consciousness can be switched off
by drugs.
True, but when not switched off, when operating in an alive and awake 
human being, no physiological explanation can be found for phenomenal 
consciousness, as Chalmers spends the majority of a whole book carefully 
explaining.

and Chalmers finding that there can be no such
explanation, I infer this consciousness to be ontologically fundamental
- an emergent property of the unitary system as a whole.

But you could have observers in quantum mechanics
with no phenomenality at all. All the problems of
QM relate to access consciousness, ie to how
observers get information.
Certainly you could, the zombies that Chalmers talks about, mindless 
hulks in other commentaries. But invoking phenomenal consciousness as a 
system property solves the 'objectively static, subjective appearance of 
collapse and change' issue.


I'm not aware of a problem of how observers get information in QM. 
Everett posits the basic mechanism of an observer as one with sensory 
apparatus and recording capability. As he demonstrates, this physical 
entity becomes a superposition - mixture of all possible states having 
made all possible versions of the observation, and only with respect to 
the contents of the memory is there a specific determinate outcome, 
which is perhaps what you are referring to as 'getting information'. 
(Agreed of course that all this is to do with access consciousness.)
This seems to me to be exactly the same process as in RQM,

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-09 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 08/03/11 14:39, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 8, 11:47 am, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:

On 06/03/11 15:22, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.comwrote:

On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote:Collapse appears to instruments as 
well as people
We don't have any evidence for that,

Of course we do

That was a rather blanket statement. But if we can doubt the existence
of everything but our minds, then we don't have any evidence for it!

But I think it is perfectly tenable to say that we cannot prove that the
instruments which appear to us to be collapsed are in fact not
collapsed, that there is only the appearance of collapse subjectively.

That they really are collapsed is tenable too.
Yes, but it is an assumption, a theory. What we have is evidence that 
subjectively there is collapse, and that objectively, 'most of the 
time', the wave equation applies, complete with decoherence producing a 
mixture of all possible states.

How could one possibly disprove that?  indeed, if we take either the

concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously,

We shouldn't take Wigner's friend as proving CCC, since it is
intended as a reductio ad absurdum of it.

OK, but I happen to think it is a precise explanation of how reality works.

It is strange to regard something intended as a paradox as an
explanation
Maybe, but I have read leading figures in modern physics explaining that 
the world really is as Schroedinger's cat demonstrates.

And RQM doesn't remotely have that implication.

Yes it does. In RQM the environment is determinate where, and only
where, the observer has observed it.

In RQM, the observers knowledge becomes determinate
when they observe something.
As does the environment. The only determinacy is that much of the 
environment correlated with the observer by 'observation', which in RQM 
means physical interaction.

If I am Wigner, and my friend goes
off and does an experiment, the result is indeterminate in my version of
the environment.

Well, you don't know it. But you don't cause the friend to collapse,
because
there is no collapse in RQM.

Agreed

this is not the

case.- that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on them.
Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our
personal systems.I'm not sure what you mean by account for collapse.
I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as
in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of
collapse only 'in consciousness'.

But Everett can explain the apperarance of collapse to instruments...
he doesn't need consciousness.

Everett states very clearly that with respect to the physical body of
the observer there is no collapse. I think the intruments the observer
is using come under the same banner, the linear dynamics. He makes it
very clear that it is only with regard to the record of sensory
observations and machine configuration which I equate in his
formulation with the functional identity of the observer, that there is
the appearance of collapse.

SInce you didn't say whether you mean human or machine observer,
that doesn't clarify matters. As it happens, Everettian record
making can be automated.
True. He uses the example of a non human observer, so clearly his 
argument applies to non humans.

This is pretty much exactly the definition
of access consciousness, that of which the observer is directly and
immediately aware.

Access consciousness involves record making, and so
do any  number of non-conscious machines...seismographs,
video recorders, etc. I don't think you can argue
that consciousness is involved just because record making is.
Agreed, access consciousness is, in this context, all to do with 
producing observations and instantiating the record of observations.

(In the human observer, I take the record of machine
configuration to be the observations of the internal state of the
observer, as I explain in detail elsewhere.)  At least one 
interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, an
Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely epistemological.  
All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely

predicts probabilities for this change.

That's what I thought I was saying!


Fits my view.

Brent


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

Peter, your comments appear to illustrate a basic confusion between
ontological and epistemological claims that makes me think that you
haven't taken on board the fundamental distinction entailed in Bruno's
original statement:

Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

If we haven't resolved something so fundamental at the outset, it's no
wonder you find what I go on to say so difficult to follow.  As Bruno
implies, the whole POINT of any ontological reduction programme is
ontological elimination: it is an attempt (however incapable of final
success it may be) to distinguish what REALLY exists from what
APPEARS to exist.  Hence it is of the greatest significance that
ontological elimination doesn't also entail epistemological
elimination; i.e. even when composites seem to have been shown to have
no really real ontological status distinct from their components,
they nonetheless somehow stubbornly hang on to their apparently real
epistemological status.

The relationship to the Hard Problem should now be clear, I think: the
zombie is just the reduced ontology of the components, shorn of any
composite epistemology.  Since ontological reduction wants to say that
this reduced state of affairs JUST IS what the real situation
consists in, this shouldn't be a problem, and indeed this is the
eliminativist position, however bizarre it may seem.  However, unless
we lapse into that sort of inconsistency, it manifestly IS a problem -
i.e. the Hard one.

David

On 9 March 2011 01:24, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:


 On Mar 9, 1:03 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 23:42, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  How can they fail to be composite when they include interactions,
  structures and bindings? What ***are*** you on about?

 Say there is a pile of bricks that, under some externally-applied
 description, could be construed as a house; then that pile is what
 there is, not a pile + a house.

 Houses aren't heaps of rubble, they are bricks mortared together. And
 why shouldn't I say that such-and-such mortared-together bricks are
 a house -  the house exists as does the bricks-and-mortar.

  Similarly if a theory says that
 what exists is just micro-physical bricks and their relations, then
 just those things are what one should expect to encounter - not those
 things + an open-ended zoo of higher-order composite entities.

 One *should* expect composite entities, because the relationships
 and binding between molecules are just the way they get composite
 entities get composed. If you mortar bricks together you intend
 to build something

 Since
 the theory of micro-bricks in relation supposes these to do all the
 work, what a priori reason would there be to posit additional
 composite entities on top of the bricks themselves?

 Well, under reductive explanation, they are not additional. Nor
 are they non-existent. They are identified with subsets of their
 component parts.

  In fact
 composites command our attention only in the context of observation
 after-the-micro-physical-facts, in the form of the
 non-micro-physical-facts - the so-called secondary qualities.

 So? Something may seem not to be composed of smaller
 parts, whilst actually being so.

 To
 dramatise this, Chalmers uses the metaphor of the zombie, for which no
 secondary qualitative composites exist,

 Zombies and qualia are another and much more specific
 issue.

nor any apparent need of them.
 That's what I'm on about, but in a more general way.

 But it doesn't generalise! The HP is very specific.
 We can imagine zombies because we don't understand
 the neuron-qualia link. But we do understand the molecule-heat
 link, and the brick-house link. So it is insane to say that is just
 mortared-together bricks, not a building.

 David



  On Mar 8, 9:15 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
  On 8 March 2011 12:16, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
   the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
   the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
   a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
   to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
   If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why.

  My point has always been simply to hold materialist theory to account
  in its own terms.  In these terms, when you have reduced heat to
  molecular motion, and thence to its putatively fundamental
  micro-constituents, you have thereby shown that there is NO HEAT at
  this fundamental level.  To be clear: it is NOT the case that there is
  molecular motion AND heat;

  It is also  not the case that there is molecular motion, that
  molecular
  motion is identical to heat, and there is nonetheless no heat.

  It *is* the case that there is molecular motion, *which is* heat.

 there is JUST molecular motion (or rather

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 12:50 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 Peter, your comments appear to illustrate a basic confusion between
 ontological and epistemological claims that makes me think that you
 haven't taken on board the fundamental distinction entailed in Bruno's
 original statement:

 Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

 If we haven't resolved something so fundamental at the outset, it's no
 wonder you find what I go on to say so difficult to follow.  As Bruno
 implies, the whole POINT of any ontological reduction programme is
 ontological elimination: it is an attempt (however incapable of final
 success it may be) to distinguish what REALLY exists from what
 APPEARS to exist.  Hence it is of the greatest significance that
 ontological elimination doesn't also entail epistemological
 elimination; i.e. even when composites seem to have been shown to have
 no really real ontological status distinct from their components,
 they nonetheless somehow stubbornly hang on to their apparently real
 epistemological status.

That is a confusing way of phrasing things. The crucial distinction
is not real/apparent, because houses and heat are not held to be
illusions.
The crucial distinction is fundamental/non-fundamental. To reduce
is to identify a higher-level phenomeonon with a more fundamental one.

Note the phrase more fundamental. The wise reductionist does
not claim to know what is really fundamental. That being the case,
it is unwise to insist that the non-fundamental
is unreal, since the reduction base might ultimately be non-
fundamental itself
One can reduce a house to mortared bricks without knowing that bricks
are made of atoms.
Neural activity is also non-fundamental, but where is the materialist
who
insists it is unreal?


 The relationship to the Hard Problem should now be clear, I think: the
 zombie is just the reduced ontology of the components, shorn of any
 composite epistemology.

No. As I explained before, zombies are not business-as-usual
reduction-means-elimination. We can imagine that zombies
lack qualia, because we don't see how the alleged reduction base,
their neural activity, would necessitate it. Far from being an example
of reduction, that is a case where reductive explanation has *failed*
to occur
because where there is a successful reductive explanation, the
necessity
of the higher-level phenomenon being present is clear. If heat *is*
molecular motion it *must* be present where molecular motion is
present!
There are no heat zombies -- the idea is unthinkable!

Zombies are not a typical example of the problems of reduction,
they are an instance of the reduction being bought too cheaply:
the reductive materialist presents the off-the-peg conclusion that
consciousness
just is neural firing, without filling in the explanation that
allows
us to see that it *must be*, so that we instead remain being able to
see that it
*might not* be!



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Re: STEP THREE (was Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)

2011-03-09 Thread Andrew Soltau


On 08/03/11 18:41, Bruno Marchal wrote:


1) SWE

what is SWE?

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 1:46 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 13:30, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Peter, this is too confusing, you seem to be debating a straw man.
 Let's try to keep it simple: am I to assume that you don't agree that
 ontological reduction entails ontological elimination?

 David

Yep.
Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a difference

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a difference

So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?



 On Mar 9, 1:46 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 13:30, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Peter, this is too confusing, you seem to be debating a straw man.
 Let's try to keep it simple: am I to assume that you don't agree that
 ontological reduction entails ontological elimination?

 David

 Yep.
 Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a difference

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 2:23 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a difference

 So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
 not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?

No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular
motion, and molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so
heat was not eliminated

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 14:39, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
 not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?

 No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular
 motion, and molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so
 heat was not eliminated

It seems that you persistently misunderstand the meaning of
elimination in this context. If something can be shown to be a
composite of more fundamental ontological components, it is of course
disqualified (i.e. eliminated) thereby as an ontological fundamental,
else such use of the terms ontological, fundamental and
eliminated is rendered meaningless.  Hence heat can indeed be
eliminated from the catalogue of ontological fundamentals in this way,
and understood as consisting in the more fundamental phenomenon of
molecular motion.  Of course the *concept* (and a fortiori the
sensation) of heat isn't thereby eliminated epistemologically, but
this is the very distinction we are trying to establish on a firm
footing.  The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
epistemological level.

David



 On Mar 9, 2:23 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a difference

 So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
 not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?

 No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular
 motion, and molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so
 heat was not eliminated

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Re: STEP THREE (was Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)



On 09 Mar 2011, at 14:31, Andrew Soltau wrote:


On 08/03/11 18:41, Bruno Marchal wrote:


1) SWE

what is SWE?


Sorry. It is Schroedinger Wave Equation.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 3:28 AM, 1Z wrote:

I can
  say yes to the doctor if my consciousness and qualia is related to a
  noumenal hinterland of the matter in my physical brain. That noumenal
  matter hinterland contradicts the idea that there is a level of
  description of myself where matter and physical structure can be
  replaced by arbitrary different matter and structure, once they
  preserve the computational relations, which are arithmetical, by
  digitality.
 

Yep. Comp is a bad theory of qualia. We don't know
how to write subroutines for phenomenality.


Maybe we do.  We just don't know that we know.


That artificial people
do not have real feelings is a staple of sci fi.

   


To me that is an open question.  Are philosophical zombies possible?  It 
seems unlikely, but when I consider specific ideas about consciousness, 
such as Julian Jaynes, then it seems more plausible that conscious-like 
behavior could be evinced with such different internal processing that 
it would not realize consciousness as I experience it - though it might 
still be consciousness in Bruno's sense of being capable of mathematical 
self-reference.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 4:00 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote:

Coupled with the
inability to find any physiology corresponding to phenomenal
consciousness,

That's an odd thing to say. It is rather well known
that phenomenal consciousness can be switched off
by drugs.
True, but when not switched off, when operating in an alive and awake 
human being, no physiological explanation can be found for phenomenal 
consciousness, as Chalmers spends the majority of a whole book 
carefully explaining. 


Chalmers should take a lesson from Newton. When asked to explain how 
gravity worked he replied, Hypothesi non fingo.


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

--—John von Neumann

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 09 Mar 2011, at 12:28, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 9, 7:24 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 08 Mar 2011, at 15:54, 1Z wrote:






On Mar 8, 1:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:



On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



Reduction is not elimination



snip



Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.


Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.   
Why

ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The
point
is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is  
implicitly

(if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that
exists
is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.
That's
literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of  
us, as

observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless
choose to
deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so
choose,
we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard  
Problem in

perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all
except an
ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate
constituent of
everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?



Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever,  
and
talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve  
nothing

because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all
just
quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
about all these additional things, but then to claim that this  
talk
can be materially identical to the quarks under some  
description
is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging  
the

conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and
simply
begs the critical question in the most egregious way.



The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that
I've
understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND
integrative.
That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational  
ultimate
components and their relations, AND it further specifies the  
local
emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers  
of

composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic
deathtrap,
and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time
and
space themselves, is localised and personalised at the
intersection of
these analytic and synthetic principles.


I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle  
and

difficult issue.



The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does
not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of
mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal  
firing or

quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non
pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain  
with

neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the
conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism).



Another option is open to them: it is a brute fact that the neuronal
firing
IS the pain, but physicalese descriptions of neuronal firing don't
capture that because
they are inadequate.


Except that it is not a brute fact that the neuronal firing is the
pain. That does not make sense. A neuronal firing is entirely
descriptibe in a thrid person way, but a pain is not at all.


If it is entirely describable, the identification fails. If the
identification
is true as a brute fact, then it is the description that is failing.
Since
it fails, we can't grasp the brute fact, but brute facts aren't
necessarily
graspable...that is the point of the jargon term brute fact. In the
world of mathematics, ideas such as brute facts and unreachable
noumena don't make sense, because mathematical objects are fully
describable. Brute facts belong to realism, where certain things just
are
and there is no guarantee they will be comprehensible.


Arithmetical truth is definable by Zermelo Fraenkel (a Löbian  
machine), but not by Peano Arithmetic (another simpler one). Most big  
object in math are not fully graspable, and if we are machine any  
notion of truth-about-us, is beyond our reach, yet a priori  
mathematical, assuming comp.
fully describable

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 4:30 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote:
Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely 
epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model of the 
state and QM merely

predicts probabilities for this change.

That's what I thought I was saying!


No.  Everett and Omnes are quite different.  Omnes says the wave 
function is merely a representation of what we know about an initial 
state (e.g. one we've prepared in the laboratory) and the wave equation 
tells us the probabilities of what we will observe.  Since the WF is 
just a representation of our knowledge, it abruptly changes 
(collapses) when we gain new knowledge.  Everett on the other hand 
reifies the wave function and assumes it never collapses.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 4:30 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 09 Mar 2011, at 12:28, 1Z wrote:





  On Mar 9, 7:24 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 08 Mar 2011, at 15:54, 1Z wrote:

  On Mar 8, 1:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:

  On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Reduction is not elimination

  snip

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

  Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  
  Why
  ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
  dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
  insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The
  point
  is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is  
  implicitly
  (if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that
  exists
  is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.
  That's
  literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
  fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of  
  us, as
  observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless
  choose to
  deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so
  choose,
  we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard  
  Problem in
  perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all
  except an
  ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate
  constituent of
  everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
  ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?

  Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
  computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever,  
  and
  talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve  
  nothing
  because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all
  just
  quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
  about all these additional things, but then to claim that this  
  talk
  can be materially identical to the quarks under some  
  description
  is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging  
  the
  conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and
  simply
  begs the critical question in the most egregious way.

  The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that
  I've
  understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND
  integrative.
  That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational  
  ultimate
  components and their relations, AND it further specifies the  
  local
  emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers  
  of
  composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
  synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
  duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic
  deathtrap,
  and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
  categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
  entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time
  and
  space themselves, is localised and personalised at the
  intersection of
  these analytic and synthetic principles.

  I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle  
  and
  difficult issue.

