Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 26-nov.-07, à 20:22, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Yes I am particularizing things... But the end justifies the means. I am being positivist, trying to express these rules as a function of an observer. In any case, once the specific example is worked out, we can fall back on the general case. Your feedback about exist not really being adequate to express truth is well noted. Let me change the proposed rules to express truth as a function of an axiomatic system A existing as data either in the memory of M or as a axiomatic substrate for a simulated world W. Let's try the following: In a world W simulated according to the axiomatic data system A, there is a machine M, data p and data q such that 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. (exist=being simulated in W according to A ) 2) If M has access to p, then M has access to the access point to p. 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if M has access to p, it also has access to q. Now we can make the statements reflexive ( I don't know if this is the right word) by setting data p = Machine description M. In a simulated world W following the axiomatic data system A there is a machine M=p and data q such that 1) If M has access to M then M exists in W. (reflexivity?) 2) If M has access to M, then M has access to the access point to M. (Infinite reflexivity? - description of consciousness?) 3) If M has information describing q as a consequence of M in accordance with A, then if M has access to M, it also has access to q. (This is a form of Anthropic principle) I am not sure if this is leading anywhere, but it's fun playing with it. Sure. And playing is the best way to learn, as nature knows since the beginning. Maybe a computer program could be written to express these staqtements. I certainly encourage you to do so. Note that for the general modal theory, S4, or even the comp fist person S4Grz, programs already exists. By some aspect your attempt reminds me also of dynamic logic. This is modal logic applied to computations (and thus a bit away from computability which concerns my more theological global concern ;). You could googelize on dynamic modal logic. I am not at all an expert on those logics, to be sure. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
George, you can do that indeed, but then you are particularizing things. This can be helpful from a pedagogical point of view, but the advantage of the axiomatic approach (to a knowledge theory) is that once you agree on the axioms and rules, then you agree on the consequences independently of the particular instantiation you think about. Word like machine, access, memory, world, data, are, fundamentally harder than the simple idea of knowledge the modal S4 axioms convey. Using machines, for example, could seem as a computationalist restriction, when the axioms S4 remains completely neutral, etc. Also, acceding a memory is more opinion than knowledge because we can have false memory for example. (And then what are the inference rules of your system?). S4 is a normal modal logic with natural Kripke referentials (transitive, reflexive accessibility relations). A bit more problematic is your identification of true with exist. This hangs on possible but highly debatable and complex relations between truth and reality. This is interesting per se, but imo a bit out of topics, or premature (in current thread). Perhaps we will have opportunity to debate on this, but I want make sure that what I am explaining now does not depend on those possible relations (between truth and reality). Bruno Le 24-nov.-07, à 21:23, George Levy a écrit : Bruno thank you for this elaborate reply. I would like these three statements to make use of cybernetic language, that is to be more explicit in terms of the machine or entity to which they refer. Would it be correct to rephrase the statements in the active tense, using the machine as the subject, replacing proposition p by the term data and replacing true by exist? The statements would then be: In a world W there is a machine M, data p and data q such that 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. 2) If M has access to p, then M has access to the access point to p. 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if M has access to p, it also has access to q. I assumed that the term has access means in its memory... but it does not have to. I also assumed in statements 3 that the multiple uses of M refers to the same machine. I guess there may be cases where multiple machines can have access to the dame data. Same with statement 4 George Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit : Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for knowing. That is: 1) If p is knowable then p is true; 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable; 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is knowable (+ some logical rules). Bruno, what or who do you mean by it in statements 2) and 3). The same as in it is raining. I could have written 1. and 2. like 1) knowable(p) - p 2) knowable(p) - knowable(knowable(p)) In this way we can avoid using words like it, or even like true. p is a variable, and is implicitly universally quantified over. knowable(p) - p really means that whatever is the proposition p, if it is knowable then it is true. The false is unknowable (although it could be conceivable, believable, even provable (in inconsistent theory), etc. The p in 1. 2. and 3. is really like the x in the formula (sin(x))^2 + (cos(x))^2 = 1. knowable(p) - p really means that we cannot know something false. This is coherent with the natural language use of know, which I illustrate often by remarking that we never say Alfred knew the earth is flat, but the he realized he was wrong. We say instead Alfred believed that earth is flat, but then . The axiom 1. is the incorrigibility axiom: we can know only the truth. Of course we can believe we know something until we know better. The axiom 2. is added when we want to axiomatize a notion of knowledge from the part of sufficiently introspective subject. It means that if some proposition is knowable, then the knowability of that proposition is itself knowable. It means that when the subject knows some proposition then the subject will know that he knows that proposition. The subject can know that he knows. In addition, what do you mean by is knowable, is true and entails? All the point in axiomatizing some notion, consists in giving a way to reason about that
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Yes I am particularizing things... But the end justifies the means. I am being positivist, trying to express these rules as a function of an observer. In any case, once the specific example is worked out, we can fall back on the general case. Your feedback about exist not really being adequate to express truth is well noted. Let me change the proposed rules to express truth as a function of an axiomatic system A existing as data either in the memory of M or as a axiomatic substrate for a simulated world W. Let's try the following: In a world W simulated according to the axiomatic data system A, there is a machine M, data p and data q such that 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. (exist=being simulated in W according to A ) 2) If M has access to p, then M has access to the access point to p. 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if M has access to p, it also has access to q. Now we can make the statements reflexive ( I don't know if this is the right word) by setting data p = Machine description M. In a simulated world W following the axiomatic data system A there is a machine M=p and data q such that 1) If M has access to M then M exists in W. (reflexivity?) 2) If M has access to M, then M has access to the access point to M. (Infinite reflexivity? - description of consciousness?) 