  The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does
  not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of
  mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal  
  firing or
  quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non
  pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain  
  with
  neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the
  conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism).

  Another option is open to them: it is a brute fact that the neuronal
  firing
  IS the pain, but physicalese descriptions of neuronal firing don't
  capture that because
  they are inadequate.

  Except that it is not a brute fact that the neuronal firing is the
  pain. That does not make sense. A neuronal firing is entirely
  descriptibe in a thrid person way, but a pain is not at all.

  If it is entirely describable, the identification fails. If the
  identification
  is true as a brute fact, then it is the description that is failing.
  Since
  it fails, we can't grasp the brute fact, but brute facts aren't
  necessarily
  graspable...that is the point of the jargon term brute fact. In the
  world of mathematics, ideas such as brute facts and unreachable
  noumena don't make sense, because mathematical objects are fully
  describable. Brute facts belong to realism, where certain things just
  are
  and there is no guarantee they will be comprehensible.

 Arithmetical truth is definable by Zermelo Fraenkel (a Löbian  
 machine),

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 4:47 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 On 3/9/2011 4:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:

  Peter, your comments appear to illustrate a basic confusion between
  ontological and epistemological claims that makes me think that you
  haven't taken on board the fundamental distinction entailed in Bruno's
  original statement:

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological*elimination*.

 This strikes me a mere semantic argumentation.  Houses are made of
 bricks.  Bricks are made of atoms.  Atoms are made of strings. This is
 reduction; ontological reduction.  X is reduce to Y and relations among
 Y.  Elimination is not mentioned anywhere.  There is no justification
 for eliminating anything; either ontologically or epistemologically
 (whatever that means?).  There are still atoms and bricks and houses.  
 Reduction is a word we invented to describe this.  I don't know why
 someone wants to equate it with elimination.  What would it mean to
 eliminate bricks?  To banish them?  To always refer to them by long
 descriptive phrases in terms of atoms?

 Brent

Eliminativism argues that folk-psychology won't even
survive as a convenient shorthand -- but that is an argument
that goes way beyond reduction itself. House, heat
etc are not subject to it.

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 5:30 AM, 1Z wrote:

Zombies are not a typical example of the problems of reduction,
they are an instance of the reduction being bought too cheaply:
the reductive materialist presents the off-the-peg conclusion that
consciousness
just is neural firing, without filling in the explanation that
allows
us to see that it*must be*, so that we instead remain being able to
see that it
*might not*  be!

   


But keep in mind what counts as explanation.  In science it is really 
just a model that tells us how something can manipulated.  The molecular 
model of heat works as an explanation because it connects different 
phenomenon, e.g. heating of a gas due to compression, heating due to 
friction.


I think eventually we will have a theory tells us which kind of neural 
firings or computation produce what kind of conscious thoughts. And that 
will be the end of explanation.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 3:25 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 14:39, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
  not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?

  No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular
  motion, and molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so
  heat was not eliminated

 It seems that you persistently misunderstand the meaning of
 elimination in this context. If something can be shown to be a
 composite of more fundamental ontological components, it is of course
 disqualified (i.e. eliminated) thereby as an ontological fundamental

But that's *not* what elimination means as in eliminativism.
The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't exist
at all.
Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
we are going to continue using the term

 else such use of the terms ontological, fundamental and
 eliminated is rendered meaningless.  Hence heat can indeed be
 eliminated from the catalogue of ontological fundamentals in this way,
 and understood as consisting in the more fundamental phenomenon of
 molecular motion.  Of course the *concept* (and a fortiori the
 sensation) of heat isn't thereby eliminated epistemologically

More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
call that elimination, what are you going to call
what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?

, but
 this is the very distinction we are trying to establish on a firm
 footing.  The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
 principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
 entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
 a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
 epistemological level.

It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 16:21, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:

 To me that is an open question.  Are philosophical zombies possible?  It
 seems unlikely, but when I consider specific ideas about consciousness, such
 as Julian Jaynes, then it seems more plausible that conscious-like behavior
 could be evinced with such different internal processing that it would not
 realize consciousness as I experience it - though it might still be
 consciousness in Bruno's sense of being capable of mathematical
 self-reference.

My reading of Jaynes (and TOOCITBOTBM is one of my favourites) is that
by non-conscious he actually meant non-self-conscious.  The
non-self-conscious person essentially obeys the voices in her head,
but when these can no longer provide guidance, internal dialogue - and
with it, self-consciousness - may emerge as a superior survival
strategy.  However I don't believe Jaynes thought that the bicameral
person literally lacked phenomenal experience.

David

 On 3/9/2011 3:28 AM, 1Z wrote:

 I can
   say yes to the doctor if my consciousness and qualia is related to a
   noumenal hinterland of the matter in my physical brain. That noumenal
   matter hinterland contradicts the idea that there is a level of
   description of myself where matter and physical structure can be
   replaced by arbitrary different matter and structure, once they
   preserve the computational relations, which are arithmetical, by
   digitality.


 Yep. Comp is a bad theory of qualia. We don't know
 how to write subroutines for phenomenality.

 Maybe we do.  We just don't know that we know.

 That artificial people
 do not have real feelings is a staple of sci fi.



 To me that is an open question.  Are philosophical zombies possible?  It
 seems unlikely, but when I consider specific ideas about consciousness, such
 as Julian Jaynes, then it seems more plausible that conscious-like behavior
 could be evinced with such different internal processing that it would not
 realize consciousness as I experience it - though it might still be
 consciousness in Bruno's sense of being capable of mathematical
 self-reference.

 Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 09 Mar 2011, at 17:49, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 9, 4:30 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:






OK. I guess you associate pain to the primitive matter. But that is
even more incoherent with respect to the comp hypothesis.


There is nothing mystical about the falsehood of comp. It
is quite possible for comp to  be false whilst naturalism remains
true.


My point is just that IF comp is true, then naturalism is false. Or   
if you prefer, that if naturalism is true, then comp is false.

So I certainly agree here.






Computationalism is not per se a theory of qualia.


How can it be a theory of consciousness without being a theory
of qualia?


In that sense all right. Comp is the theory which accept as axiom that  
my brain/body is Turing emulable at some level.
But in that sense, comp is a theory of everything. Indeed, it even  
makes elementary arithmetic a theory of everything, with both quanta  
and qualia derivable from digital machine's self-reference.







Yep. Comp is a bad theory of qualia.


As I said, Comp is the assumption that qualia are preserved through
functional substitution at some level. A theory of qualia emerges  
from

the self-reference logic.


A theory of indescribable something-or-others does


More precisely, a theory of describable and indescribable oneself  
can prove and infer about oneself.






But then if you abandon comp at this stage, it means I have made my
point. I thought you were defending COMP + MAT(*)


I was pointing out that COMP does not imply not-MAT once
PLATO is dropped. COMP may be a bad theory for other reasons.


COMP makes no sense at all without Plato (that is we need to believe  
that phi_x(y) converges or does not converge. No more is needed for  
the epistemological reversal. Or show the flaw in UDA, or show where  
more than such Plato is used.






If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in the
UD Argument.


Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon


Then there is a flaw in UDA+MGA. Where?





(*) For the new people: MAT = weak materialism = the common doctrine
that primitive matter exists, or that matter exists at the basic
ontological level.


We don't know
how to write subroutines for phenomenality.


Assuming comp, it is enough to write the code of a universal machine.
For example RA (Robinson Arithmetic) has qualia, but RA lacks the
cognitive ability to understand the notion of qualia. If you give it
the induction axioms (getting PA), you get a Löbian machine, and it
has the full power to find its own theory of qualia.


Assuming indescribability is a sufficient, and not
just a necessary feature of qualia


That contradicts what you said in the preceding post. But then my task  
is even more simple, given that machine can access to the  
indescribability of their qualia.







That artificial people
do not have real feelings is a staple of sci fi.


And ?


So the intuitions that underly the HP also
underly the badness of COMP as a theory
of qualia


What is HP?

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 17:22, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't exist
 at all.

Just so.  At a reduced ontological level, heat doesn't exist at all -
it's just molecular motion, no more, no less, and any explanation
invoking heat could in principle be entirely eliminated by one
invoking molecular motion.

 Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
 about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
 when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
 we are going to continue using the term

Not knowing what (if anything) may ultimately turn out to be the
bottom level doesn't stop us from knowing that, in the hierarchy of
explanation, molecular motion is a more fundamental level than heat.
And the question of whether we go on using the eliminated term is an
epistemological matter (i.e. it concerns what we know and can say) not
an ontological one (concerning what ultimately exists).

 More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
 same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
 call that elimination, what are you going to call
 what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?

If here you want to say that phlogiston was eliminated, then you are
clearly using the word in a non-standard way.  Phlogiston is just a
theoretical term of an incorrect theory of combustion, and hence no
longer has a place in the replacement theory.  Heat, on the other
hand, is believed to refer correctly to a more fundamental underlying
molecular phenomenon, and hence can be retained as a theoretical
concept, though eliminated as a fundamental entity in its own right.

 The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
 principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
 entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
 a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
 epistemological level.

 It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
 I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental

In effect, it *is* a synonym for non-fundamental.  If, as reductive
programmes envisage, ontology can be grounded somewhere in a finite
set of ultimate entities and their relations, then non-fundamental
entities (composites) must be aspects of what we know, not what things
ultimately are.

David



 On Mar 9, 3:25 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 14:39, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically* (i.e.
  not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular motion?

  No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular
  motion, and molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so
  heat was not eliminated

 It seems that you persistently misunderstand the meaning of
 elimination in this context. If something can be shown to be a
 composite of more fundamental ontological components, it is of course
 disqualified (i.e. eliminated) thereby as an ontological fundamental

 But that's *not* what elimination means as in eliminativism.
 The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't exist
 at all.
 Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
 about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
 when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
 we are going to continue using the term

 else such use of the terms ontological, fundamental and
 eliminated is rendered meaningless.  Hence heat can indeed be
 eliminated from the catalogue of ontological fundamentals in this way,
 and understood as consisting in the more fundamental phenomenon of
 molecular motion.  Of course the *concept* (and a fortiori the
 sensation) of heat isn't thereby eliminated epistemologically

 More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
 same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
 call that elimination, what are you going to call
 what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?

, but
 this is the very distinction we are trying to establish on a firm
 footing.  The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
 principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
 entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
 a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
 epistemological level.

 It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
 I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 5:56 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 In that sense all right. Comp is the theory which accept as axiom that  
 my brain/body is Turing emulable at some level.
 But in that sense, comp is a theory of everything. Indeed, it even  
 makes elementary arithmetic a theory of everything, with both quanta  
 and qualia derivable from digital machine's self-reference.

Comp is not a TOE without Platonism


  But then if you abandon comp at this stage, it means I have made my
  point. I thought you were defending COMP + MAT(*)

  I was pointing out that COMP does not imply not-MAT once
  PLATO is dropped. COMP may be a bad theory for other reasons.

 COMP makes no sense at all without Plato (that is we need to believe  
 that phi_x(y) converges or does not converge.

Platonism is not bivalence

 No more is needed for  
 the epistemological reversal. Or show the flaw in UDA, or show where  
 more than such Plato is used.



  If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
  with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in the
  UD Argument.

  Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
  real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
  level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
  but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
  anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon

 Then there is a flaw in UDA+MGA. Where?

You can't disprove materialism without assuming
Platonism




  That artificial people
  do not have real feelings is a staple of sci fi.

  And ?

  So the intuitions that underly the HP also
  underly the badness of COMP as a theory
  of qualia

 What is HP?

The Hard Problem

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 6:00 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 17:22, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't exist
  at all.

 Just so.  At a reduced ontological level, heat doesn't exist at all -

It does, because it is identified with something that does exist

 it's just molecular motion, no more, no less, and any explanation
 invoking heat could in principle be entirely eliminated by one
 invoking molecular motion.

Or vice versa. But replacement of a description  by an
equivalent or synonymous one does not show that
neither has a referent

  Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
  about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
  when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
  we are going to continue using the term

 Not knowing what (if anything) may ultimately turn out to be the
 bottom level doesn't stop us from knowing that, in the hierarchy of
 explanation, molecular motion is a more fundamental level than heat.
 And the question of whether we go on using the eliminated term is an
 epistemological matter (i.e. it concerns what we know and can say) not
 an ontological one (concerning what ultimately exists).

The question of whether we continue using the term is ontological,
because the issue of whether it has something to refer to is
ontological
(albeit not fundamentally so). We *can* stop using the term
pholgiston because it has nothing to refer to.

  More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
  same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
  call that elimination, what are you going to call
  what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?

 If here you want to say that phlogiston was eliminated, then you are
 clearly using the word in a non-standard way.

No, you are, because elimnativism and reductionism are
different ideas.

 Phlogiston is just a
 theoretical term of an incorrect theory of combustion, and hence no
 longer has a place in the replacement theory.

 Heat, on the other
 hand, is believed to refer correctly to a more fundamental underlying
 molecular phenomenon, and hence can be retained as a theoretical
 concept, though eliminated as a fundamental entity in its own right.

Fine. So reductionist materialists only believe that mind doesn't
exist in its own right...whereas eliminativists believe it doesn't
exist at all.

  The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
  principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
  entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
  a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
  epistemological level.

  It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
  I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental

 In effect, it *is* a synonym for non-fundamental.  If, as reductive
 programmes envisage, ontology can be grounded somewhere in a finite
 set of ultimate entities and their relations, then non-fundamental
 entities (composites) must be aspects of what we know, not what things
 ultimately are.

They are neither: they are what things non-ultimately are.

Aspects of knowledge would be things like truth and justification

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Re: Molecular Motion and Heat, was ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-09 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

When you compare heat and molecular motion, first it would be good to 
define what molecular motion is.


At the beginning, the molecules and atoms were considered as hard 
spheres. At this state, there was the problem as follows. We bring a 
glass of hot water in the room and leave it there. Eventually the 
temperature of the water will be equal to the ambient temperature. 
According to the heat theory, the temperature in the glass will be hot 
again spontaneously and it is in complete agreement with our experience. 
With molecular motion, if we consider them as hard spheres there is a 
nonzero chance that the water in the glass will be hot again. Moreover, 
there is a theorem (Poincaré recurrence) that states that if we wait 
long enough then the temperature of the glass must be hot again. No 
doubt, the chances are very small and time to wait is very long, in a 
way this is negligible. Yet some people are happy with such statistical 
explanation, some not. Hence, it is a bit too simple to say that 
molecular motion has eliminated heat at this level.


Then we could say that molecules and atoms are not hard spheres but 
quantum objects. This however brings even more problems, as we do not 
have macroscopic objects then. Let me quote Laughlin to this end


By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects 
to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are 
accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of 
Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but 
ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all 
properties of an object – an identifiable position. This is why attempts 
to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense 
statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously 
everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian 
description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare 
this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which 
a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become 
corporeal.


So I personally not that sure that molecular motion has more meaning 
*ontologically* than heat.


Evgenii

P.S. For those who love heat, entropy, and information:

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/12/entropy-and-artificial-life.html


On 09.03.2011 15:39 1Z said the following:



On Mar 9, 2:23 pm, David Nymanda...@davidnyman.com  wrote:

On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Zpeterdjo...@yahoo.com  wrote:


Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a
difference


So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically*
(i.e. not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular
motion?


No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular motion, and
molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so heat was not eliminated



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 8:49 AM, 1Z wrote:

If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
  with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in the
  UD Argument.
 

Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon

   


But how do we know what the zeroth level is?  What is really meant is 
OUR level - the one in which we can give ostensive definitions.  Which 
is my point about BIVs.  We can only know them to be conscious insofar 
as they can be grounded in our zeroth level.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 9:24 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 9 March 2011 16:21, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:

   

  To me that is an open question.  Are philosophical zombies possible?  It
  seems unlikely, but when I consider specific ideas about consciousness, such
  as Julian Jaynes, then it seems more plausible that conscious-like behavior
  could be evinced with such different internal processing that it would not
  realize consciousness as I experience it - though it might still be
  consciousness in Bruno's sense of being capable of mathematical
  self-reference.
 

My reading of Jaynes (and TOOCITBOTBM is one of my favourites) is that
by non-conscious he actually meant non-self-conscious.  The
non-self-conscious person essentially obeys the voices in her head,
but when these can no longer provide guidance, internal dialogue - and
with it, self-consciousness - may emerge as a superior survival
strategy.  However I don't believe Jaynes thought that the bicameral
person literally lacked phenomenal experience.

David

   


Yes, I realize there are kinds of consciousness.  I thought the 
interesting idea in Jaynes was that perceptual consciousness, which I'm 
sure my dog has, was co-opted by evolution to become 
self-consciousness.  Specifically that with the development of language, 
communication of aural information became very important.  The brain 
evolved to internalize this into an inner-narration to realize the 
advantage of keeping one's thought's to oneself (e.g. decpetion).  It 
would imply that if, for example written communication was invented 
before language, then our brains might implement consciousness through 
an inner text (like those ribbons across the bottom of a TV news 
program) instead of an inner voice.  This is what leads me to speculate 
that there could be completely different modes of internal cogitation 
that we could not easily identify even though the external behavior was 
what we could call conscious.  The intelligent Mars Rover may be an 
example of this.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 5:15 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 On 3/9/2011 5:30 AM, 1Z wrote:

  Zombies are not a typical example of the problems of reduction,
  they are an instance of the reduction being bought too cheaply:
  the reductive materialist presents the off-the-peg conclusion that
  consciousness
  just is neural firing, without filling in the explanation that
  allows
  us to see that it*must be*, so that we instead remain being able to
  see that it
  *might not*  be!

 But keep in mind what counts as explanation.  In science it is really
 just a model that tells us how something can manipulated.

As opposed to what?  I think explanation supports modal
claims. I think models do as well. If you always get a result
however you manipulate a model, it's necessary within that
model. If you sometimes do, it's possible. Never, impossible.

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 11:46 AM, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 9, 5:15 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:
   

On 3/9/2011 5:30 AM, 1Z wrote:

 

Zombies are not a typical example of the problems of reduction,
they are an instance of the reduction being bought too cheaply:
the reductive materialist presents the off-the-peg conclusion that
consciousness
just is neural firing, without filling in the explanation that
allows
us to see that it*must be*, so that we instead remain being able to
see that it
*might not*  be!
   

But keep in mind what counts as explanation.  In science it is really
just a model that tells us how something can manipulated.
 

As opposed to what?


As opposed to stories about what exists, but can never be tested.

Brent


I think explanation supports modal
claims. I think models do as well. If you always get a result
however you manipulate a model, it's necessary within that
model. If you sometimes do, it's possible. Never, impossible.

   


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 19:09, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

Fine, Peter, have it your way.  We can't seem to progress beyond
vocabulary difficulties to the substance.  No doubt I have been less
than persuasive, and thus have failed to convince you that there is
indeed any substance. But since I have nothing further to add at this
point, I'll stop here (and so save you some typing, as you are wont to
say).

David



 On Mar 9, 6:00 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 17:22, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't exist
  at all.

 Just so.  At a reduced ontological level, heat doesn't exist at all -

 It does, because it is identified with something that does exist

 it's just molecular motion, no more, no less, and any explanation
 invoking heat could in principle be entirely eliminated by one
 invoking molecular motion.

 Or vice versa. But replacement of a description  by an
 equivalent or synonymous one does not show that
 neither has a referent

  Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
  about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
  when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
  we are going to continue using the term

 Not knowing what (if anything) may ultimately turn out to be the
 bottom level doesn't stop us from knowing that, in the hierarchy of
 explanation, molecular motion is a more fundamental level than heat.
 And the question of whether we go on using the eliminated term is an
 epistemological matter (i.e. it concerns what we know and can say) not
 an ontological one (concerning what ultimately exists).

 The question of whether we continue using the term is ontological,
 because the issue of whether it has something to refer to is
 ontological
 (albeit not fundamentally so). We *can* stop using the term
 pholgiston because it has nothing to refer to.

  More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
  same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
  call that elimination, what are you going to call
  what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?

 If here you want to say that phlogiston was eliminated, then you are
 clearly using the word in a non-standard way.

 No, you are, because elimnativism and reductionism are
 different ideas.

 Phlogiston is just a
 theoretical term of an incorrect theory of combustion, and hence no
 longer has a place in the replacement theory.

 Heat, on the other
 hand, is believed to refer correctly to a more fundamental underlying
 molecular phenomenon, and hence can be retained as a theoretical
 concept, though eliminated as a fundamental entity in its own right.

 Fine. So reductionist materialists only believe that mind doesn't
 exist in its own right...whereas eliminativists believe it doesn't
 exist at all.

  The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
  principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
  entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as resting on
  a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities at the
  epistemological level.

  It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
  I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental

 In effect, it *is* a synonym for non-fundamental.  If, as reductive
 programmes envisage, ontology can be grounded somewhere in a finite
 set of ultimate entities and their relations, then non-fundamental
 entities (composites) must be aspects of what we know, not what things
 ultimately are.

 They are neither: they are what things non-ultimately are.

 Aspects of knowledge would be things like truth and justification

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 19:43, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:

 Yes, I realize there are kinds of consciousness.  I thought the interesting
 idea in Jaynes was that perceptual consciousness, which I'm sure my dog has,
 was co-opted by evolution to become self-consciousness.  Specifically that
 with the development of language, communication of aural information became
 very important.  The brain evolved to internalize this into an
 inner-narration to realize the advantage of keeping one's thought's to
 oneself (e.g. decpetion).  It would imply that if, for example written
 communication was invented before language, then our brains might implement
 consciousness through an inner text (like those ribbons across the bottom of
 a TV news program) instead of an inner voice.  This is what leads me to
 speculate that there could be completely different modes of internal
 cogitation that we could not easily identify even though the external
 behavior was what we could call conscious.  The intelligent Mars Rover may
 be an example of this.

Interesting, you've given me something new to think about.

Thanks

David

 On 3/9/2011 9:24 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 9 March 2011 16:21, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:



   To me that is an open question.  Are philosophical zombies possible?
   It
   seems unlikely, but when I consider specific ideas about
  consciousness, such
   as Julian Jaynes, then it seems more plausible that conscious-like
  behavior
   could be evinced with such different internal processing that it would
  not
   realize consciousness as I experience it - though it might still be
   consciousness in Bruno's sense of being capable of mathematical
   self-reference.


 My reading of Jaynes (and TOOCITBOTBM is one of my favourites) is that
 by non-conscious he actually meant non-self-conscious.  The
 non-self-conscious person essentially obeys the voices in her head,
 but when these can no longer provide guidance, internal dialogue - and
 with it, self-consciousness - may emerge as a superior survival
 strategy.  However I don't believe Jaynes thought that the bicameral
 person literally lacked phenomenal experience.

 David



 Yes, I realize there are kinds of consciousness.  I thought the interesting
 idea in Jaynes was that perceptual consciousness, which I'm sure my dog has,
 was co-opted by evolution to become self-consciousness.  Specifically that
 with the development of language, communication of aural information became
 very important.  The brain evolved to internalize this into an
 inner-narration to realize the advantage of keeping one's thought's to
 oneself (e.g. decpetion).  It would imply that if, for example written
 communication was invented before language, then our brains might implement
 consciousness through an inner text (like those ribbons across the bottom of
 a TV news program) instead of an inner voice.  This is what leads me to
 speculate that there could be completely different modes of internal
 cogitation that we could not easily identify even though the external
 behavior was what we could call conscious.  The intelligent Mars Rover may
 be an example of this.

 Brent

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Re: Molecular Motion and Heat, was ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 9 March 2011 19:22, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote:

 So I personally not that sure that molecular motion has more meaning
 *ontologically* than heat.

Actually, I agree with you.  Of course whatever we can speak or
theorise about is, strictly, entirely epistemological and consequently
those aspects we label ontological are properly a subset of the
theory of knowledge.  And of course even in these terms it isn't clear
that the physical is simply reducible to independently existing
fundamental entities and their relations.  Even though I was
attempting to pursue some rather obvious consequences of the idea that
reality might be so reducible, I accept that the relation between what
we know and what may ultimately ground such knowledge is doubtless
altogether more complex, subtle and opaque.

David


 When you compare heat and molecular motion, first it would be good to define
 what molecular motion is.

 At the beginning, the molecules and atoms were considered as hard spheres.
 At this state, there was the problem as follows. We bring a glass of hot
 water in the room and leave it there. Eventually the temperature of the
 water will be equal to the ambient temperature. According to the heat
 theory, the temperature in the glass will be hot again spontaneously and it
 is in complete agreement with our experience. With molecular motion, if we
 consider them as hard spheres there is a nonzero chance that the water in
 the glass will be hot again. Moreover, there is a theorem (Poincaré
 recurrence) that states that if we wait long enough then the temperature of
 the glass must be hot again. No doubt, the chances are very small and time
 to wait is very long, in a way this is negligible. Yet some people are happy
 with such statistical explanation, some not. Hence, it is a bit too simple
 to say that molecular motion has eliminated heat at this level.

 Then we could say that molecules and atoms are not hard spheres but quantum
 objects. This however brings even more problems, as we do not have
 macroscopic objects then. Let me quote Laughlin to this end

 By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to
 exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed
 to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres.
 Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical
 entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object – an
 identifiable position. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in
 Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being
 neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation into
 large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful,
 not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed
 Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms
 and, in doing so, become corporeal.

 So I personally not that sure that molecular motion has more meaning
 *ontologically* than heat.

 Evgenii

 P.S. For those who love heat, entropy, and information:

 http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/12/entropy-and-artificial-life.html


 On 09.03.2011 15:39 1Z said the following:


 On Mar 9, 2:23 pm, David Nymanda...@davidnyman.com  wrote:

 On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Zpeterdjo...@yahoo.com  wrote:

 Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a
 difference

 So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically*
 (i.e. not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular
 motion?

 No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular motion, and
 molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so heat was not eliminated


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 10:33 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 9 March 2011 19:09, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Fine, Peter, have it your way.  We can't seem to progress beyond
 vocabulary difficulties to the substance.

Unfortunately non-vocabulary differences have to be expressed in
vocabulary. As do vocabulary differences, for that matter.

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 7:28 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 On 3/9/2011 8:49 AM, 1Z wrote:

  If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
    with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in the
    UD Argument.

  Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
  real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
  level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
  but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
  anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon

 But how do we know what the zeroth level is?  

Then hypothesis that the physical world
is zero level is consistent with the hypothesis
that we are and must be running on the metal.
Many other scenarios are possible. But only
coherence was asked for (see above)

What is really meant is
 OUR level - the one in which we can give ostensive definitions.  Which
 is my point about BIVs.  We can only know them to be conscious insofar
 as they can be grounded in our zeroth level.

A BIV that is grounded in our level is no BIV at all. That would
be like a novel consisting entirely of historical facts.

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Re: Molecular Motion and Heat, was ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 7:22 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote:
 When you compare heat and molecular motion, first it would be good to
 define what molecular motion is.

 At the beginning, the molecules and atoms were considered as hard
 spheres. At this state, there was the problem as follows. We bring a
 glass of hot water in the room and leave it there. Eventually the
 temperature of the water will be equal to the ambient temperature.
 According to the heat theory, the temperature in the glass will be hot
 again spontaneously and it is in complete agreement with our experience.

OK.

 With molecular motion, if we consider them as hard spheres there is a
 nonzero chance that the water in the glass will be hot again.

I don't see the difference. Both seem to predict the same thing

 Moreover,
 there is a theorem (Poincar recurrence) that states that if we wait
 long enough then the temperature of the glass must be hot again. No
 doubt, the chances are very small and time to wait is very long, in a
 way this is negligible. Yet some people are happy with such statistical
 explanation, some not. Hence, it is a bit too simple to say that
 molecular motion has eliminated heat at this level.

I still don't see the difference

 Then we could say that molecules and atoms are not hard spheres but
 quantum objects. This however brings even more problems, as we do not
 have macroscopic objects then. Let me quote Laughlin to this end

 By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects
 to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are
 accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of
 Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but
 ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all
 properties of an object an identifiable position. This is why attempts
 to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense
 statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously
 everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian
 description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare
 this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which
 a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become
 corporeal.

 So I personally not that sure that molecular motion has more meaning
 *ontologically* than heat

Ermm... so you are saying that the classical explanation of heat
reduces it
to the motions of molecules with individually well-defined positions
and velocities --whereas
Qm reuires that those things can only be defined in a kind of reverse-
reductionism
scenario where the parts acquire their properties from the whole? Is
that right?
I am  not sure that really breaks anything in thermodynamics, because
quantum
entities still can have well-defined kinetic energies without having
well
defined positions or velocities.



 Evgenii

 P.S. For those who love heat, entropy, and information:

 http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/12/entropy-and-artificial-life.html

 On 09.03.2011 15:39 1Z said the following:



  On Mar 9, 2:23 pm, David Nymanda...@davidnyman.com  wrote:
  On 9 March 2011 14:17, 1Zpeterdjo...@yahoo.com  wrote:

  Phlogiston was eliminated, heat was reduced. There's a
  difference

  So on this basis you would claim that heat is *ontologically*
  (i.e. not merely epistemologically) distinguishable from molecular
  motion?

  No. I would say it is ontologically the same as molecular motion, and
  molecular motion exists, so heat exists, so heat was not eliminated

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 09 Mar 2011, at 19:10, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 9, 5:56 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

In that sense all right. Comp is the theory which accept as axiom  
that

my brain/body is Turing emulable at some level.
But in that sense, comp is a theory of everything. Indeed, it even
makes elementary arithmetic a theory of everything, with both quanta
and qualia derivable from digital machine's self-reference.


Comp is not a TOE without Platonism


Remind me what you mean by Platonism. In the derivation I use only  
arithmetical realism. Platonism per se is in the conclusion.









But then if you abandon comp at this stage, it means I have made my
point. I thought you were defending COMP + MAT(*)



I was pointing out that COMP does not imply not-MAT once
PLATO is dropped. COMP may be a bad theory for other reasons.


COMP makes no sense at all without Plato (that is we need to  
believe

that phi_x(y) converges or does not converge.


Platonism is not bivalence


But arithmetical realism is, formally, the excluded middle principle.  
I accept the truth of A v ~A, for A sigma_1.






No more is needed for
the epistemological reversal. Or show the flaw in UDA, or show where
more than such Plato is used.




If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in  
the

UD Argument.



Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon


Then there is a flaw in UDA+MGA. Where?


You can't disprove materialism without assuming
Platonism


This does not show where is the flaw.








That artificial people
do not have real feelings is a staple of sci fi.



And ?



So the intuitions that underly the HP also
underly the badness of COMP as a theory
of qualia


What is HP?


The Hard Problem


HP, which is nothing than the mind body problem, and is really HPM+HPM  
(HPMind+HPmatter) underlies the difficulty of any theory.


Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/9/2011 4:15 PM, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 9, 7:28 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:
   

On 3/9/2011 8:49 AM, 1Z wrote:

 

If you have a theory of qualia using primitive matter, and coherent
 

  with comp, then you should be able to use it to extract a flaw in the
  UD Argument.
   
 

Here's one: minds can be computed,  but they only have
real conscious if they run on the metal (at the zeroth
level of abstraction). That's not your version of COMP,
but it is adequate for most AI researchers, and for
anybody who wants to be reincarnated in silicon
   

But how do we know what the zeroth level is?
 

Then hypothesis that the physical world
is zero level is consistent with the hypothesis
that we are and must be running on the metal.
Many other scenarios are possible. But only
coherence was asked for (see above)

   

What is really meant is
OUR level - the one in which we can give ostensive definitions.  Which
is my point about BIVs.  We can only know them to be conscious insofar
as they can be grounded in our zeroth level.
 

A BIV that is grounded in our level is no BIV at all. That would
be like a novel consisting entirely of historical facts.

   
A BIV that is conscious is like a historical novel.  A human BIV with 
input simulating the perceptions of a Drtywxz on planet Uwipjt might 
possibly be conscious, as a Boltzmann brain might be.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 09 Mar 2011, at 20:09, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 9, 6:00 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:

On 9 March 2011 17:22, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

The point of eliminativism is that the eliminated thing doesn't  
exist

at all.


Just so.  At a reduced ontological level, heat doesn't exist at all -


It does, because it is identified with something that does exist


it's just molecular motion, no more, no less, and any explanation
invoking heat could in principle be entirely eliminated by one
invoking molecular motion.


Or vice versa. But replacement of a description  by an
equivalent or synonymous one does not show that
neither has a referent


Moreover, it is difficult to see why anyone would complain
about a sense of elimination that just means non-fundamental,
when we don't necessarily know what is fundamental, and
we are going to continue using the term


Not knowing what (if anything) may ultimately turn out to be the
bottom level doesn't stop us from knowing that, in the hierarchy of
explanation, molecular motion is a more fundamental level than heat.
And the question of whether we go on using the eliminated term is an
epistemological matter (i.e. it concerns what we know and can say)  
not

an ontological one (concerning what ultimately exists).


The question of whether we continue using the term is ontological,
because the issue of whether it has something to refer to is
ontological
(albeit not fundamentally so). We *can* stop using the term
pholgiston because it has nothing to refer to.


More importantly, the concept has a referent. It is just the
same referent as another concept. But if your are going to
call that elimination, what are you going to call
what happened to phlogiston? Extermination?


If here you want to say that phlogiston was eliminated, then you are
clearly using the word in a non-standard way.


No, you are, because elimnativism and reductionism are
different ideas.


 Phlogiston is just a
theoretical term of an incorrect theory of combustion, and hence no
longer has a place in the replacement theory.



 Heat, on the other
hand, is believed to refer correctly to a more fundamental underlying
molecular phenomenon, and hence can be retained as a theoretical
concept, though eliminated as a fundamental entity in its own right.


Fine. So reductionist materialists only believe that mind doesn't
exist in its own right...whereas eliminativists believe it doesn't
exist at all.


The reductionist programme seeks to eliminate any need (in
principle) to appeal to any and all non-fundamental ontological
entities in precisely this way, and hence show ontology as  
resting on
a single fundamental base, thereby situating composite entities  
at the

epistemological level.



It is hard to see what you mean by epistemological there.
I don't think it is a synonym for non fundamental


In effect, it *is* a synonym for non-fundamental.  If, as reductive
programmes envisage, ontology can be grounded somewhere in a finite
set of ultimate entities and their relations, then non-fundamental
entities (composites) must be aspects of what we know, not what  
things

ultimately are.