3) If M has information describing q as a consequence of M in accordance with A, then if M has access to M, it also has access to q. (This is a form of Anthropic principle) I am not sure if this is leading anywhere, but it's fun playing with it. Maybe a computer program could be written to express these staqtements. George Bruno Marchal wrote: George, you can do that indeed, but then you are particularizing things. This can be helpful from a pedagogical point of view, but the advantage of the axiomatic approach (to a knowledge theory) is that once you agree on the axioms and rules, then you agree on the consequences independently of the particular instantiation you think about. Word like machine, access, memory, world, data, are, fundamentally harder than the simple idea of knowledge the modal S4 axioms convey. Using machines, for example, could seem as a computationalist restriction, when the axioms S4 remains completely neutral, etc. Also, acceding a memory is more opinion than knowledge because we can have false memory for example. (And then what are the inference rules of your system?). S4 is a normal modal logic with natural Kripke referentials (transitive, reflexive accessibility relations). A bit more problematic is your identification of true with exist. This hangs on possible but highly debatable and complex relations between truth and reality. This is interesting per se, but imo a bit out of topics, or premature (in current thread). Perhaps we will have opportunity to debate on this, but I want make sure that what I am explaining now does not depend on those possible relations (between truth and reality). Bruno Le 24-nov.-07, à 21:23, George Levy a écrit : Bruno thank you for this elaborate reply. I would like these three statements to make use of cybernetic language, that is to be more explicit in terms of the machine or entity to which they refer. Would it be correct to rephrase the statements in the active tense, using the machine as the subject, replacing proposition p by the term data and replacing true by exist? The statements would then be: In a world W there is a machine M, data p and data q such that 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. 2) If M has access to p, then M has access to the access point to p. 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if M has access to p, it also has access to q. I assumed that the term has access means in its memory... but it does not have to. I also assumed in statements 3 that the multiple uses of M refers to the same machine. I guess there may be cases where multiple machines can have access to the dame data. Same with statement 4 George Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit : Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno thank you for this elaborate reply. I would like these three statements to make use of cybernetic language, that is to be more explicit in terms of the machine or entity to which they refer. Would it be correct to rephrase the statements in the active tense, using the machine as the subject, replacing proposition p by the term data and replacing true by exist? The statements would then be: In a world W there is a machine M, data p and data q such that 1) If M has access to p (possibly in its memory), then p exists in W. 2) If M has access to p, then M has access to the access point to p. 3) If M has access to the information relating or linking p to q then if M has access to p, it also has access to q. I assumed that the term has access means in its memory... but it does not have to. I also assumed in statements 3 that the multiple uses of M refers to the same machine. I guess there may be cases where multiple machines can have access to the dame data. Same with statement 4 George Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit : Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for knowing. That is: 1) If p is knowable then p is true; 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable; 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is knowable (+ some logical rules). Bruno, what or who do you mean by it in statements 2) and 3). The same as in it is raining. I could have written 1. and 2. like 1) knowable(p) - p 2) knowable(p) - knowable(knowable(p)) In this way we can avoid using words like it, or even like true. p is a variable, and is implicitly universally quantified over. knowable(p) - p really means that whatever is the proposition p, if it is knowable then it is true. The false is unknowable (although it could be conceivable, believable, even provable (in inconsistent theory), etc. The p in 1. 2. and 3. is really like the x in the formula (sin(x))^2 + (cos(x))^2 = 1. knowable(p) - p really means that we cannot know something false. This is coherent with the natural language use of know, which I illustrate often by remarking that we never say Alfred knew the earth is flat, but the he realized he was wrong. We say instead Alfred believed that earth is flat, but then . The axiom 1. is the incorrigibility axiom: we can know only the truth. Of course we can believe we know something until we know better. The axiom 2. is added when we want to axiomatize a notion of knowledge from the part of sufficiently introspective subject. It means that if some proposition is knowable, then the knowability of that proposition is itself knowable. It means that when the subject knows some proposition then the subject will know that he knows that proposition. The subject can know that he knows. In addition, what do you mean by is knowable, is true and entails? All the point in axiomatizing some notion, consists in giving a way to reason about that notion without ever defining it. We just try to agree on some principles, like 1.,2., 3., and then derives things from those principles. Nuance can be added by adding new axioms if necessary. Of course axioms like above are not enough, we have to use deduction rules. In case of the S4 theory, which I will rewrite with modal notation (hoping you recognize it). I write Bp for B(p) to avoid heaviness in the notation, likewize, I write BBp for B(B(p)). 1) Bp - p (incorrigibility) 2) Bp - BBp (introspective knowledge) 3) B(p-q) - (Bp - Bq) (weak omniscience, = knowability of the consequences of knowable propositions). Now with such axioms you can derive no theorems (except the axiom themselves). So you need some principles which give you a way to deduce theorems from axioms. The usual deduction rule of S4 are the substitution rule, the modus ponens rule and the necessitation rule. The substitution rule say that you can substitute p by any proposition (as far as you avoid clash of variable, etc.). The modus ponens rule say that if you have already derived some formula A, and some formula A - B, then you can derive B. The necessitation rule says that if you have already derive A, then you can derive BA. Are is knowable, is true and entails
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 22-nov.-07, à 20:50, George Levy a écrit : Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for knowing. That is: 1) If p is knowable then p is true; 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable; 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is knowable (+ some logical rules). Bruno, what or who do you mean by it in statements 2) and 3). The same as in it is raining. I could have written 1. and 2. like 1) knowable(p) - p 2) knowable(p) - knowable(knowable(p)) In this way we can avoid using words like it, or even like true. p is a variable, and is implicitly universally quantified over. knowable(p) - p really means that whatever is the proposition p, if it is knowable then it is true. The false is unknowable (although it could be conceivable, believable, even provable (in inconsistent theory), etc. The p in 1. 2. and 3. is really like the x in the formula (sin(x))^2 + (cos(x))^2 = 1. knowable(p) - p really means that we cannot know something false. This is coherent with the natural language use of know, which I illustrate often by remarking that we never say Alfred knew the earth is flat, but the he realized he was wrong. We say instead Alfred believed that earth is flat, but then . The axiom 1. is the incorrigibility axiom: we can know only the truth. Of course we can believe we know something until we know better. The axiom 2. is added when we want to axiomatize a notion of knowledge from the part of sufficiently introspective subject. It means that if some proposition is knowable, then the knowability of that proposition is itself knowable. It means that when the subject knows some proposition then the subject will know that he knows that proposition. The subject can know that he knows. In addition, what do you mean by is knowable, is true and entails? All the point in axiomatizing some notion, consists in giving a way to reason about that notion without ever defining it. We just try to agree on some principles, like 1.,2., 3., and then derives things from those principles. Nuance can be added by adding new axioms if necessary. Of course axioms like above are not enough, we have to use deduction rules. In case of the S4 theory, which I will rewrite with modal notation (hoping you recognize it). I write Bp for B(p) to avoid heaviness in the notation, likewize, I write BBp for B(B(p)). 