They are neither: they are what things non-ultimately are.

Aspects of knowledge would be things like truth and justification


That's correct. But if that analysis was possibly successful, there  
would be no HP. Consciousness does exist in its own right, unlike  
heat, and so the analogy with heat break down ... unless you push the  
comp hypothesis to its ultimate conclusion and make primitive matter a  
convenient fiction. In that reversed direction we attach an immaterial  
(and self-referential property like knowledge Bp ( p)), to an  
immaterial entity (well an infinity of them). The hard problem comes  
from the insistence to privilege a particular type of 'physical'  
implementation. Consciousness becomes a person attribute, like a  
belief in a reality, and we can explain why it has unfathomable  
feature, why it is not definable, etc. matter becomes more complex to  
recover, and that is the point of the reversal. Appearance of matter  
does not disappear though, as the logic of the consistent belief and  
knowledge (the modality defined by Bp  Dp ( p) illustrate.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 06/03/11 18:07, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Hi Andrew,


On 06 Mar 2011, at 14:14, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi Bruno

On 05/03/11 14:46, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 04 Mar 2011, at 20:10, Andrew Soltau wrote:

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on 
the idea that everything is simpler than something.
If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a 
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you 
can't get much simpler than that.



Can you elaborate. What are their assumption? What do you mean by 
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything.  Almost 
all words here needs a clear context to make sense. Which everything?
I skipped over the details because I was don't want to be repeating 
paragraphs of stuff each time I make a point. Not sure about the 
protocol. Anyway.


Chalmers states

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as 
fundamental ... we will take experience itself as a fundamental 
feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. (1995, 
p. 216)


Clearly it is a universal property of the system in which we find 
ourselves, physical or arithmetical.




I understand Chalmers (materialist) stance,
Chalmers is saying that conciousness cannot be a product of the 
physical, surely the very opposite of a materialist stance?
but don't see the relation with your own saying. I don't see the same 
words, like symmetrical and universal. Also, be careful with the 
possible confusion for the reader. Universal can mean Truing 
universal (a math concept), or pertaining to the whole physical 
universe, like when saying the universal law of gravitation, for 
example.

Point taken.

I simply mean that just as a universe is in some sense a matter and 
energy phenomenon, and a spacetime phenomenon, it is at root also a 
conciousness phenomenon.


Bitbol concludes his section One mind, many points of view with

Mind is by itself point-of-view-less, just as it is placeless and 
timeless. The aporia is the following: Mind is not within the world 
since, even if it can identify itself to any available point of view, 
it is not identical to this point of view. Nor does Mind stand 
outside the world, since it has no point of view of its own, 
independent from the points of view the world can offer. Wittgenstein 
would say that Mind is the limit of the world.


I agree, and often say similar things, but of course it is a bit vague 
out of the context. ventuall I think Bitbol use world in the usual 
sense of physical world, assumed to be primary.


Also I thought that Wittgenstein said that the World is the border of 
the subject (the limit if the mind, not of the world).






and continues

More formally, Mind can be considered as an empty space in the 
triadic relation: point of view of ( ) on a 'real universe'. This 
scheme provides another way of seeing why Mind retains its necessity, 
even though the real universe gathers all that falls under the 
categories of knowledge: Mind plays a key role in the very 
constitutive relations of this knowledge. Its closest philosophical 
equivalents are Husserl's and Sartre's Transcendental ego; or, even 
better, Wittenstein's subject which (...) does not belong to the 
world: rather it is a limit of the world (Tractatus 5.632).


Hmm... I thought Wittgenstein said that the world is the limit of the 
subject.  I have no problem with Husserl's or Sartre transcendental 
ego. The 8 hypostases,  can be seen in that way.



It is the same Mind, phenomenal conciousness, in all places and at 
all times.


I like that idea, but it is an open problem (in the comp frame).




In Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics I show that it is necessarily 
an emergent property of the unitary totality, Russell's 'Everything', 
which fits this concept precisely.


What is the role of Quantum Mechanics. What is Russell's everything? 
Is it Russell Standish's notion of 'nothing', or Bertrand Russell's 
notion of everything in math? You might elaborate a little bit.
Certainly. Yes, Russell's everything here means Russell Standish's 
notion of 'nothing'.


In Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics I draw attention to the conclusion 
of a number of leading thinkers that the universe is static, even in QM. 
Relativity gives us a static block universe, QM gives us - in the 
quantum concept of time - a static array of static block universes. 
Then, by analogy to a movie film, I draw attention to Everett's 
appearance of collapse, which corresponds precisely to a sequece of 
frame of reference, just as the movie is a sequcne of two dimensional 
frames. Iteration of block universe moments, Everett's appearance of 
collapse, gives rise to exactly the subjective experience of a changing, 
apparently constnatly determinate, reatliy, which we experience. Finally 
the punch line.  The iterator of block universe moments can only be an 
emergent property of the unitary system as a whole. Nothing else is in 
the correct

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 06/03/11 15:06, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 5:46 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:

The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse
occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs has
been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. It
appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse is
purely subjective,

It doesn't appear in an univocal way, since there are
such things as objective collapse theories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_collapse_theory

OK, perhaps I stand corrected. But I am sure that no objective collapse 
theory has been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance.

as Everett demonstrates.

MWI isn't usually presented as a subjective theory. Penrose
argues that it makes surreptitious assumptions about how
observers' minds work, but that is part of an argument against
it.

I would differentiate between Everett and MWI. MWI means to me many 
worlds in some way separate. Everett is without question, in my view, 
saying that there is one physical environment, and that it is only 
subjectively that there are different, determinate views of that 
environment.

In this case, consciousness
is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and only consciousness,
which encounters this appearance of collapse and change.

It is only consciousness that consciously encounters everything else
too. However, that does not make consciousness *ontologically*
fundamental.

It does if the physical system is static. If there is no change, 
objectively, only subjectively, this points to consciousness - 
phenomenal consciousness - being ontologically fundamental.

We know there
is an effective collapse, or the appearance of collapse, because we
experience this subjectively. On the other hand, nothing in the physical
world, including the physical body and the physical brain, can account
for this.

Whoah! What he have is a profusion of theores, with no clear winner
What I mean is that if the physical domain is indeed static, as Davies, 
Barbour, Deutsch and others explain, then nothing physical can account 
for the appearance of change we encounter as observers. Coupled with the 
inability to find any physiology corresponding to phenomenal 
consciousness, and Chalmers finding that there can be no such 
explanation, I infer this consciousness to be ontologically fundamental 
- an emergent property of the unitary system as a whole.

Whatever consciousness is, it appears to be the phenomenon at
the centre of this process. In consciousness, change is encountered, the
appearance of collapse, and, it increasingly appears, no where else. My
paper Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/  explains this in detail.

Andrew

On 04/03/11 16:31, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.comwrote:

I suspect we all may.
Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental
aspect of physics.

How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved
in quantum mechanics,

That isn't clear at all


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 06/03/11 15:19, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the
idea that everything is simpler than something.

If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a perfectly
symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you can't get much
simpler than that.

Hmm. Apart from the fact that no one knows what emergent means

I think of it as the common definition that it is a property of a system 
not present in any part or aspect of a system.


On my view, phenomenal consciousness is a property of the unitary system 
the way transport is a property of a working vehicle. It's what it does!


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 06/03/11 15:22, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:

On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote:  Collapse appears to instruments as 
well as people

We don't have any evidence for that,

Of course we do

That was a rather blanket statement. But if we can doubt the existence 
of everything but our minds, then we don't have any evidence for it!


But I think it is perfectly tenable to say that we cannot prove that the 
instruments which appear to us to be collapsed are in fact not 
collapsed, that there is only the appearance of collapse subjectively. 
How could one possibly disprove that?

indeed, if we take either the
concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously,

We shouldn't take Wigner's friend as proving CCC, since it is
intended as a reductio ad absurdum of it.

OK, but I happen to think it is a precise explanation of how reality works.

And RQM doesn't remotely have that implication.
Yes it does. In RQM the environment is determinate where, and only 
where, the observer has observed it. If I am Wigner, and my friend goes 
off and does an experiment, the result is indeterminate in my version of 
the environment.

this is not the
case.  - that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on them.

Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our
personal systems.  I'm not sure what you mean by account for collapse.

I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as
in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of
collapse only 'in consciousness'.

But Everett can explain the apperarance of collapse to instruments...
he doesn't need consciousness.
Everett states very clearly that with respect to the physical body of 
the observer there is no collapse. I think the intruments the observer 
is using come under the same banner, the linear dynamics. He makes it 
very clear that it is only with regard to the record of sensory 
observations and machine configuration which I equate in his 
formulation with the functional identity of the observer, that there is 
the appearance of collapse. This is pretty much exactly the definition 
of access consciousness, that of which the observer is directly and 
immediately aware. (In the human observer, I take the record of machine 
configuration to be the observations of the internal state of the 
observer, as I explain in detail elsewhere.)

   At least one interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and
Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely epistemological.  
All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely

predicts probabilities for this change.

That's what I thought I was saying!

Fits my view.


Brent


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 06/03/11 15:27, 1Z wrote:

  Clearly it is a universal property of the system in which we find
  ourselves, physical or arithmetical.

One philosopher saying something doesn't make it clear

Indeed. Clearly, in this case, it is a universal property of the system 
in which we findourselves, physical or arithmetical.


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 8, 1:02 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 00:11, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



  It's rather well known that reductivism and eliminativism are
  not equivalent positions, for instance.
 snip
  And reductive identity theorists say mind is a bunch
  of micro physical goings-on, whereas their eliminativist
  opponents say mind Is nothing at all.

 Yes, indeed they do, as I am very well aware, but I've said why I
 think that neither of these well known positions can adequately
 address the mind-body issues, which is what we are discussing.  My
 claim is that they are using circular reasoning, assuming the
 conclusion in the premise, or are simply ignoring the very tools they
 employ to construct their case.  What specifically do you find to be
 the error in this analysis?

If they are both 100% wrong, that does  not make them
equivalent

  Either or neither or both  of reductivism  and eliminativism can
  be judged empirically inadequate: in no case does that
  make them the same

 I have explained why I think any real distinction between the two in a
 materialist schema is fundamentally question-begging with respect to
 the mind-body problem, essentially in the terms Bruno articulated so
 succinctly.

I don't know what a question begging distinction is. People
who are proposing a theory are allowed to stipulate its principles

 You haven't pointed out what is wrong with my argument,
 merely that others disagree with it.


I don't recall you giving an argument...just insisting
that materialism means there is no mind.

 It would be more helpful if you
 would say simply what you find to be wrong or unclear in what I have
 said.

 David

There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why. If you
think the mind-to-matter reduction simply fails, that is another
issue.
A failed attempt at reduction is not at all the same thing as denialism

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 8, 11:32 am, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 06/03/11 15:06, 1Z wrote:

  On Mar 4, 5:46 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:
  The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse
  occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs has
  been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. It
  appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse is
  purely subjective,
  It doesn't appear in an univocal way, since there are
  such things as objective collapse theories

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_collapse_theory

 OK, perhaps I stand corrected. But I am sure that no objective collapse
 theory has been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance.


Subjective collapse theories, and no collapse theories have
not met with general acceptance either!

 as Everett demonstrates.
  MWI isn't usually presented as a subjective theory. Penrose
  argues that it makes surreptitious assumptions about how
  observers' minds work, but that is part of an argument against
  it.

 I would differentiate between Everett and MWI. MWI means to me many
 worlds in some way separate.

That's vague. Worlds separate on decoherence but share the
same space time

 Everett is without question, in my view,
 saying that there is one physical environment,

That's vague too.

and that it is only
 subjectively that there are different, determinate views of that
 environment.

And that. Observers embedded in the system will see determinate
results to interaction
where in fact ever result occured. However, observer does not mean
human here, since observation is fundamentally entanglement for
Everett

 In this case, consciousness
  is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and only consciousness,
  which encounters this appearance of collapse and change.
  It is only consciousness that consciously encounters everything else
  too. However, that does not make consciousness *ontologically*
  fundamental.

 It does if the physical system is static.


If there is no change,
 objectively, only subjectively, this points to consciousness -
 phenomenal consciousness - being ontologically fundamental.

On the other hand, the appearance of change refutes the
static universe hypothesis.

 We know there
  is an effective collapse, or the appearance of collapse, because we
  experience this subjectively. On the other hand, nothing in the physical
  world, including the physical body and the physical brain, can account
  for this.
  Whoah! What he have is a profusion of theores, with no clear winner

 What I mean is that if the physical domain is indeed static, as Davies,
 Barbour, Deutsch and others explain, then nothing physical can account
 for the appearance of change we encounter as observers.

Well, *they* don't think that,

 Coupled with the
 inability to find any physiology corresponding to phenomenal
 consciousness,

That's an odd thing to say. It is rather well known
that phenomenal consciousness can be switched off
by drugs.

 and Chalmers finding that there can be no such
 explanation, I infer this consciousness to be ontologically fundamental
 - an emergent property of the unitary system as a whole.

But you could have observers in quantum mechanics
with no phenomenality at all. All the problems of
QM relate to access consciousness, ie to how
observers get information.

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:


On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


Reduction is not elimination



snip


Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.


Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The point
is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
(if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that exists
is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.  That's
literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless choose to
deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so choose,
we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard Problem in
perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all except an
ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate constituent of
everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?

Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever, and
talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve nothing
because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all just
quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
about all these additional things, but then to claim that this talk
can be materially identical to the quarks under some description
is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging the
conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and simply
begs the critical question in the most egregious way.

The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that I've
understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND integrative.
That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational ultimate
components and their relations, AND it further specifies the local
emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers of
composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic deathtrap,
and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time and
space themselves, is localised and personalised at the intersection of
these analytic and synthetic principles.


I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle and  
difficult issue.


The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does  
not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of  
mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal firing or  
quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non  
pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain with  
neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the  
conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism). So,  
eventually, some realize that if neuron plays a role in pain, they can  
only *associate* it to neuronal firing, and this leads to dualism,  
which most materialist abhor. That is even truer for monist  
materialist who are then force to accept a form of epiphenomenalism.


Prima facie, comp, which is also a form of reductionism, might seems  
to be lead to a similar problem, but I think you have understand that  
this is not necessarily. First comp gives the main role to the person  
and its consciousness at the start. Comp addresses a person and make a  
proposition of whether or not she want a digital brain substitution,  
when the brain is copy at some, hopefully correct, substitution level,  
and then it shows that if such a substitution can work in principle,  
the person consciousness will be associated, not to a body or machine  
or anything third person describable, but to an unnameable infinity  
which formally will have all the attribute of a person. But then the  
price is big, which is that the mind body problem is made two-times  
more difficult than most materialist usually envisage. Indeed, matter  
as such needs to be explained from the relation of consciousness with  
the logical (and immaterial) 'constituent' of the computations, which  
appears to be not even enumerable (due to oracles) and to borrow the  
whole insolubility hierarchy of computer science or arithmetic. Indeed  
an implicit reference to truth has to be made, and comp

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 8, 11:47 am, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 06/03/11 15:22, 1Z wrote:

  On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:
  On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote:  Collapse appears to instruments 
  as well as people

  We don't have any evidence for that,
  Of course we do

 That was a rather blanket statement. But if we can doubt the existence
 of everything but our minds, then we don't have any evidence for it!

 But I think it is perfectly tenable to say that we cannot prove that the
 instruments which appear to us to be collapsed are in fact not
 collapsed, that there is only the appearance of collapse subjectively.

That they really are collapsed is tenable too.

 How could one possibly disprove that? indeed, if we take either the
  concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously,
  We shouldn't take Wigner's friend as proving CCC, since it is
  intended as a reductio ad absurdum of it.

 OK, but I happen to think it is a precise explanation of how reality works.

It is strange to regard something intended as a paradox as an
explanation

 And RQM doesn't remotely have that implication.

 Yes it does. In RQM the environment is determinate where, and only
 where, the observer has observed it.

In RQM, the observers knowledge becomes determinate
when they observe something.

If I am Wigner, and my friend goes
 off and does an experiment, the result is indeterminate in my version of
 the environment.

Well, you don't know it. But you don't cause the friend to collapse,
because
there is no collapse in RQM.

 this is not the
  case.  - that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on 
  them.

  Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our
  personal systems.  I'm not sure what you mean by account for collapse.

  I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as
  in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of
  collapse only 'in consciousness'.
  But Everett can explain the apperarance of collapse to instruments...
  he doesn't need consciousness.

 Everett states very clearly that with respect to the physical body of
 the observer there is no collapse. I think the intruments the observer
 is using come under the same banner, the linear dynamics. He makes it
 very clear that it is only with regard to the record of sensory
 observations and machine configuration which I equate in his
 formulation with the functional identity of the observer, that there is
 the appearance of collapse.

SInce you didn't say whether you mean human or machine observer,
that doesn't clarify matters. As it happens, Everettian record
making can be automated.

 This is pretty much exactly the definition
 of access consciousness, that of which the observer is directly and
 immediately aware.

Access consciousness involves record making, and so
do any  number of non-conscious machines...seismographs,
video recorders, etc. I don't think you can argue
that consciousness is involved just because record making is.

 (In the human observer, I take the record of machine
 configuration to be the observations of the internal state of the
 observer, as I explain in detail elsewhere.)    At least one 
 interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, an

  Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely epistemological.  
  All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely
  predicts probabilities for this change.

 That's what I thought I was saying!

  Fits my view.

  Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 8, 1:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:



  On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Reduction is not elimination

  snip

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

  Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
  ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
  dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
  insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The point
  is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
  (if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that exists
  is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.  That's
  literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
  fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
  observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless choose to
  deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so choose,
  we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard Problem in
  perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all except an
  ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate constituent of
  everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
  ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?

  Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
  computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever, and
  talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve nothing
  because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all just
  quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
  about all these additional things, but then to claim that this talk
  can be materially identical to the quarks under some description
  is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging the
  conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and simply
  begs the critical question in the most egregious way.

  The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that I've
  understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND integrative.
  That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational ultimate
  components and their relations, AND it further specifies the local
  emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers of
  composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
  synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
  duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic deathtrap,
  and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
  categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
  entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time and
  space themselves, is localised and personalised at the intersection of
  these analytic and synthetic principles.

 I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle and  
 difficult issue.

 The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does  
 not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of  
 mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal firing or  
 quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non  
 pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain with  
 neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the  
 conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism).

Another option is open to them: it is a brute fact that the neuronal
firing
IS the pain, but physicalese descriptions of neuronal firing don't
capture that because
they are inadequate.

So,  
 eventually, some realize that if neuron plays a role in pain, they can  
 only *associate* it to neuronal firing, and this leads to dualism,  
 which most materialist abhor. That is even truer for monist  
 materialist who are then force to accept a form of epiphenomenalism.

 Prima facie, comp, which is also a form of reductionism, might seems  
 to be lead to a similar problem,

It leads to a worse problem. The objection to identifying qualia with
physical happening is that felt qualitiies are not identifiable with
physicalese descriptions. The approach outlined above resolves that
with the idea that concrete physical events have  a noumenal
hinterland which is not captured by physicalese descriptions.
However, in the realm of pure math, without stuffy matter,
no such hinterland is available: neuronal firings have to be
essentially
identical with their physicalese (and hence mathematical)
descriptions.
If the quale isn't there, it isn't anywhere: it has no place to hide.

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Re: STEP THREE (was Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)

2011-03-08 Thread Brent Meeker


On 3/8/2011 10:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
We could start with lambda terms, or combinators instead. A 
computation (of phi_4(5) is just a sequence


phi_4^0 (5)  phi_4^1 (5)  phi_4^2 (5)  phi_4^3 (5)  phi_4^4 (5) 
 phi_4^5 (5)  phi_4^6 (5)   ...


_4 is the program. 5 is the input. ^i is the ith step (i = 0, 1, 2, 
...), and phi refers implicitly to a universal number.


Bruno, I don't think I understand what a universal number is.  Could you 
point me to an explication.


thnx, Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-08 Thread David Nyman

On 8 March 2011 12:16, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
 the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
 the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
 a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
 to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
 If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why.

My point has always been simply to hold materialist theory to account
in its own terms.  In these terms, when you have reduced heat to
molecular motion, and thence to its putatively fundamental
micro-constituents, you have thereby shown that there is NO HEAT at
this fundamental level.  To be clear: it is NOT the case that there is
molecular motion AND heat; there is JUST molecular motion (or rather
its fundamental constituents).  I would remind you that you have been
deploying a similar argument with respect to the formal nature of
mathematics, which was the point of departure for this iteration of
the discussion.

Similarly, if you can reduce mind to brain states, and thence to its
micro-constituents, then you have likewise shown that there is NO MIND
at this fundamental level.  Heat and mind are a posteriori mental
constructs, supernumerary to the reduced account; hence the claimed
identity with the reduced material substrate is properly an
additional posit necessitated by the after-the-material-fact of mind
and its constructs.  To state this is just to state the Hard Problem.

Consequently, what is mistaken about eliminativism is that, since it
must employ the fruits of mind to deny the existence of mind, it is
simply incoherent.  What is mistaken about materialist identity theory
is that its assumptions force it to collapse two categorically
orthogonal states into one, which is simply to turn the meaning of
identity on its head.  This might be acceptable to Humpty Dumpty,
but to a less idiosyncratic user of language it must appear merely ad
hoc and desperate.  One can easily see how the morning star might be
shown to be one with the evening star, but the claim that first and
third-person phenomena can be similarly collapsed without residue is
of a very different order.  A weaker version (the easy option) is
the hope that one type of material state might be reliably correlated
with another (e.g. the neural correlates of consciousness), which is
an empirical possibility; such an approach would permit the theory to
sidestep the orthogonality problem, which lingers stubbornly in the
hard corner.

I really don't know why you would consider the above account to be
controversial, based on your arguments elsewhere vis-a-vis
mathematical formalism.  Of course I'm not denying that heat and
mind exist; I'm just saying that nothing of the kind can be
extracted A PRIORI from the fundamental reduction that is the goal and
terminus of micro-physical theory.  And the point of saying this is to
articulate the Hard Problem in a particularly pointed way, without all
that distasteful talk of the undead.  The end point of reduction is
the a priori elimination of everything composite.  Hence there are no
zombies in this etiolated picture.  There isn't anything composite at
all; nothing above the level of the micro-physical goings-on
themselves.  Everything else manifests after the fact of observation.
And that really is the Hard Problem.

David



 On Mar 8, 1:02 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 00:11, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



  It's rather well known that reductivism and eliminativism are
  not equivalent positions, for instance.
 snip
  And reductive identity theorists say mind is a bunch
  of micro physical goings-on, whereas their eliminativist
  opponents say mind Is nothing at all.

 Yes, indeed they do, as I am very well aware, but I've said why I
 think that neither of these well known positions can adequately
 address the mind-body issues, which is what we are discussing.  My
 claim is that they are using circular reasoning, assuming the
 conclusion in the premise, or are simply ignoring the very tools they
 employ to construct their case.  What specifically do you find to be
 the error in this analysis?

 If they are both 100% wrong, that does  not make them
 equivalent

  Either or neither or both  of reductivism  and eliminativism can
  be judged empirically inadequate: in no case does that
  make them the same

 I have explained why I think any real distinction between the two in a
 materialist schema is fundamentally question-begging with respect to
 the mind-body problem, essentially in the terms Bruno articulated so
 succinctly.

 I don't know what a question begging distinction is. People
 who are proposing a theory are allowed to stipulate its principles

 You haven't pointed out what is wrong with my argument,
 merely that others disagree with it.


 I don't recall you giving an argument...just insisting
 that materialism means there is no mind.

 It

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 8, 9:15 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 12:16, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
  the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
  the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
  a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
  to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
  If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why.

 My point has always been simply to hold materialist theory to account
 in its own terms.  In these terms, when you have reduced heat to
 molecular motion, and thence to its putatively fundamental
 micro-constituents, you have thereby shown that there is NO HEAT at
 this fundamental level.  To be clear: it is NOT the case that there is
 molecular motion AND heat;

It is also  not the case that there is molecular motion, that
molecular
motion is identical to heat, and there is nonetheless no heat.

It *is* the case that there is molecular motion, *which is* heat.

there is JUST molecular motion (or rather
 its fundamental constituents).  I would remind you that you have been
 deploying a similar argument with respect to the formal nature of
 mathematics,

Huh? I have been saying that mathematical terms don't
refer.  But heat does refer. It refers to what molecular motion
refers to. Two terms, one referent. Likewise Muhamad Ali
and Cassius Clay. When someone says Ali is identical to Clay
they are not asserting the non-existence of either.

which was the point of departure for this iteration of
 the discussion.

 Similarly, if you can reduce mind to brain states, and thence to its
 micro-constituents, then you have likewise shown that there is NO MIND
 at this fundamental level.  Heat and mind are a posteriori mental
 constructs, supernumerary to the reduced account;

Non-existence of referent doesn't follow from redundancy of reference.
We don't
need both Clay and Ali, but both terms have something
to refer to.

 hence the claimed
 identity with the reduced material substrate is properly an
 additional posit necessitated by the after-the-material-fact of mind
 and its constructs.


 To state this is just to state the Hard Problem.

Not in the least. You haven't even touched on the nature
of experience. All you have done is asserted something
of an identification that clearly doesn't apply to other
identifications. It is not the case that one of the Morning
Star and the Everning Star doesn't exist (which one?)

 Consequently, what is mistaken about eliminativism is that, since it
 must employ the fruits of mind to deny the existence of mind, it is
 simply incoherent.

Whatever. Eliminativism may be the worst rubbish in the
world. but it isn't the same thing as reductivism.

 What is mistaken about materialist identity theory
 is that its assumptions force it to collapse two categorically
 orthogonal states into one,

You say they are orthogonal. Maybe they are. But that is quite
distinct from your claim that reductions in general are eliminations

which is simply to turn the meaning of
 identity on its head.

You may think that identification is impossible in this
case. But identification still isn't elimination, and it
works in some cases even if it doesn't work with mind.

 This might be acceptable to Humpty Dumpty,
 but to a less idiosyncratic user of language it must appear merely ad
 hoc and desperate.

This is getting weirder and weirder. The Hard Problem is
a very specific problem to do with the nature of mind and matter.
However, successful reductions don't change the *meaning* of
identity. If anyone is doing *that* it's you!

 One can easily see how the morning star might be
 shown to be one with the evening star, but the claim that first and
 third-person phenomena can be similarly collapsed without residue is
 of a very different order.  

Fine. Then the claim is false. But the claimed identification
still doesn't *mean* ellimination!!

A weaker version (the easy option) is
 the hope that one type of material state might be reliably correlated
 with another (e.g. the neural correlates of consciousness), which is
 an empirical possibility; such an approach would permit the theory to
 sidestep the orthogonality problem, which lingers stubbornly in the
 hard corner.

 I really don't know why you would consider the above account to be
 controversial, based on your arguments elsewhere vis-a-vis
 mathematical formalism.

What claims, for heaven's sake? If someone reduces arithmetic
to set theory, that doesn;t mean there is no arithmetic.
If sets exist, then numbers do, and if sets don't numbers
don't. It makes no sense to say that the one exists
and the other doesn't. That would be like saying Ali
lives and Clay does not, or the morning star
has been hit by an asteroid, but the evening star has not

 Of course I'm not denying that heat and
 mind exist; I'm just saying that nothing of the kind can be
 extracted A PRIORI

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-08 Thread David Nyman

On 8 March 2011 23:42, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 How can they fail to be composite when they include interactions,
 structures and bindings? What ***are*** you on about?

Say there is a pile of bricks that, under some externally-applied
description, could be construed as a house; then that pile is what
there is, not a pile + a house.  Similarly if a theory says that
what exists is just micro-physical bricks and their relations, then
just those things are what one should expect to encounter - not those
things + an open-ended zoo of higher-order composite entities.  Since
the theory of micro-bricks in relation supposes these to do all the
work, what a priori reason would there be to posit additional
composite entities on top of the bricks themselves?  In fact
composites command our attention only in the context of observation
after-the-micro-physical-facts, in the form of the
non-micro-physical-facts - the so-called secondary qualities.  To
dramatise this, Chalmers uses the metaphor of the zombie, for which no
secondary qualitative composites exist, nor any apparent need of them.
That's what I'm on about, but in a more general way.

David



 On Mar 8, 9:15 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 12:16, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
  the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
  the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
  a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
  to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
  If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why.

 My point has always been simply to hold materialist theory to account
 in its own terms.  In these terms, when you have reduced heat to
 molecular motion, and thence to its putatively fundamental
 micro-constituents, you have thereby shown that there is NO HEAT at
 this fundamental level.  To be clear: it is NOT the case that there is
 molecular motion AND heat;

 It is also  not the case that there is molecular motion, that
 molecular
 motion is identical to heat, and there is nonetheless no heat.

 It *is* the case that there is molecular motion, *which is* heat.

there is JUST molecular motion (or rather
 its fundamental constituents).  I would remind you that you have been
 deploying a similar argument with respect to the formal nature of
 mathematics,

 Huh? I have been saying that mathematical terms don't
 refer.  But heat does refer. It refers to what molecular motion
 refers to. Two terms, one referent. Likewise Muhamad Ali
 and Cassius Clay. When someone says Ali is identical to Clay
 they are not asserting the non-existence of either.

which was the point of departure for this iteration of
 the discussion.

 Similarly, if you can reduce mind to brain states, and thence to its
 micro-constituents, then you have likewise shown that there is NO MIND
 at this fundamental level.  Heat and mind are a posteriori mental
 constructs, supernumerary to the reduced account;

 Non-existence of referent doesn't follow from redundancy of reference.
 We don't
 need both Clay and Ali, but both terms have something
 to refer to.

 hence the claimed
 identity with the reduced material substrate is properly an
 additional posit necessitated by the after-the-material-fact of mind
 and its constructs.


 To state this is just to state the Hard Problem.

 Not in the least. You haven't even touched on the nature
 of experience. All you have done is asserted something
 of an identification that clearly doesn't apply to other
 identifications. It is not the case that one of the Morning
 Star and the Everning Star doesn't exist (which one?)

 Consequently, what is mistaken about eliminativism is that, since it
 must employ the fruits of mind to deny the existence of mind, it is
 simply incoherent.

 Whatever. Eliminativism may be the worst rubbish in the
 world. but it isn't the same thing as reductivism.

 What is mistaken about materialist identity theory
 is that its assumptions force it to collapse two categorically
 orthogonal states into one,

 You say they are orthogonal. Maybe they are. But that is quite
 distinct from your claim that reductions in general are eliminations

which is simply to turn the meaning of
 identity on its head.

 You may think that identification is impossible in this
 case. But identification still isn't elimination, and it
 works in some cases even if it doesn't work with mind.

 This might be acceptable to Humpty Dumpty,
 but to a less idiosyncratic user of language it must appear merely ad
 hoc and desperate.

 This is getting weirder and weirder. The Hard Problem is
 a very specific problem to do with the nature of mind and matter.
 However, successful reductions don't change the *meaning* of
 identity. If anyone is doing *that* it's you!

 One can easily see how the morning star might be
 shown to be one with the evening star, but the claim that first and

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 9, 1:03 am, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 8 March 2011 23:42, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  How can they fail to be composite when they include interactions,
  structures and bindings? What ***are*** you on about?

 Say there is a pile of bricks that, under some externally-applied
 description, could be construed as a house; then that pile is what
 there is, not a pile + a house.

Houses aren't heaps of rubble, they are bricks mortared together. And
why shouldn't I say that such-and-such mortared-together bricks are
a house -  the house exists as does the bricks-and-mortar.

  Similarly if a theory says that
 what exists is just micro-physical bricks and their relations, then
 just those things are what one should expect to encounter - not those
 things + an open-ended zoo of higher-order composite entities.

One *should* expect composite entities, because the relationships
and binding between molecules are just the way they get composite
entities get composed. If you mortar bricks together you intend
to build something

 Since
 the theory of micro-bricks in relation supposes these to do all the
 work, what a priori reason would there be to posit additional
 composite entities on top of the bricks themselves?

Well, under reductive explanation, they are not additional. Nor
are they non-existent. They are identified with subsets of their
component parts.

  In fact
 composites command our attention only in the context of observation
 after-the-micro-physical-facts, in the form of the
 non-micro-physical-facts - the so-called secondary qualities.

So? Something may seem not to be composed of smaller
parts, whilst actually being so.

 To
 dramatise this, Chalmers uses the metaphor of the zombie, for which no
 secondary qualitative composites exist,

Zombies and qualia are another and much more specific
issue.

nor any apparent need of them.
 That's what I'm on about, but in a more general way.

But it doesn't generalise! The HP is very specific.
We can imagine zombies because we don't understand
the neuron-qualia link. But we do understand the molecule-heat
link, and the brick-house link. So it is insane to say that is just
mortared-together bricks, not a building.

 David



  On Mar 8, 9:15 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
  On 8 March 2011 12:16, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   There are uncontroversial examples of successful reduction, eg
   the reduction of heat to molecular motion. In these cases
   the reduced phenomenon still exists. There is still such
   a thing as heat. People who sincerely think mind is reducible
   to brain states, therefore sincerely hold that mind is not nothing.
   If you think that is mistaken, you need to say why.

  My point has always been simply to hold materialist theory to account
  in its own terms.  In these terms, when you have reduced heat to
  molecular motion, and thence to its putatively fundamental
  micro-constituents, you have thereby shown that there is NO HEAT at
  this fundamental level.  To be clear: it is NOT the case that there is
  molecular motion AND heat;

  It is also  not the case that there is molecular motion, that
  molecular
  motion is identical to heat, and there is nonetheless no heat.

  It *is* the case that there is molecular motion, *which is* heat.

 there is JUST molecular motion (or rather
  its fundamental constituents).  I would remind you that you have been
  deploying a similar argument with respect to the formal nature of
  mathematics,

  Huh? I have been saying that mathematical terms don't
  refer.  But heat does refer. It refers to what molecular motion
  refers to. Two terms, one referent. Likewise Muhamad Ali
  and Cassius Clay. When someone says Ali is identical to Clay
  they are not asserting the non-existence of either.

 which was the point of departure for this iteration of
  the discussion.