1) Bp - p (incorrigibility) 2) Bp - BBp (introspective knowledge) 3) B(p-q) - (Bp - Bq) (weak omniscience, = knowability of the consequences of knowable propositions). Now with such axioms you can derive no theorems (except the axiom themselves). So you need some principles which give you a way to deduce theorems from axioms. The usual deduction rule of S4 are the substitution rule, the modus ponens rule and the necessitation rule. The substitution rule say that you can substitute p by any proposition (as far as you avoid clash of variable, etc.). The modus ponens rule say that if you have already derived some formula A, and some formula A - B, then you can derive B. The necessitation rule says that if you have already derive A, then you can derive BA. Are is knowable, is true and entails absolute or do they have meaning only with respect to a particular observer? The abstract S4 theory is strictly neutral on this. But abstract theory can have more concrete models or interpretations. In our lobian setting, it will happen that formal provability by a machine does not obey the incorrigibility axiom (as Godel notices in his 1933 paper). This means that formal provability by a machine cannot be used to modelize the knowability of the machine. It is a bit counterintuitive, but formal provability by a machine modelizes only a form of opinion by the machine, so that to get a knowability notion from the provability notion, we have to explicitly define knowability(p) by provability(p) and p is true. (Cf Platos's Theaetetus). Here provability and knowability is always relative to an (ideal) machine. I will come back on this in my explanation to David later. But don't hesitate to ask question before. Can these terms be relative to an observer? If they can, how would you rephrase these statements? An observer ? I guess you mean a subject. Observability could obeys quite different axioms that knowability (as it is the case for machine with comp). Just interpret knowable(p) by p is knowable by M. M denotes some machine
Re: Are First Person prime?
Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for knowing. That is: 1) If p is knowable then p is true; 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable; 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is knowable (+ some logical rules). Bruno, what or who do you mean by it in statements 2) and 3). In addition, what do you mean by is knowable, is true and entails? Are is knowable, is true and entails absolute or do they have meaning only with respect to a particular observer? Can these terms be relative to an observer? If they can, how would you rephrase these statements? George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
One more question: can or should p be the observer? George George Levy wrote: Hi Bruno, I am reopening an old thread ( more than a year old) which I found very intriguing. It leads to some startling conclusions. Le 05-août-06, à 02:07, George Levy a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote:I think that if you want to make the first person primitive, given that neither you nor me can really define it, you will need at least to axiomatize it in some way. Here is my question. Do you agree that a first person is a knower, and in that case, are you willing to accept the traditional axioms for knowing. That is: 1) If p is knowable then p is true; 2) If p is knowable then it is knowable that p is knowable; 3) if it is knowable that p entails q, then if p is knowable then q is knowable (+ some logical rules). Bruno, what or who do you mean by it in statements 2) and 3). In addition, what do you mean by is knowable, is true and entails? Are is knowable, is true and entails absolute or do they have meaning only with respect to a particular observer? Can these terms be relative to an observer? If they can, how would you rephrase these statements? George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker writes: In a deterministic universe, saying that things could have turned out differently had initial conditions or physical laws been different is analogous to saying the sound coming out of the speakers could have been different if the grooves on the record or the equalisation in the preamp stage had been different. That still sounds like a cheat to me. If it's recording of the universe it's an inputless program, since there is no environment outside the universe. But when you invoke the analogy of the record, you conceive the grooves and the initial conditions as input. The fundamental constants and physical laws could be taken as input. There are of course various theories as to how these values have been set, ranging from God made it that way to multiverse theories in which every possibility is realised but only some lead to conscious observers. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Words like real, physical material needs to be (re)defined or at least clarify in front of the UDA. They don't need apriori, rationalist clarity, since they can be defended by the empiricist-Johnsoinian approach. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. I would say there is no relevant difference, from the first person point of view, between a process in a real universe and a relative computation in Platonia. If Platonia is not real in any sense, it cannot contain observers, persons, appearances, etc. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. All partial recursive solutions of Schroedinger or Dirac equation exists in Platonia, and define through that block description notion of internal time quite analogous to Everett subjective probabilities. The A-series cannot be reduced to the B-series. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. A program is basically the same as a number. No it isn't. You don't know which programme is specified by a number without knowing how the number is to be interpreted, ie what hardware it is running on. A process or a computation is a finite or infinite sequence of numbers (possibly branching, and defined relatively to a universal numbers). It is not just a sequence, because a sequence does not specify counterfactuals. The UD build all such (branching) sequences. If it exists. Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple of one that many mathematical possibilities do not exist physically). What does not exist cannot be observed. That is the Somethingist solution to White Rabbits. Consciousness is a problem for all forms of materialism and physicalism to some extent, but it is possible to discern where the problem is particularly acute. There is no great problem with the idea that matter considered as a bare substrate can have mental properities. Panpsychism ? That's *can* have mental properties. Implying also can *not* have mental properties. Property dualism, not contra panpsychism. An electron would be conscious? Why do you think there are neurons in brains? Why do you think there are genes in cells? Do you think they are only amplifiers of particle's mind. Note that this would not a priori contradict comp per se, it would only make the substitution level very low. (Unlikely imo, but that is not relevant for our discussion). Any inability to have mental properties would itself be a property and therefore be inconsistent with the bareness of a bare substrate. The subjectivity of conscious states, often treated as inherent boils down to a problem of communicating one's qualia -- how one feels, how things seem. Thus it is not truly inherent but depends on the means of