  Similarly, if you can reduce mind to brain states, and thence to its
  micro-constituents, then you have likewise shown that there is NO MIND
  at this fundamental level.  Heat and mind are a posteriori mental
  constructs, supernumerary to the reduced account;

  Non-existence of referent doesn't follow from redundancy of reference.
  We don't
  need both Clay and Ali, but both terms have something
  to refer to.

  hence the claimed
  identity with the reduced material substrate is properly an
  additional posit necessitated by the after-the-material-fact of mind
  and its constructs.

  To state this is just to state the Hard Problem.

  Not in the least. You haven't even touched on the nature
  of experience. All you have done is asserted something
  of an identification that clearly doesn't apply to other
  identifications. It is not the case that one of the Morning
  Star and the Everning Star doesn't exist (which one?)

  Consequently, what is mistaken about eliminativism is that, since it
  must employ the fruits of mind to deny the existence of mind, it is
  simply

Re: STEP THREE (was Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)

2011-03-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Mar 2011, at 20:11, Brent Meeker wrote:


On 3/8/2011 10:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
We could start with lambda terms, or combinators instead. A  
computation (of phi_4(5) is just a sequence


phi_4^0 (5)  phi_4^1 (5)  phi_4^2 (5)  phi_4^3 (5)  phi_4^4 (5)   
phi_4^5 (5)  phi_4^6 (5)   ...


_4 is the program. 5 is the input. ^i is the ith step (i = 0, 1,  
2, ...), and phi refers implicitly to a universal number.


Bruno, I don't think I understand what a universal number is.  Could  
you point me to an explication.




The expression universal numbers is mine, but the idea is implicit  
in any textbook on theoretical computer science, or of recursion  
theory (like books by Cutland, or Rogers, or Boolos and Jeffrey, ...).


Fix any universal system, for example numbers+addition+multiplication,  
or LISP programs.


You can enumerate the programs:

P_0, P_1, P_2, ...

So that you can enumerate the corresponding phi_i

phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, ...

Take a computable bijection between NXN and N, so that couples of  
numbers x,y are code by numbers, and you can mechanically extract x  
and y from x,y


Then u is a universal number if for all x and y you have that  
phi_u(x,y) = phi_x(y).

In practice x is called program, and y is called the input.

Now, I use, as fixed initial universal system, a Robinson Arithmetic  
prover. I will say that a number u is universal if RA can prove the  
(purely arithmetical) relation phi_u(x,y) = phi_x(y).


The notion is not entirely intrinsic (so to be universal is not like  
to be prime), but this is not important because from the machine's  
point of view, all universal numbers have to be taken into account.  
With that respect, here, mind theorist have an easier work than  
computer scientist which search intrinsic notion of universality. We  
don't need that, because the personal Löbian machine and their  
hypostases does not depend on the initial choice, neither of the  
computable bijection, nor of the first universal system.


To put it more simply: a universal number is the Gödel number of the  
code of a universal system (a computer, or a general purpose computer  
(in french: an 'ordinateur'),  or a 'programming language interpreter').


OK? Ask for more if needed.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Mar 2011, at 15:54, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 8, 1:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 07 Mar 2011, at 21:48, David Nyman wrote:




On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



Reduction is not elimination



snip



Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.



Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The  
point

is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
(if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that  
exists
is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.   
That's

literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless  
choose to
deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so  
choose,

we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard Problem in
perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all  
except an
ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate  
constituent of

everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?



Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever, and
talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve nothing
because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all  
just

quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
about all these additional things, but then to claim that this talk
can be materially identical to the quarks under some description
is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging the
conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and  
simply

begs the critical question in the most egregious way.


The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that  
I've
understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND  
integrative.

That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational ultimate
components and their relations, AND it further specifies the local
emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers of
composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic  
deathtrap,

and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time  
and
space themselves, is localised and personalised at the  
intersection of

these analytic and synthetic principles.


I think that you have a clear understanding of that rather subtle and
difficult issue.

The problem with the materialist, once they use comp, and thus does
not materialize the soul is that they have to identify a state of
mind with a state of matter. Pain become literally neuronal firing or
quark interaction. But pain is not neuronal firing, pain is a non
pleasant subjective reality lived by person, and to equate pain with
neuronal firing leads the most honest materialist scientist to the
conclusion that pain somehow does not exist (eliminativism).


Another option is open to them: it is a brute fact that the neuronal
firing
IS the pain, but physicalese descriptions of neuronal firing don't
capture that because
they are inadequate.


Except that it is not a brute fact that the neuronal firing is the  
pain. That does not make sense. A neuronal firing is entirely  
descriptibe in a thrid person way, but a pain is not at all. You can  
associate them, but you can't equate them. You can identify 3-heat  
with molecular cinetic energy, but you cannot equate the sensation of  
heat with neuronal firing in the same way. The problem is that *any*  
physicalese or not, third person description of what could be the pain  
will fail, because the pain quale is just not a third person  
describable phenomenon. Comp solves the problem by identifying the  
pain with what appears to be existing non describable, by numbers,  
attribute of numbers' relation.







So,
eventually, some realize that if neuron plays a role in pain, they  
can

only *associate* it to neuronal firing, and this leads to dualism,
which most materialist abhor. That is even truer for monist
materialist who are then force to accept a form of epiphenomenalism.

Prima facie, comp, which is also a form of reductionism, might seems
to be lead to a similar problem,


It leads to a worse problem. The objection to identifying

Re: causes (was:ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)


Hi John,

On 06 Mar 2011, at 22:27, John Mikes wrote:




On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.net 
 wrote:


  Is the causes word even necessary? Would it not be accurate to  
say that a change in information = a change in our description,  
unless you are assuming some sort of pluralistic 1st person view,  
i.e. from the point of view of many (a fixed set of observers):  
'collapse' is nothing but a change in the information common to all  
that causes' (or necessitates!) a change in the description of each  
individual to remain a viable member of the 'many'?

Onward!
Stephen

Thanks, Stephen, for standing up against the verb 'causes'. In our  
limited views of the totality (the unlimited complexity of the  
wholeness) we can only search for factors contributing to changes we  
experience WITHIN the model of our knowledge. If we find such, we  
are tempted to call it THE cause - while many more (from the  
unknown) may also play in.


You are right. The term cause is very tricky. They are as many  
notion of cause than there exists modal logics (infinities). We can  
say that a causes b, if B(a - b), in some context/theory defining  
locally modality B. It *is* a vague notion.







Information is also a tricky term, maybe: knowledge of relations we  
(lately?) acquired in our topical model of yesterday's knowledge,  
but definitely also WITHIN our knowable model.
(Please forgive me for using yesterday's: nobody can think in  
terms of all the ongoing news of today).


Information has to be distinguished from true information, consistent  
information, true consistent information, etc. In comp, the modalities  
of the self-reference forces us to introduce those distinction.  
Eventually this shows that machines have an incredibly rich canonical  
theology (scientifically testable, because it contains the machine's  
physic).


Here, the theology of a machine is defined by the truth *about* the  
machine. Nobody can know it, but a machine can study its logic  
(independently of its content) for a simpler (in term of the  
strongness of its provability predicate (the B in the hypostases)).


Have a good day,

Bruno



-Original Message-
From: Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2011 3:09 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
 Subject: Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 3/6/2011 7:18 AM, 1Z wrote:

On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:

Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we  
can

shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you
mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM,
advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the  
collapse

is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model
of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.

Such epistemological theories need to be carefully distinguished from
consciousness causes
collapse theories.


Right.  Epistemological collapse is nothing but a change in
information that causes us to change our description.
**

  Is the causes word even necessary? Would it not be accurate to  
say that a change in information = a change in our description,  
unless you are assuming some sort of pluralistic 1st person view,  
i.e. from the point of view of many (a fixed set of observers):  
'collapse' is nothing but a change in the information common to all  
that causes' (or necessitates!) a change in the description of each  
individual to remain a viable member of the 'many'?


Onward!

Stephen


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 06 Mar 2011, at 16:16, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 4, 5:49 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:

I suspect we all may.



Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,
... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most
fundamental
aspect of physics.



How does he know consciousness is fundamental?


Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about
1500 years.


Really? Have daffodils and shopping centres likewise? Physicists
cannot  be accused of neglecting something unless it can be
shown to be something they should prima facie be dealing with.


They do use it all the time. They have just use the primary matter (as  
simplifying assumption), and the identity thesis (as simplig-fying  
assumption), so that they can correlated observation with predictive  
theories. This leads to problem with respect to the new physics  
(quantum physics), and with respect to the computationalist  
hypothesis. But the Platonist were aware of this (mainly by the dream  
argument), and kept us vigilant of not reifying matter.






Physics is the science of the fundamental.


Then I am a physicist.




If consciousness
is another high level phenomenon, like shopping centres,
it is no business of the physicist.


IF consciousness emerges ...
That might be a big IF.




If you think cosnc. is
fundamental, you are making an extraordinary claim and the
burden of proof is on you.


I am not making any claim about the fact that consciousness is  
fundamental or not. I just try to understand that phenomenon, among  
other phenomenon. And I show that if we suppose that consciousness can  
be related to some computation, then matter is not fundamental. Matter  
emerges as a modality of self-reference (the material hypostases).  
And the point is that it makes comp + the classical theory of  
knowledge testable.





It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the  
wave

packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the
linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See
the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the
idea that everything is simpler than something.
Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the
collapse with the linear equation, so that if consciousness collapse
physically the wave, you need a non-comp theory of consciousness.
Then comp by itself is a theory of consciousness, and does provide a
transparent (I mean testable) link with consciousness, not by
identifying the mystery of consciousness with a non linear and non
mechanical phenomenon (the collapse) but by providing an explanation
of the quantum and the linear from the computationalist hypothesis.




Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally
involved
in quantum mechanics,



That isn't clear at all


It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other
theories are too vague, or refuted).


Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
refuted,
and spiritual interpretations, like von Neumann's are the vagues of
the lot


I refer you to Shimony for a refutation that consciousness can  
collapse the Q wave.
And GRW proposes a new theory, which they admit themselves to be ad  
hoc, and makes no sense in QM+relativity. I am not sure at all it  
works even for non relativistic QM. It would reduce Quantum  
computation to classical probabilistic computation, in particular.  
That might still be possible (forgetting relativity). I can imagine  
that it could lead to the collapse of many comp complexity classes,  
including P and NP.



Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-07 Thread 1Z



On Mar 7, 9:30 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 06 Mar 2011, at 16:16, 1Z wrote:





  On Mar 4, 5:49 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:

  On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
  I suspect we all may.

  Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,
  ... it
  is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
  consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most
  fundamental
  aspect of physics.

  How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

  Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about
  1500 years.

  Really? Have daffodils and shopping centres likewise? Physicists
  cannot  be accused of neglecting something unless it can be
  shown to be something they should prima facie be dealing with.

 They do use it all the time. They have just use the primary matter (as  
 simplifying assumption), and the identity thesis (as simplig-fying  
 assumption), so that they can correlated observation with predictive  
 theories.

You haven;t explained why they should be dealing with
consc. in the first place. Surely it is prima facie psychology.

This leads to problem with respect to the new physics  
 (quantum physics),

So you say. Many think QM problems have nothing
to do with consc.

 and with respect to the computationalist  
 hypothesis. But the Platonist were aware of this (mainly by the dream  
 argument), and kept us vigilant of not reifying matter.

  Physics is the science of the fundamental.

 Then I am a physicist.

Physics is the empirical sciencce of the fundamental.

  If consciousness
  is another high level phenomenon, like shopping centres,
  it is no business of the physicist.

 IF consciousness emerges ...
 That might be a big IF.

You need to show that it *is* a big
if before accusing physicists of
neglecting comp.

  If you think cosnc. is
  fundamental, you are making an extraordinary claim and the
  burden of proof is on you.

 I am not making any claim about the fact that consciousness is  
 fundamental or not

Implicitly you are. To say that physics has failed
to deal with it is to imply that it should be dealing with it,
which is to imply that it is fundamental

. I just try to understand that phenomenon, among  
 other phenomenon. And I show that if we suppose that consciousness can  
 be related to some computation, then matter is not fundamental. Matter  
 emerges as a modality of self-reference (the material hypostases).  
 And the point is that it makes comp + the classical theory of  
 knowledge testable.





  It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the  
  wave
  packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the
  linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See
  the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
  I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the
  idea that everything is simpler than something.
  Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the
  collapse with the linear equation, so that if consciousness collapse
  physically the wave, you need a non-comp theory of consciousness.
  Then comp by itself is a theory of consciousness, and does provide a
  transparent (I mean testable) link with consciousness, not by
  identifying the mystery of consciousness with a non linear and non
  mechanical phenomenon (the collapse) but by providing an explanation
  of the quantum and the linear from the computationalist hypothesis.

  Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally
  involved
  in quantum mechanics,

  That isn't clear at all

  It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other
  theories are too vague, or refuted).

  Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
  refuted,
  and spiritual interpretations, like von Neumann's are the vagues of
  the lot

 I refer you to Shimony for a refutation that consciousness can  
 collapse the Q wave.
 And GRW proposes a new theory, which they admit themselves to be ad  
 hoc, and makes no sense in QM+relativity. I am not sure at all it  
 works even for non relativistic QM.

So? conscisouness does it by magic is not better.

It would reduce Quantum  
 computation to classical probabilistic computation, in particular.  
 That might still be possible (forgetting relativity). I can imagine  
 that it could lead to the collapse of many comp complexity classes,  
 including P and NP.

 Bruno

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On 07 Mar 2011, at 15:10, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 7, 9:30 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 06 Mar 2011, at 16:16, 1Z wrote:






On Mar 4, 5:49 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:



On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:

I suspect we all may.



Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,
... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most
fundamental
aspect of physics.



How does he know consciousness is fundamental?



Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about
1500 years.



Really? Have daffodils and shopping centres likewise? Physicists
cannot  be accused of neglecting something unless it can be
shown to be something they should prima facie be dealing with.


They do use it all the time. They have just use the primary matter  
(as

simplifying assumption), and the identity thesis (as simplig-fying
assumption), so that they can correlated observation with predictive
theories.


You haven;t explained why they should be dealing with
consc. in the first place. Surely it is prima facie psychology.


There is no human observation without consciousness. We can use  
physical equation to predict where a planet can be, not where a planet  
can be seen, but we usually link the two. The greeks were aware that  
link necessitate a theory which unify knowledge and escape the dream  
problem. Aristotle was aware of that too, but its followers took his  
primary matter for granted, and this had made easier the separation of  
theology from the science, with the result of making physics a  
theology which ignores itself.








This leads to problem with respect to the new physics
(quantum physics),


So you say. Many think QM problems have nothing
to do with consc.


QM has just dingle out the more general problem of the existence of  
consciousness in a physical world. I am not saying that consciousness  
is related per se with the quantum. On the contrary, as you know, I  
defend Everett, and Everett use the less magical theory of  
consciousness: comp (or weakening).


Consciousness plays a role in physics because we have to link being  
and seeing. All physical theories uses an implicit theory of  
consciousness (the identity thesis, or what is is what I see).







and with respect to the computationalist
hypothesis. But the Platonist were aware of this (mainly by the dream
argument), and kept us vigilant of not reifying matter.


Physics is the science of the fundamental.


Then I am a physicist.


Physics is the empirical sciencce of the fundamental.


Then I am even more a physicist. Indeed I show that the comp theory of  
consciousness (computationalism) is empirically falsifiable (accepting  
the greek classical theory of knowledge).







If consciousness
is another high level phenomenon, like shopping centres,
it is no business of the physicist.


IF consciousness emerges ...
That might be a big IF.


You need to show that it *is* a big
if before accusing physicists of
neglecting comp.


They do not neglect comp. They use it implicitly ever since Aristotle,  
and explicitly since Everett. They neglect the consciousness, or the  
mind-body problem.







If you think cosnc. is
fundamental, you are making an extraordinary claim and the
burden of proof is on you.


I am not making any claim about the fact that consciousness is
fundamental or not


Implicitly you are. To say that physics has failed
to deal with it is to imply that it should be dealing with it,
which is to imply that it is fundamental


It was fundamental for the greek. Science is born from an  
understanding that the physical reality might hide something, notably  
mathematical truth (Xeuxippes), or just 'truth', the original god of  
the Platonists. But you can do physics without working on the mind- 
body problem. But fundamental physics is more demanding. To solve the  
mind-body problem in a monist theory, you have to sacrify, at the  
ontological level, either mind or matter (provably so assuming comp).







. I just try to understand that phenomenon, among
other phenomenon. And I show that if we suppose that consciousness  
can
be related to some computation, then matter is not fundamental.  
Matter

emerges as a modality of self-reference (the material hypostases).
And the point is that it makes comp + the classical theory of
knowledge testable.






It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the
wave
packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the
linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See
the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on  
the

idea that everything is simpler than something.
Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the
collapse with the linear equation, so that if

Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-07 Thread 1Z



On Mar 7, 2:52 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  You haven;t explained why they should be dealing with
  consc. in the first place. Surely it is prima facie psychology.

 There is no human observation without consciousness.

There can be no observations without sense organs,
but it is not the job of physics to study sense organs


  Implicitly you are. To say that physics has failed
  to deal with it is to imply that it should be dealing with it,
  which is to imply that it is fundamental

 It was fundamental for the greek. Science is born from an  
 understanding that the physical reality might hide something, notably  
 mathematical truth (Xeuxippes), or just 'truth', the original god of  
 the Platonists. But you can do physics without working on the mind-
 body problem. But fundamental physics is more demanding. To solve the  
 mind-body problem in a monist theory, you have to sacrify, at the  
 ontological level, either mind or matter (provably so assuming comp).

Reduction is not elimination

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 07 Mar 2011, at 16:12, 1Z wrote:

On Mar 7, 2:52 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

You haven;t explained why they should be dealing with
consc. in the first place. Surely it is prima facie psychology.

There is no human observation without consciousness.

There can be no observations without sense organs,
but it is not the job of physics to study sense organs

Sense organs are usually conceived, both in MEC and in MAT, as
measuring apparatus. When physics embraces monistic views and embed
the physicist *in* in the world they are studying, they do study sense
organ, even if they can simplify them in a lot of ways. The carbon
nature of those sense organs might be not fundamental.
Anyway, since Everett, we are back to normal, the physicist and his
consciousness (through the comp theory of consciousness) is back in
the picture. Now comp asks for extending that picture to the whole
sigma_1 truth.

Implicitly you are. To say that physics has failed
to deal with it is to imply that it should be dealing with it,
which is to imply that it is fundamental

It was fundamental for the greek. Science is born from an
understanding that the physical reality might hide something, notably
mathematical truth (Xeuxippes), or just 'truth', the original god
of

the Platonists. But you can do physics without working on the mind-
body problem. But fundamental physics is more demanding. To solve the
mind-body problem in a monist theory, you have to sacrify, at the
ontological level, either mind or matter (provably so assuming comp).

Reduction is not elimination

Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
reduction, but it does entail ontological reduction.

That explains why a lot of honest materialist are keen to try to
eliminate consciousness, like the Churchland, even Dennett.
Now, as I said often, even before comp, uda, auda, it is easier to
explain the illusion of matter to a consciousness than an illusion of
consciousness to matter; if only because the notion of illusionary
consciousness is a non sense at the start.

Bruno

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

On 07 Mar 2011, at 16:41, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 07 Mar 2011, at 16:12, 1Z wrote:

Reduction is not elimination

Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
reduction, but it does entail ontological reduction.

Please read:

Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

---
I think I wrote about instead of above in my preceding mail to
'digital physics'.

---
And I apologize for my random use of the s, and my fuzzy use of the
past tense for some verbs.

I am very sorry. Don't hesitate to ask precision when you find my
english ambiguous.

Bruno

That explains why a lot of honest materialist are keen to try to
eliminate consciousness, like the Churchland, even Dennett.
Now, as I said often, even before comp, uda, auda, it is easier to
explain the illusion of matter to a consciousness than an illusion
of consciousness to matter; if only because the notion of
illusionary consciousness is a non sense at the start.

Bruno

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-07 Thread David Nyman

On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Reduction is not elimination

snip

 Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
*elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.  The point
is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
(if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that exists
is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.  That's
literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
observers, actually finds to be the case, we can nonetheless choose to
deny or ignore this inconvenient truth.  But if we do not so choose,
we can perhaps see that here we have the materialist Hard Problem in
perhaps its purest form: why should there be anything at all except an
ensemble of quarks? (or whatever this month's ultimate constituent of
everything is supposed to be).  And why should any subset of an
ensemble of quarks be localised as here or now?

Adding computation to the materialist mix can't help, because
computation is also just an arrangement of quarks, or whatever, and
talking about emergence, or logical levels etc, can achieve nothing
because after any amount of this logical gyrating *it's still all just
quarks*.  Of course, funnily enough, we manage nonetheless to talk
about all these additional things, but then to claim that this talk
can be materially identical to the quarks under some description
is just to play circular and futile games with words.  Plugging the
conclusion into the premise can of course explain nothing, and simply
begs the critical question in the most egregious way.

The crucial difference in your theory, Bruno, to the extent that I've
understood it, is that it is explicitly both analytic AND integrative.
 That is, it postulates specific arithmetical-computational ultimate
components and their relations, AND it further specifies the local
emergence of conscious first-person viewpoints, and their layers of
composite contents, through an additional subtle filtering and
synthesis of the relational ensemble.  Hence, through a kind of
duality of part and whole, it is able to avoid the monistic deathtrap,
and consequently isn't forced to deny, or sweep under the rug, the
categorical orthogonality of mind and body.  In such a schema, the
entire domain of the secondary qualities, including matter, time and
space themselves, is localised and personalised at the intersection of
these analytic and synthetic principles.

David


 On 07 Mar 2011, at 16:41, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 07 Mar 2011, at 16:12, 1Z wrote:

 Reduction is not elimination

 Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 reduction, but it does entail ontological reduction.

 Please read:

 Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

 ---
 I think I wrote about instead of above in my preceding mail to 'digital
 physics'.

 ---
 And I apologize for my random use of the s, and my fuzzy use of the past
 tense for some verbs.

 I am very sorry. Don't hesitate to ask precision when you find my english
 ambiguous.

 Bruno




 That explains why a lot of honest materialist are keen to try to eliminate
 consciousness, like the Churchland, even Dennett.
 Now, as I said often, even before comp, uda, auda, it is easier to explain
 the illusion of matter to a consciousness than an illusion of consciousness
 to matter; if only because the notion of illusionary consciousness is a non
 sense at the start.

 Bruno




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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-07 Thread 1Z



On Mar 7, 8:48 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



  Reduction is not elimination

 snip

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

 Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
 ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 *elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
 dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
 insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.

It's rather well known that reductivism and eliminativism are
not equivalent positions, for instance.

 The point
 is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
 (if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that exists
 is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.

Yep. And reductive identity theorists say mind is a bunch
of micro physical goings-on, whereas their eliminativist
opponents say mind Is nothing at all.

  That's
 literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
 fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
 observers, actually finds to be the case,

Either or neither or both  of reductivism  and eliminativism can
be judged empirically inadequate: in no case does that
make them the same

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-07 Thread David Nyman

On 8 March 2011 00:11, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 It's rather well known that reductivism and eliminativism are
 not equivalent positions, for instance.
snip
 And reductive identity theorists say mind is a bunch
 of micro physical goings-on, whereas their eliminativist
 opponents say mind Is nothing at all.

Yes, indeed they do, as I am very well aware, but I've said why I
think that neither of these well known positions can adequately
address the mind-body issues, which is what we are discussing.  My
claim is that they are using circular reasoning, assuming the
conclusion in the premise, or are simply ignoring the very tools they
employ to construct their case.  What specifically do you find to be
the error in this analysis?

 Either or neither or both  of reductivism  and eliminativism can
 be judged empirically inadequate: in no case does that
 make them the same

I have explained why I think any real distinction between the two in a
materialist schema is fundamentally question-begging with respect to
the mind-body problem, essentially in the terms Bruno articulated so
succinctly.  You haven't pointed out what is wrong with my argument,
merely that others disagree with it.  It would be more helpful if you
would say simply what you find to be wrong or unclear in what I have
said.

David




 On Mar 7, 8:48 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:
 On 7 March 2011 15:56, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



  Reduction is not elimination

 snip

  Ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
  *elimination*, but it does entail ontological *elimination*.

 Bruno, this is what I was trying to say some time ago to Peter.  Why
 ontological reduction does not necessarily entail epistemological
 *elimination* is of course precisely the question that mustn't be
 dodged or begged, which is what I'm convinced Peter is doing by
 insisting dogmatically that reduction is not elimination.

 It's rather well known that reductivism and eliminativism are
 not equivalent positions, for instance.

 The point
 is that a primitive-materialist micro-physical theory is implicitly
 (if not explicitly) committed to the claim that everything that exists
 is *just* some arrangement of ultimate material constituents.

 Yep. And reductive identity theorists say mind is a bunch
 of micro physical goings-on, whereas their eliminativist
 opponents say mind Is nothing at all.

  That's
 literally *all there is*, ex hypothesi.  Despite the fact (and, a
 fortiori, *because* of the fact) that this is not what any of us, as
 observers, actually finds to be the case,

 Either or neither or both  of reductivism  and eliminativism can
 be judged empirically inadequate: in no case does that
 make them the same

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-06 Thread Andrew Soltau


Hi Bruno

On 05/03/11 14:46, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 04 Mar 2011, at 20:10, Andrew Soltau wrote:

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on 
the idea that everything is simpler than something.
If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a 
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you 
can't get much simpler than that.



Can you elaborate. What are their assumption? What do you mean by 
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything.  Almost 
all words here needs a clear context to make sense. Which everything?
I skipped over the details because I was don't want to be repeating 
paragraphs of stuff each time I make a point. Not sure about the 
protocol. Anyway.


Chalmers states

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as 
fundamental ... we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature 
of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. (1995, p. 216)


Clearly it is a universal property of the system in which we find 
ourselves, physical or arithmetical.


Bitbol concludes his section One mind, many points of view with

Mind is by itself point-of-view-less, just as it is placeless and 
timeless. The aporia is the following: Mind is not within the world 
since, even if it can identify itself to any available point of view, it 
is not identical to this point of view. Nor does Mind stand outside the 
world, since it has no point of view of its own, independent from the 
points of view the world can offer. Wittgenstein would say that Mind is 
the limit of the world.


and continues

More formally, Mind can be considered as an empty space in the triadic 
relation: point of view of ( ) on a 'real universe'. This scheme 
provides another way of seeing why Mind retains its necessity, even 
though the real universe gathers all that falls under the categories 
of knowledge: Mind plays a key role in the very constitutive relations 
of this knowledge. Its closest philosophical equivalents are Husserl's 
and Sartre's Transcendental ego; or, even better, Wittenstein's subject 
which (...) does not belong to the world: rather it is a limit of the 
world (Tractatus 5.632).


It is the same Mind, phenomenal conciousness, in all places and at all 
times.


In Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics I show that it is necessarily an 
emergent property of the unitary totality, Russell's 'Everything', which 
fits this concept precisely. It is also necessarily, from the 
perspective of any specific framework, perfectly symmetrical.



Other points answered in separate posts to try and keep things simple 
enough for me.


Andrew

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 4, 5:46 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse
 occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs has
 been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. It
 appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse is
 purely subjective,

It doesn't appear in an univocal way, since there are
such things as objective collapse theories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_collapse_theory

 as Everett demonstrates.

MWI isn't usually presented as a subjective theory. Penrose
argues that it makes surreptitious assumptions about how
observers' minds work, but that is part of an argument against
it.

 In this case, consciousness
 is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and only consciousness,
 which encounters this appearance of collapse and change.

It is only consciousness that consciously encounters everything else
too. However, that does not make consciousness *ontologically*
fundamental.

 We know there
 is an effective collapse, or the appearance of collapse, because we
 experience this subjectively. On the other hand, nothing in the physical
 world, including the physical body and the physical brain, can account
 for this.

Whoah! What he have is a profusion of theores, with no clear winner

 Whatever consciousness is, it appears to be the phenomenon at
 the centre of this process. In consciousness, change is encountered, the
 appearance of collapse, and, it increasingly appears, no where else. My
 paper Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics
 http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/ explains this in detail.

 Andrew

 On 04/03/11 16:31, 1Z wrote:



  On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:
  I suspect we all may.

  Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it
  is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
  consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental
  aspect of physics.
  How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

  Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved
  in quantum mechanics,
  That isn't clear at all

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 4, 5:49 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:



  On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
  I suspect we all may.

  Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,  
  ... it
  is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
  consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most  
  fundamental
  aspect of physics.

  How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

 Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about  
 1500 years.

Really? Have daffodils and shopping centres likewise? Physicists
cannot  be accused of neglecting something unless it can be
shown to be something they should prima facie be dealing with.
Physics is the science of the fundamental. If consciousness
is another high level phenomenon, like shopping centres,
it is no business of the physicist. If you think cosnc. is
fundamental, you are making an extraordinary claim and the
burden of proof is on you.

 It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the wave  
 packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the  
 linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See  
 the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
 I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the  
 idea that everything is simpler than something.
 Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the  
 collapse with the linear equation, so that if consciousness collapse  
 physically the wave, you need a non-comp theory of consciousness.
 Then comp by itself is a theory of consciousness, and does provide a  
 transparent (I mean testable) link with consciousness, not by  
 identifying the mystery of consciousness with a non linear and non  
 mechanical phenomenon (the collapse) but by providing an explanation  
 of the quantum and the linear from the computationalist hypothesis.



  Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally  
  involved
  in quantum mechanics,

  That isn't clear at all

 It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other  
 theories are too vague, or refuted).

Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
refuted,
and spiritual interpretations, like von Neumann's are the vagues of
the lot

 And without collapse, consciousness play the role in providing the  
 meaning of the first person indeterminacy, actually of the notion of  
 first person, from which the (hopefully quantum) many realities are  
 statistically derivable.

 Comp makes physics a fundamental modality of consciousness, and in the  
 AUDA, you need only to accept the idea that consciousness is related  
 with an inference of self-consistency (or of the existence of self-
 consistent extension). Physics is then given literally by the weighted  
 relative self-consistent extensions. This is a testable consequence of  
 comp.

 Bruno

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we can
 shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you
 mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM,
 advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the collapse
 is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model
 of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.

Such epistemological theories need to be carefully distinguished from
consciousness causes
collapse theories.

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
  I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the
  idea that everything is simpler than something.

 If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a perfectly
 symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you can't get much
 simpler than that.

Hmm. Apart from the fact that no one knows what emergent means

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote: Collapse appears to instruments as 
 well as people

 We don't have any evidence for that,

Of course we do

indeed, if we take either the
 concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously,

We shouldn't take Wigner's friend as proving CCC, since it is
intended as a reductio ad absurdum of it.

And RQM doesn't remotely have that implication.

this is not the
 case. - that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on them.

 Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our
 personal systems. I'm not sure what you mean by account for collapse.

 I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as
 in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of
 collapse only 'in consciousness'.

But Everett can explain the apperarance of collapse to instruments...
he doesn't need consciousness.

    At least one interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and
  Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely epistemological.  
  All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely
  predicts probabilities for this change.
 Fits my view.

  Brent


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



On Mar 6, 1:14 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Bruno

 On 05/03/11 14:46, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  On 04 Mar 2011, at 20:10, Andrew Soltau wrote:

  I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on
  the idea that everything is simpler than something.
  If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a
  perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you
  can't get much simpler than that.

  Can you elaborate. What are their assumption? What do you mean by
  perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything.  Almost
  all words here needs a clear context to make sense. Which everything?

 I skipped over the details because I was don't want to be repeating
 paragraphs of stuff each time I make a point. Not sure about the
 protocol. Anyway.

 Chalmers states

 I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as
 fundamental ... we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature
 of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. (1995, p. 216)

 Clearly it is a universal property of the system in which we find
 ourselves, physical or arithmetical.

One philosopher saying something doesn't make it clear

 Bitbol concludes his section One mind, many points of view with

 Mind is by itself point-of-view-less, just as it is placeless and
 timeless. The aporia is the following: Mind is not within the world
 since, even if it can identify itself to any available point of view, it
 is not identical to this point of view. Nor does Mind stand outside the
 world, since it has no point of view of its own, independent from the
 points of view the world can offer. Wittgenstein would say that Mind is
 the limit of the world.

 and continues

 More formally, Mind can be considered as an empty space in the triadic
 relation: point of view of ( ) on a 'real universe'. This scheme
 provides another way of seeing why Mind retains its necessity, even
 though the real universe gathers all that falls under the categories
 of knowledge: Mind plays a key role in the very constitutive relations
 of this knowledge. Its closest philosophical equivalents are Husserl's
 and Sartre's Transcendental ego; or, even better, Wittenstein's subject
 which (...) does not belong to the world: rather it is a limit of the
 world (Tractatus 5.632).

 It is the same Mind, phenomenal conciousness, in all places and at all
 times.

 In Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics I show that it is necessarily an
 emergent property of the unitary totality, Russell's 'Everything', which
 fits this concept precisely. It is also necessarily, from the
 perspective of any specific framework, perfectly symmetrical.

 Other points answered in separate posts to try and keep things simple
 enough for me.

 Andrew

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-06 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi Andrew,


On 06 Mar 2011, at 14:14, Andrew Soltau wrote:


Hi Bruno

On 05/03/11 14:46, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 04 Mar 2011, at 20:10, Andrew Soltau wrote:

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on  
the idea that everything is simpler than something.
If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a  
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you  
can't get much simpler than that.



Can you elaborate. What are their assumption? What do you mean by  
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything.   
Almost all words here needs a clear context to make sense. Which  
everything?
I skipped over the details because I was don't want to be repeating  
paragraphs of stuff each time I make a point. Not sure about the  
protocol. Anyway.


Chalmers states
I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as  
fundamental ... we will take experience itself as a fundamental  
feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. (1995,  
p. 216)


Clearly it is a universal property of the system in which we find  
ourselves, physical or arithmetical.




I understand Chalmers (materialist) stance, but don't see the relation  
with your own saying. I don't see the same words, like symmetrical  
and universal. Also, be careful with the possible confusion for the  
reader. Universal can mean Truing universal (a math concept), or  
pertaining to the whole physical universe, like when saying the  
universal law of gravitation, for example.





Bitbol concludes his section One mind, many points of view with

Mind is by itself point-of-view-less, just as it is placeless and  
timeless. The aporia is the following: Mind is not within the world  
since, even if it can identify itself to any available point of  
view, it is not identical to this point of view. Nor does Mind stand  
outside the world, since it has no point of view of its own,  
independent from the points of view the world can offer.  
Wittgenstein would say that Mind is the limit of the world.


I agree, and often say similar things, but of course it is a bit vague  
out of the context. ventuall I think Bitbol use world in the usual  
sense of physical world, assumed to be primary.


Also I thought that Wittgenstein said that the World is the border of  
the subject (the limit if the mind, not of the world).






and continues

More formally, Mind can be considered as an empty space in the  
triadic relation: point of view of ( ) on a 'real universe'. This  
scheme provides another way of seeing why Mind retains its  
necessity, even though the real universe gathers all that falls  
under the categories of knowledge: Mind plays a key role in the very  
constitutive relations of this knowledge. Its closest philosophical  
equivalents are Husserl's and Sartre's Transcendental ego; or, even  
better, Wittenstein's subject which (...) does not belong to the  
world: rather it is a limit of the world (Tractatus 5.632).


Hmm... I thought Wittgenstein said that the world is the limit of the  
subject.  I have no problem with Husserl's or Sartre transcendental  
ego. The 8 hypostases,  can be seen in that way.



It is the same Mind, phenomenal conciousness, in all places and at  
all times.


I like that idea, but it is an open problem (in the comp frame).




In Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics I show that it is necessarily  
an emergent property of the unitary totality, Russell's  
'Everything', which fits this concept precisely.


What is the role of Quantum Mechanics. What is Russell's everything?  
Is it Russell Standish's notion of 'nothing', or Bertrand Russell's  
notion of everything in math? You might elaborate a little bit.




It is also necessarily, from the perspective of any specific  
framework, perfectly symmetrical.


?





Other points answered in separate posts to try and keep things  
simple enough for me.


I will take a look. You might try to not make exploding the mail box  
of the readers of the list. Lot of mails can discourage people, given  
that many people have already a large numbers of mails, IMO (but  
that's just a suggestive metacomment that you don't need to mind too  
much).


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-06 Thread Brent Meeker


On 3/6/2011 7:16 AM, 1Z wrote:

It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other
  theories are too vague, or refuted).
 

Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
refuted,
and spiritual interpretations, like von Neumann's are the vagues of
the lot

   


The most conservative interpretation of QM, closest to Bohr, is that the 
equations of QM are merely description of what we know about particular 
systems.  The equations make stochastic predictions.  When we do the 
experiment, one result of those predicted is realized with the 
appropriate frequency of occurence.  The only collapse is 
actualization of one of the possibilities in our description.  
Decoherence theory is a way of modeling when we can expect the 
actualization to be complete.  This has a technical difficulty since the 
unitary evolution implies that decoherence is never complete but only 
approached asymptotically.  However, recent theories of holographic 
information imply that only finite information can be contained within 
an event horizon.  This would in turn imply there must be a smallest 
non-zero probability and decoherence actually drives cross-terms in the 
density matrix to zero.  The problem of basis and einselection still 
remains.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-06 Thread Brent Meeker


On 3/6/2011 7:18 AM, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:
   

Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we can
shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you
mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM,
advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the collapse
is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model
of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.
 

Such epistemological theories need to be carefully distinguished from
consciousness causes
collapse theories.
   


Right.  Epistemological collapse is nothing but a change in 
information that causes us to change our description.


Brent

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-06 Thread John Mikes

*Brent,*
*I agree with most of your statements (whatver value this may have...) Let
me interject below.*
*John M

*
On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote:

 On 3/6/2011 7:16 AM, 1Z wrote:

 It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other
   theories are too vague, or refuted).


 Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
 refuted,


*JM: nor have any such been affirmed, since all of them are based on partial
knowledge.*
**

  and spiritual interpretations, like von Neumann's are the vagues of
 the lot




 The most conservative interpretation of QM, closest to Bohr, is that the
 equations of QM are merely description of what we know about particular
 systems.





*JM: In my words: we know only a part of the totality (= particular systems)
and cannot 'think' beyond that. We cannot comprise 'everything'. *
**

  The equations make stochastic predictions.  When we do the experiment, one
 result of those predicted is realized with the appropriate frequency of
 occurence.  The only collapse is actualization of one of the possibilities
 in our description.  Decoherence theory is a way of modeling when we can
 expect the actualization to be complete.  This has a technical difficulty
 since the unitary evolution implies that decoherence is never complete but
 only approached asymptotically.


*JM: All that understood within the 'model' we draw of the wholenss, i.e.
whatever we know about it as of yesterday. It certainly IS finite. (The last
sentence is above my head).*
**

  However, recent theories of holographic information imply that only finite
 information can be contained within an event horizon.  This would in turn
 imply there must be a smallest non-zero probability and decoherence actually
 drives cross-terms in the density matrix to zero.  The problem of basis and
 einselection still remains.

 Brent
  *John M

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Re: causes (was:ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)

2011-03-06 Thread Stephen Paul King



-Original Message- 
From: Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2011 3:09 PM To: 
everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING 
was Another TOE short paper



On 3/6/2011 7:18 AM, 1Z wrote:


On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:


Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we can
shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you
mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM,
advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the collapse
is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model
of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.


Such epistemological theories need to be carefully distinguished from
consciousness causes
collapse theories.




Right.  Epistemological collapse is nothing but a change in
information that causes us to change our description.

**

   Is the causes word even necessary? Would it not be accurate to say 
that a change in information = a change in our description, unless you are 
assuming some sort of pluralistic 1st person view, i.e. from the point of 
view of many (a fixed set of observers): 'collapse' is nothing but a change 
in the information common to all that causes' (or necessitates!) a change 
in the description of each individual to remain a viable member of the 
'many'?


Onward!

Stephen


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Re: causes (was:ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper)

2011-03-06 Thread John Mikes

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Stephen Paul King stephe...@charter.netwrote:

*  Is the causes word even necessary? Would it not be accurate to say
that a change in information = a change in our description, unless you are
assuming some sort of pluralistic 1st person view, i.e. from the point of
view of many (a fixed set of observers): 'collapse' is nothing but a change
in the information common to all that causes' (or necessitates!) a change
in the description of each individual to remain a viable member of the
'many'?*
*Onward!*
*Stephen*
**
Thanks, Stephen, for standing up against the verb 'causes'. In our limited
views of the totality (the unlimited complexity of the wholeness) we can
only search for factors *contributing* to changes we experience WITHIN the
model of our knowledge. If we find such, we are tempted to call it *THE
cause - *while many more (from the unknown) may also play in.

*Information* is also a tricky term, maybe: knowledge of relations we *
(lately?)* acquired in our topical model of yesterday's knowledge, but
definitely also WITHIN our knowable model.
(Please forgive me for using yesterday's: nobody can think in terms of all
the ongoing news of today).
**
Best
John M
*
*


 -Original Message-

 From: Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2011 3:09 PM To:
 everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
 was Another TOE short paper


 On 3/6/2011 7:18 AM, 1Z wrote:


 On Mar 4, 7:10 pm, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com  wrote:

 Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we can
 shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you
 mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM,
 advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the collapse
 is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model
 of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.

 Such epistemological theories need to be carefully distinguished from
 consciousness causes
 collapse theories.


 Right.  Epistemological collapse is nothing but a change in
 information that causes us to change our description.

 **

   Is the causes word even necessary? Would it not be accurate to say that
 a change in information = a change in our description, unless you are
 assuming some sort of pluralistic 1st person view, i.e. from the point of
 view of many (a fixed set of observers): 'collapse' is nothing but a change
 in the information common to all that causes' (or necessitates!) a change
 in the description of each individual to remain a viable member of the
 'many'?

 Onward!

 Stephen


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-05 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Mar 2011, at 20:10, Andrew Soltau wrote:

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on  
the idea that everything is simpler than something.
If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a  
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you  
can't get much simpler than that.



Can you elaborate. What are their assumption? What do you mean by  
perfectly symmetrical emergent property of the Everything.  Almost  
all words here needs a clear context to make sense. Which everything?


Chalmers told me that first person indeterminacy does not exist, and  
not much more, and Bitbol never reply to me when I sent him my PhD.


They seems to act like pseudo-religious philosopher to me. I still  
don't know if it is ideological or politics.


But it is better to discuss only ideas than refer to people, I think.  
You can explain ideas of other people as far as you use them, and then  
provide the reference. So, what was you point? I might agree with them.


BTW, you did not answer my last point on the comp reversal, at the UDA  
step seven.


I appreciate your point on the logical types. Now, to base them on a  
physics, taken a priori, will prevent the solution of the  
computationalist mind body problem. Elementary arithmetic, and any  
universal system, defines automatically many logical types (like the  
arithmetical modalities of self-references and their variants) and the  
UDA shows that you have to reduce the physical modalities to  
modalities of self-reference, relativize to the UD or the sigma_1 truth.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper



I suspect we all may.


Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it 
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of 
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental 
aspect of physics.


Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved 
in quantum mechanics, and since it is also the primary mechanism whereby 
the world is observed, and thus science made possible, I am in full 
agreement.


The nature of consciousness has been a mystery ever since there have 
been people, and remains so even in our high tech scientific age. 
However, there is a very specific attribute which can be readily 
deduced. Consciousness is to the quantum state the way a projector is to 
the frames of the projected movie. It is therefore by definition a 
system process, a process 'outside' of the moments, just as the 
projector is outside' and operates contextually to, the frames of the 
movie. Given that there is nothing outside of the universe, by 
definition, such a phenomenon can only be an emergent property of the 
unitary universe / multiverse system. We know for certain that it is of 
this nature.


The frame of a movie is of one, primitive, logical type, while the movie 
itself, the sequence of frames, is of a different second logical type. 
Iteration, the action of the movie projector, is of yet another, third, 
different logical type. It is common to all movies. In the same way, the 
quantum state, the change of the quantum state - the collapse dynamics - 
and the iterative function, consciousness, are each of different logical 
type.  This is fully described in Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics 
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/.


As Wong states The universe might be in some sense a Great Mind. The 
implications are so extraordinary that the scientific mind baulks. The 
experiencer 'in' each conscious observer is an emergent property of the 
totality. No wonder that the intuition of some mighty being is part of 
our folklore!


Andrew



On 04/03/11 12:08, ronaldheld wrote:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0005v1.pdf.
Bruno may be interested in this one.
   Ronald



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-04 Thread 1Z



On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:
 I suspect we all may.

 Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it
 is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
 consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental
 aspect of physics.

How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

 Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved
 in quantum mechanics,

That isn't clear at all

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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-04 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:




On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau andrewsol...@gmail.com wrote:

I suspect we all may.

Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,  
... it

is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most  
fundamental

aspect of physics.


How does he know consciousness is fundamental?


Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about  
1500 years.
It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the wave  
packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the  
linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See  
the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the  
idea that everything is simpler than something.
Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the  
collapse with the linear equation, so that if consciousness collapse  
physically the wave, you need a non-comp theory of consciousness.
Then comp by itself is a theory of consciousness, and does provide a  
transparent (I mean testable) link with consciousness, not by  
identifying the mystery of consciousness with a non linear and non  
mechanical phenomenon (the collapse) but by providing an explanation  
of the quantum and the linear from the computationalist hypothesis.






Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally  
involved

in quantum mechanics,


That isn't clear at all


It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other  
theories are too vague, or refuted).
And without collapse, consciousness play the role in providing the  
meaning of the first person indeterminacy, actually of the notion of  
first person, from which the (hopefully quantum) many realities are  
statistically derivable.


Comp makes physics a fundamental modality of consciousness, and in the  
AUDA, you need only to accept the idea that consciousness is related  
with an inference of self-consistency (or of the existence of self- 
consistent extension). Physics is then given literally by the weighted  
relative self-consistent extensions. This is a testable consequence of  
comp.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-04 Thread Brent Meeker


On 3/4/2011 6:20 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote:


I suspect we all may.


Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... 
it is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of 
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental 
aspect of physics.


Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved 
in quantum mechanics, and since it is also the primary mechanism 
whereby the world is observed, and thus science made possible, I am in 
full agreement.


The nature of consciousness has been a mystery ever since there have 
been people, and remains so even in our high tech scientific age. 
However, there is a very specific attribute which can be readily 
deduced. Consciousness is to the quantum state the way a projector is 
to the frames of the projected movie. It is therefore by definition a 
system process, a process 'outside' of the moments, just as the 
projector is outside' and operates contextually to, the frames of the 
movie. Given that there is nothing outside of the universe, by 
definition, such a phenomenon can only be an emergent property of the 
unitary universe / multiverse system. We know for certain that it is 
of this nature.


The frame of a movie is of one, primitive, logical type, while the 
movie itself, the sequence of frames, is of a different second logical 
type. Iteration, the action of the movie projector, is of yet another, 
third, different logical type. 


The metaphor of the movie film frame as an obersver moment as become 
so ubiquitous I'm afraid we may lose site of alternatives.  Ironically, 
almost all the movies you watch now are not stored as frames, rather 
they are compressed a jpegs in which on changes between frames are 
encoded.  A new metaphor?  Interestingly it corresponds to Bertrand 
Russell's analysis of time in terms of overlapping intervals.


Brent

It is common to all movies. In the same way, the quantum state, the 
change of the quantum state - the collapse dynamics - and the 
iterative function, consciousness, are each of different logical 
type.  This is fully described in Logical Types in Quantum Mechanics 
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/.


As Wong states The universe might be in some sense a Great Mind. The 
implications are so extraordinary that the scientific mind baulks. The 
experiencer 'in' each conscious observer is an emergent property of 
the totality. No wonder that the intuition of some mighty being is 
part of our folklore!


Andrew



On 04/03/11 12:08, ronaldheld wrote:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0005v1.pdf.
Bruno may be interested in this one.
   Ronald

 


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

2011-03-04 Thread Brent Meeker

Collapse appears to instruments as well as people - that's why we can 
shared records of experiments and agree on them. I'm not sure what you 
mean by account for collapse.  At least one interpretation of QM, 
advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and Omnes for example, is that the collapse 
is purely epistemological.  All that changes is our knowledge or model 
of the state and QM merely predicts probabilities for this change.


Brent

On 3/4/2011 9:46 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote:
The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse 
occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs 
has been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. 
It appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse 
is purely subjective, as Everett demonstrates. In this case, 
consciousness is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and only 
consciousness, which encounters this appearance of collapse and 
change. We know there is an effective collapse, or the appearance of 
collapse, because we experience this subjectively. On the other hand, 
nothing in the physical world, including the physical body and the 
physical brain, can account for this. Whatever consciousness is, it 
appears to be the phenomenon at the centre of this process. In 
consciousness, change is encountered, the appearance of collapse, and, 
it increasingly appears, no where else. My paper Logical Types in 
Quantum Mechanics http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/ 
explains this in detail.


Andrew

On 04/03/11 16:31, 1Z wrote:

On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:
 

I suspect we all may.

Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental
aspect of physics.
   

How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

 

Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved
in quantum mechanics,
   

That isn't clear at all

 


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper

I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the 
idea that everything is simpler than something. 
If we take Chalmers and Bitbol seriously, consciousness is a perfectly 
symmetrical emergent property of the Everything, and you can't get much 
simpler than that.


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper


On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote:

Collapse appears to instruments as well as people
We don't have any evidence for that, indeed, if we take either the 
concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously, this is not the 
case.

- that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on them.
Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our 
personal systems.

I'm not sure what you mean by account for collapse.
I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as 
in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of 
collapse only 'in consciousness'.
  At least one interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, and 
Omnes for example, is that the collapse is purely epistemological.  
All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely 
predicts probabilities for this change.

Fits my view.


Brent

On 3/4/2011 9:46 AM, Andrew Soltau wrote:
The measurement problem is the question of why, or even if, collapse 
occurs. Certainly no coherent concept of how and why collapse occurs 
has been formulated in a manner which meets with general acceptance. 
It appears, as Davies and others explain, the appearance of collapse 
is purely subjective, as Everett demonstrates. In this case, 
consciousness is necessarily central, as it is consciousness, and 
only consciousness, which encounters this appearance of collapse and 
change. We know there is an effective collapse, or the appearance of 
collapse, because we experience this subjectively. On the other hand, 
nothing in the physical world, including the physical body and the 
physical brain, can account for this. Whatever consciousness is, it 
appears to be the phenomenon at the centre of this process. In 
consciousness, change is encountered, the appearance of collapse, 
and, it increasingly appears, no where else. My paper Logical Types 
in Quantum Mechanics 
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/5554/ explains this in 
detail.


Andrew

On 04/03/11 16:31, 1Z wrote:

On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltauandrewsol...@gmail.com  wrote:
 

I suspect we all may.

Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be, ... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most fundamental
aspect of physics.
   

How does he know consciousness is fundamental?

 

Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally involved
in quantum mechanics,
   

That isn't clear at all

 


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Re: ON THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING was Another TOE short paper