communication being used. Feelings and seemings can be more readily communicated in artistic, poetic language, and least readily in scientific, technical language. Since the harder, more technical a science is, the more mathematical it is, the communication problem is at its most acute in a purely mathematical langauge. Thus the problem with physicalism is not its posit of matter (as a bare substrate) but its other posit, that all properties are physical. Since physics is mathematical, that amounts to the claim that all properties are mathematical (or at least mathematically describable). In making the transition from a physicalist world-view to a mathematical one, the concept of a material substrate is abandoned (although it was never a problem for consciousness) and the posit of mathematical properties becomes, which is a problem for consciousness becomes extreme. Why? Because in a mathematics-only universe, qualia have to be identified with, or reduced to, mathematical structures. http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/diagrams/matter_substrate.jpg The interesting thing is that these two problems can be used to solve each other to some extent. if we allow extra-mathemtical properties into our universe, we can use them to solve the White Rabbit problem. There are two ways of doing this: We can claim either:- White Rabbit universes don't exist
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. That's my point. Counterfactuals are defined relative to some environment/data/input which we suppose to be possibly different. It's not so much that it's not well defined, but that it's aribtrarily defined. So I think lz's point about intelligence requiring counterfactuals is the same as saying intelligence is relative to some environment - a view with which I agree. In the case of reproducing organisms the organism/environment distinction is clear. In a simulation it's not. Sorry to keep returning to this, but it's important. I still don't see how you can distinguish between the conditionals in a computer program and the conditionals inherent in any physical system. A computer is a device set up so that input A results in output B, while input C results in output D. The conditional is inherent even if the C-D branch is never realised because it *could* be realised. But a rock is also a device set up so that input A results in output B while input C results in output D: if you push it on its left side (A) it moves to the right (B) while if you push it on its right side (C) it moves to the left (D). The rock has this inherent conditional behaviour even if the C-D branch is never realised, because it *could* be realised if things had been different. If you include the computer's data in the program then it becomes an inputless system, a self-contained simulation. If you include yourself, the rock and everything else that might interact with it in one system you have a self-contained, inputless universe. Both the closed simulation and the universe (in the absence of CI type quantum randomness) are at least as deterministic as what we normally call a recording, despite all the conditionals, because it is rather more likely that I will change a recording than that God will intervene to push rocks around or provide computers with miraculous inputs. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 22-août-06, à 13:45, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. A counterfactual is somethingthat could have happened, but didn't. A static, immaterial systems can only handle counterfactuals by turning them into factuals -- everything that can happen does happen. It can fully capture the *conditional* structure of a programme, (unlike a recording) at the expense of not being a process. A programme is not the same thing as a process. I agree. Like a corpse is not the same as a life. Computationalism refers to real, physical processes running on material computers. Words like real, physical material needs to be (re)defined or at least clarify in front of the UDA. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. I would say there is no relevant difference, from the first person point of view, between a process in a real universe and a relative computation in Platonia. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. All partial recursive solutions of Schroedinger or Dirac equation exists in Platonia, and define through that block description notion of internal time quite analogous to Everett subjective probabilities. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. A program is basically the same as a number. A process or a computation is a finite or infinite sequence of numbers (possibly branching, and defined relatively to a universal numbers). The UD build all such (branching) sequences. No-one would believe that a brain-scan, however detailed, is conscious, Of course. so not computationalist, however ardent, is required to believe that a progamme on a disk, gathering dust on a shelf, is sentient, however good a piece of AI code it may be! Of course. Another route is record the actual behaviour, under some circumstances of a process, into a stream of data (ultimately, a string of numbers, and therefore soemthing already in Plato's heaven). OK then. This route loses the conditonal structure, the counterfactuals that are vital to computer programmes and therefore to computationalism. Not in the all computations view. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in general not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. The UD generates all such branching sequences. And the non triviality of computer science gives reasons to add different relative weigh on the branches (already like the MWI). Since a recording is not computation as such, the computationalist need not attribute mentality to it -- it need not have a mind of its own, any more than the characters in a movie. Right. (Another way of looking at this is via the Turing Test; a mere recording would never pass a TT since it has no condiitonal/counterfactual behaviour and therfore cannot answer unexpected questions). OK (but not quite relevant imo, because I can attribute a mind to a sleeping person, although it lacks inputs and outputs). That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Multiverse theories seek to turn the 3rd-person X could have happened but didn't into the 1st-person X could have been observed by me, but wasn't. OK. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, A quantum multiverse is sitll only a tiny corner of Platonia. A priori. But if the quantum hypothesis is correct, and if
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. That's my point. Counterfactuals are defined relative to some environment/data/input which we suppose to be possibly different. It's not so much that it's not well defined, but that it's aribtrarily defined. So I think lz's point about intelligence requiring counterfactuals is the same as saying intelligence is relative to some environment - a view with which I agree. In the case of reproducing organisms the organism/environment distinction is clear. In a simulation it's not. Sorry to keep returning to this, but it's important. I still don't see how you can distinguish between the conditionals in a computer program and the conditionals inherent in any physical system. A computer is a device set up so that input A results in output B, while input C results in output D. The conditional is inherent even if the C-D branch is never realised because it *could* be realised. But a rock is also a device set up so that input A results in output B while input C results in output D: if you push it on its left side (A) it moves to the right (B) while if you push it on its right side (C) it moves to the left (D). The rock has this inherent conditional behaviour even if the C-D branch is never realised, because it *could* be realised if things had been different. OK, I take your point. But the movement of the rock right or left is not a property of the rock. The rock is not computing its motion. But by including spacetime, inertia, etc, I will grant that the system computes. And it has implicit if-thens because you suppose you could have pushed it the other way; even if you don't. If you include the computer's data in the program then it becomes an inputless system, a self-contained simulation. If you include yourself, the rock and everything else that might interact with it in one system you have a self-contained, inputless universe. Both the closed simulation and the universe (in the absence of CI type quantum randomness) are at least as deterministic as what we normally call a recording, despite all the conditionals, because it is rather more likely that I will change a recording than that God will intervene to push rocks around or provide computers with miraculous inputs. Right. So within this simulation you may say there are intelligent subsystems by making a somewhat arbitrary cut between subsystem and environment. This still seems different from a recording though. The recording is only of the paths actually taken, whereas looking at the program you can see other paths that could have been taken - just as you say the rock computes because you *could have* pushed it the other way. And in anycase there does seem to be quantum randomness. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker writes: If you include the computer's data in the program then it becomes an inputless system, a self-contained simulation. If you include yourself, the rock and everything else that might interact with it in one system you have a self-contained, inputless universe. Both the closed simulation and the universe (in the absence of CI type quantum randomness) are at least as deterministic as what we normally call a recording, despite all the conditionals, because it is rather more likely that I will change a recording than that God will intervene to push rocks around or provide computers with miraculous inputs. Right. So within this simulation you may say there are intelligent subsystems by making a somewhat arbitrary cut between subsystem and environment. This still seems different from a recording though. The recording is only of the paths actually taken, whereas looking at the program you can see other paths that could have been taken - just as you say the rock computes because you *could have* pushed it the other way. In a deterministic universe, saying that things could have turned out differently had initial conditions or physical laws been different is analogous to saying the sound coming out of the speakers could have been different if the grooves on the record or the equalisation in the preamp stage had been different. And in anycase there does seem to be quantum randomness. There does, although the MWI is deterministic. I can't think of any good reason why true or apparent quantum randomness should be necessary for intelligent behaviour or consciousness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: If you include the computer's data in the program then it becomes an inputless system, a self-contained simulation. If you include yourself, the rock and everything else that might interact with it in one system you have a self-contained, inputless universe. Both the closed simulation and the universe (in the absence of CI type quantum randomness) are at least as deterministic as what we normally call a recording, despite all the conditionals, because it is rather more likely that I will change a recording than that God will intervene to push rocks around or provide computers with miraculous inputs. Right. So within this simulation you may say there are intelligent subsystems by making a somewhat arbitrary cut between subsystem and environment. This still seems different from a recording though. The recording is only of the paths actually taken, whereas looking at the program you can see other paths that could have been taken - just as you say the rock computes because you *could have* pushed it the other way. In a deterministic universe, saying that things could have turned out differently had initial conditions or physical laws been different is analogous to saying the sound coming out of the speakers could have been different if the grooves on the record or the equalisation in the preamp stage had been different. That still sounds like a cheat to me. If it's recording of the universe it's an inputless program, since there is no environment outside the universe. But when you invoke the analogy of the record, you conceive the grooves and the initial conditions as input. And in anycase there does seem to be quantum randomness. There does, although the MWI is deterministic. I can't think of any good reason why true or apparent quantum randomness should be necessary for intelligent behaviour or consciousness. I can't either, although Henry Stapp thinks he has such a theory: quant-ph/0003065. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 19-août-06, à 16:35, 1Z a écrit : No, I am suggesting that 0-width slices don't contain enough information to predict future states in physics. What about a quantum state? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, and the physical laws must take that into account. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. A counterfactual is somethingthat could have happened, but didn't. A static, immaterial systems can only handle counterfactuals by turning them into factuals -- everything that can happen does happen. It can fully capture the *conditional* structure of a programme, (unlike a recording) at the expense of not being a process. A programme is not the same thing as a process. Computationalism refers to real, physical processes running on material computers. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. No-one would believe that a brain-scan, however detailed, is conscious, so not computationalist, however ardent, is required to believe that a progamme on a disk, gathering dust on a shelf, is sentient, however good a piece of AI code it may be! Another route is record the actual behaviour, under some circumstances of a process, into a stream of data (ultimately, a string of numbers, and therefore soemthing already in Plato's heaven). This route loses the conditonal structure, the counterfactuals that are vital to computer programmes and therefore to computationalism. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in general not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Since a recording is not computation as such, the computationalist need not attribute mentality to it -- it need not have a mind of its own, any more than the characters in a movie. (Another way of looking at this is via the Turing Test; a mere recording would never pass a TT since it has no condiitonal/counterfactual behaviour and therfore cannot answer unexpected questions). That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Multiverse theories seek to turn the 3rd-person X could have happened but didn't into the 1st-person X could have been observed by me, but wasn't. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, A quantum multiverse is sitll only a tiny corner of Platonia. Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple of one that many mathematical possibilities do not exist physically). For instance, even if their are two informationally identical me's in different branches of a phsycial universe, it is not inevitable that any sharing or corss-over of consicousness would occur, because in a phsyical universe, cosnciousness would have something other than informational structures to supervene on. Thus me might well be able to tell that we are in a quantum multiverse rather than Platonia, on the basis that we just do not observe enough weirdness. Too broad: If I am just a mathematical structure, I should have a much wider range of experience than I do. There is a mathemtical structure corresponding to myself with all my experiences up to time T. There is a vast array of mathematical structures corresponding to other versions of me with having a huge range of experiences -- ordinary ones, like continuing to type, extraordinary ones like seeing my computer sudenly turn into bowl of petunias. All these versions of me share the memories of the me who is writing this, so they all identify themselves as me. Remember, that for mathematical monism it is only necessary that a possible experience has a mathematical description. This
Re: Are First Person prime?
Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) Regards, Quentin Le mardi 22 août 2006 13:45, 1Z a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 21-août-06, à 16:01, 1Z a écrit : Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. I would say that only non-physical system implement counterfactuals. A counterfactual is somethingthat could have happened, but didn't. A static, immaterial systems can only handle counterfactuals by turning them into factuals -- everything that can happen does happen. It can fully capture the *conditional* structure of a programme, (unlike a recording) at the expense of not being a process. A programme is not the same thing as a process. Computationalism refers to real, physical processes running on material computers. Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference between process and programme) before you can have consciousness implemented Platonically. To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is no time or changein Plato's heave. Therefore, to gain entry, a computational mind will have to be translated from a running process into something static and acausal. One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is the same, but they are not the same thing. No-one would believe that a brain-scan, however detailed, is conscious, so not computationalist, however ardent, is required to believe that a progamme on a disk, gathering dust on a shelf, is sentient, however good a piece of AI code it may be! Another route is record the actual behaviour, under some circumstances of a process, into a stream of data (ultimately, a string of numbers, and therefore soemthing already in Plato's heaven). This route loses the conditonal structure, the counterfactuals that are vital to computer programmes and therefore to computationalism. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in general not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Since a recording is not computation as such, the computationalist need not attribute mentality to it -- it need not have a mind of its own, any more than the characters in a movie. (Another way of looking at this is via the Turing Test; a mere recording would never pass a TT since it has no condiitonal/counterfactual behaviour and therfore cannot answer unexpected questions). That counterfactuality is the essence of (immaterial) comp. Although here Russell has a point: the quantum multiverse seems to handle counterfactual. Multiverse theories seek to turn the 3rd-person X could have happened but didn't into the 1st-person X could have been observed by me, but wasn't. Now if comp is correct, I cannot distinguish a genuine quantum multiverse from any of its emulation in Platonia, A quantum multiverse is sitll only a tiny corner of Platonia. Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple of one that many mathematical possibilities do not exist physically). For instance, even if their are two informationally identical me's in different branches of a phsycial universe, it is not inevitable that any sharing or corss-over of consicousness would occur, because in a phsyical universe, cosnciousness would have something other than informational structures to supervene on. Thus me might well be able to tell that we are in a quantum multiverse rather than Platonia, on the basis that we just do not observe enough weirdness. Too broad: If I am just a mathematical structure, I should have a much wider range of experience than I do. There is a
Re: Are First Person prime?
Quentin Anciaux wrote: Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) We don't know what the BB emerged out of. It might have had more than enough ontological resources to generate time. It did not have time as we know it , but for all we know time as we know it is a mere privation or degenerate case of some funky hyper-time. But we do know what the resources of Platonia are. It is a very wide, but very flat country; it contains every possible static eternal structure, but only static, eternal structures. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. Consider the following two programs: (a) input: x if x=1 print hello if x=0 print goodbye data: 1 and (b) print hello As written, program (a) will print hello just as consistently as program (b). It looks like program (a) has a conditional in that if the 4th line were data: 0 it would print goodbye. However, program (b) would also print goodbye if that string were substituted for hello. Both programs do the same thing, and both would do something else if the programmer intervened and changed them. In (a) the code is separated into program and data but as you pointed out recently there is no real difference between these. Subroutines within a larger program could be intelligent entities interacting with a virtual environment with no input from outside the program in the same way as intelligent entities within the real universe interact with the environment with no input from outside the universe. It's worth standing back at this point and looking at what a computer + program + data really is: a collection of plastic, metal, and semiconductors assembled in a specified way which has no choice but to follow the laws of physics. The if-then statements amount to a particular physical configuration such that stimulus x will make the computer behave one way while stimulus y will make it behave in a different way. This is not fundamentally different to saying that, for example, a car is configured so that it will turn left or right depending on which way the steering wheel is turned. In both situations, dumb matter blindly follows the laws of physics. The difference is in the details, complexity and intended purpose of each device; it is not that the computer interacts with its environment and handles counterfactuals while the car does not. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 22-août-06, à 14:36, 1Z a écrit : Quentin Anciaux wrote: Hi, concerning process and programs, all boils down to the timeless/time argument. I'm astonished that you accept time as is, I mean if time there is it has been created at the same time as our universe in the bigbang. Time begin when the universe begin, so you accept that time can occur in a timeless system because if you don't then it means time existed before it was created... that make me write nonsensical sentences ;) We don't know what the BB emerged out of. It might have had more than enough ontological resources to generate time. It did not have time as we know it , but for all we know time as we know it is a mere privation or degenerate case of some funky hyper-time. But we do know what the resources of Platonia are. What do you mean by resources of Platonia ? It is a very wide, but very flat country; it contains every possible static eternal structure, but only static, eternal structures. No physical block universe then. But that confirms what Quentin Anciaux said, it all boils down to the question of a primitive time or not. Obviously, comp makes time (and space and all physicalities) form of stable illusion from inside. (But I dislike the word illusion). Many physicist, like Sanders for example, and many philosophers defend the indexical version of time (which is also defended by Deutsch). Peter, be patient for a comment to your long post of today, I am trying to finish a comment on another long post by David. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. I don't see how you could make the distinction well-defined. That's my point. Counterfactuals are defined relative to some environment/data/input which we suppose to be possibly different. It's not so much that it's not well defined, but that it's aribtrarily defined. So I think lz's point about intelligence requiring counterfactuals is the same as saying intelligence is relative to some environment - a view with which I agree. In the case of reproducing organisms the organism/environment distinction is clear. In a simulation it's not. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in genreal not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could be have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. Exactly. And if non-phsyical systems (Plato' Heaven) don't implement counterfactuals, then they can't run programmes, and if Plato's heaven can't run programmes, it can't be running us as programmes. Finitism doesn't imply stasis. New frames could be popping into existence dynamically. If time is continuous then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of infinitesimal duration. Likewise. There is no room for movement within a frame in either case - There is room within an infinitessimal frame. dx/dt is not necessarily zero. No-one knows what dx/dt is. We can handle it mathematically. If we make dt exactly equal to zero, everythign stops working. Either a process is broken into non-zero sized slices, in which case they dynamism is still their, or it is broken into 0-sized slices, whoch doesn't work mathematically. It is the smallest non-zero number, or the reciprocal of the largest finite number. If there is room for movement within an infinitesimal interval then it can by definition be divided up further - it isn't an infinitesimal interval. infinitessimals can be divided into further infinitessimals. However, this is straying from the original point I wanted to make, which is that whatever reasons there might be against block universe theories, continuity of consciousness is not one of them. Every digital computer has clock cycles during which nothing actually happens, and it is the conjunction of these cycles which makes the program flow. There is no way from within the program to know what the clock rate is, if there are pauses in the program, or if it is being run in several parallel processes. You might argue that it would not be possible to run the program at all without a causal connection between the steps, but the fact remains, discontinuous framesd during which nothing changes give the illusion of continuous motion. Given some external apparatus -- you need a movie projector to show a movie -- so this cannot be applied to the universe as a whole. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in genreal not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could be have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. That's not a statement contained in the physical system; it's a statement about other similar physical systems that you consider possible. You could as well say, (print Hello world.) contains an if-then because if the characters in the string were different the output would be different. Finitism doesn't imply stasis. New frames could be popping into existence dynamically. If time is continuous then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of infinitesimal duration. Likewise. There is no room for movement within a frame in either case - There is room within an infinitessimal frame. dx/dt is not necessarily zero. No-one knows what dx/dt is. It is the smallest non-zero number, or the reciprocal of the largest finite number. You must be thinking of dx or dt. The derivative dx/dt is well defined. There's no more reason to treat velocity as mysterious than position. Per QM they are complementary variables. If there is room for movement within an infinitesimal interval then it can by definition be divided up further - it isn't an infinitesimal interval. Infinitesimal doesn't mean indivisble. However, this is straying from the original point I wanted to make, which is that whatever reasons there might be against block universe theories, continuity of consciousness is not one of them. Every digital computer has clock cycles during which nothing actually happens, and it is the conjunction of these cycles which makes the program flow. There is no way from within the program to know what the clock rate is, if there are pauses in the program, or if it is being run in several parallel processes. You might argue that it would not be possible to run the program at all without a causal connection between the steps, but the fact remains, discontinuous framesd during which nothing changes give the illusion of continuous motion. No that's not quite right. If you see two frames, A and B, of a motion picture you can't infer a time order. If you also see a third, C, you can probaly order them and constrain the time order to be either ABC or CBA. This corresponds to making the two delta-x/delta-t have the same sign. All continuity says is that if you make delta-x small enough, you will be able to do this. No need to go to infinitesimals in any particular case. Infinitesimals (and continuity) are just limits that are convenient for reasoning because then you can avoid always having to repeat conditions like for delta-x small enough. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Peter Jones writes: Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in genreal not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could be have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Every physical system contains if-then statements. If the grooves on the record were different, then the sound coming out of the speakers would also be different. Finitism doesn't imply stasis. New frames could be popping into existence dynamically. If time is continuous then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of infinitesimal duration. Likewise. There is no room for movement within a frame in either case - There is room within an infinitessimal frame. dx/dt is not necessarily zero. No-one knows what dx/dt is. It is the smallest non-zero number, or the reciprocal of the largest finite number. If there is room for movement within an infinitesimal interval then it can by definition be divided up further - it isn't an infinitesimal interval. However, this is straying from the original point I wanted to make, which is that whatever reasons there might be against block universe theories, continuity of consciousness is not one of them. Every digital computer has clock cycles during which nothing actually happens, and it is the conjunction of these cycles which makes the program flow. There is no way from within the program to know what the clock rate is, if there are pauses in the program, or if it is being run in several parallel processes. You might argue that it would not be possible to run the program at all without a causal connection between the steps, but the fact remains, discontinuous framesd during which nothing changes give the illusion of continuous motion. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that the actual physical events are *exactly* the same, just their order is different. If the world were created 5 minutes ago, complete with fossils, ruins, false memories etc., you could not be aware of this on the basis of any observation - by definition, otherwise the illusion would not be perfect. This is of course no reason to believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago; but it does mean that the absence of a sensation of having just flickered into existence is no evidence *against* this theory. My original point stands. There is no evidence *for* the theory. If the present state is determined by more than a 0-width time slice preceding it, then a physical process cannot be arbitrarily sliced up. Your original point was that the continuous flow of consciousness is evidence against a block universe. It is not, whether the time slices are of finite or infinitesimal duration. It is, because however you slice a dynamic sequence, you don't remove the dynamism. You just get lots of little dynamic slices. I'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence either: are you suggesting that time is quantised rather than continuous, and if so how is that evidence against a block universe? No, I am suggesting that 0-width slices don't contain enough information to predict future states in physics. Computationalism does not help, because computationalism requries counterfactuals. I don't see why it does, or why it makes any difference to the present question if it does. Computer programmes contain conditional (if-then) statements. A given run of the programme will in genreal not explore every branch. yet the unexplored branches are part of the programme. A branch of an if-then statement that is not executed on a particular run of a programme will constitute a counterfactual, a situation that could have happened but didn't. Without counterfactuals you cannot tell which programme (algorithm) a process is implementing because two algorithms could be have the same execution path but different unexecuted branches. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Yes, and... Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... So if there is room for movement in infinitesimal intervals (or through combination of infinitesimal intervals) in a linear theory of time, why not with a block universe? A block universe with movement is just as dynamic universe (specifically, a growing universe). The effect of movement would be the same in a block universe as in a linear universe. If time is discrete then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of finite duration, like the frames in a film. Finitism doesn't imply stasis. New frames could be popping into existence dynamically. If time is continuous then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of infinitesimal duration. Likewise. There is no room for movement within a frame in either case - There is room within an infinitessimal frame. dx/dt is not necessarily zero. that is what defines it as a frame - but the series of frames creates the effect of movement. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. ht --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that the actual physical events are *exactly* the same, just their order is different. If the world were created 5 minutes ago, complete with fossils, ruins, false memories etc., you could not be aware of this on the basis of any observation - by definition, otherwise the illusion would not be perfect. This is of course no reason to believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago; but it does mean that the absence of a sensation of having just flickered into existence is no evidence *against* this theory. My original point stands. There is no evidence *for* the theory. If the present state is determined by more than a 0-width time slice preceding it, then a physical process cannot be arbitrarily sliced up. Computationalism does not help, because computationalism requries counterfactuals. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Yes, and... Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... So if there is room for movement in infinitesimal intervals (or through combination of infinitesimal intervals) in a linear theory of time, why not with a block universe? A block universe with movement is just as dynamic universe (specifically, a growing universe). Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that the actual physical events are *exactly* the same, just their order is different. If the world were created 5 minutes ago, complete with fossils, ruins, false memories etc., you could not be aware of this on the basis of any observation - by definition, otherwise the illusion would not be perfect. This is of course no reason to believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago; but it does mean that the absence of a sensation of having just flickered into existence is no evidence *against* this theory. My original point stands. There is no evidence *for* the theory. If the present state is determined by more than a 0-width time slice preceding it, then a physical process cannot be arbitrarily sliced up. Computationalism does not help, because computationalism requries counterfactuals. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Yes, and... Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... So if there is room for movement in infinitesimal intervals (or through combination of infinitesimal intervals) in a linear theory of time, why not with a block universe? A block universe with movement is just as dynamic universe (specifically, a growing universe). Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Peter Jones writes: But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that the actual physical events are *exactly* the same, just their order is different. If the world were created 5 minutes ago, complete with fossils, ruins, false memories etc., you could not be aware of this on the basis of any observation - by definition, otherwise the illusion would not be perfect. This is of course no reason to believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago; but it does mean that the absence of a sensation of having just flickered into existence is no evidence *against* this theory. My original point stands. There is no evidence *for* the theory. If the present state is determined by more than a 0-width time slice preceding it, then a physical process cannot be arbitrarily sliced up. Your original point was that the continuous flow of consciousness is evidence against a block universe. It is not, whether the time slices are of finite or infinitesimal duration. I'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence either: are you suggesting that time is quantised rather than continuous, and if so how is that evidence against a block universe? Computationalism does not help, because computationalism requries counterfactuals. I don't see why it does, or why it makes any difference to the present question if it does. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Yes, and... Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... So if there is room for movement in infinitesimal intervals (or through combination of infinitesimal intervals) in a linear theory of time, why not with a block universe? A block universe with movement is just as dynamic universe (specifically, a growing universe). The effect of movement would be the same in a block universe as in a linear universe. If time is discrete then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of finite duration, like the frames in a film. If time is continuous then in a linear universe movement is the result of a series of static frames of infinitesimal duration. There is no room for movement within a frame in either case - that is what defines it as a frame - but the series of frames creates the effect of movement. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: What does access to information mean ? In a dynamic universe, it means causality. In a Barbour-style universe it means some nows coincidentally contain patterns representing other nows just as , in a world consisting of every possible picture, there will be pictures containing pictures-within-a-picture. This is a big topic difficult to do justice to. I'm sure we've both had the experience of re-perusing various treatments of the alternatives without necessarily being completely persuaded either way, but I for one have accomodated my intuitions to this fairly successfully. There's a brief discussion of this in 'not the roadmap' with Bruno and Colin which addresses these issues from the perspective of the 'gestalt'. The points discussed all seem paradoxical from the pov of a classical 'nameable 1st person', and this is IMO a powerful strike against this position. I have no idea what a 'classical nameable 1st person' is suppose to be. BTW, I have a question for you re 'intrinsically dynamic' views of reality. It has always seemed to me that this view commits one to a sort of continual annihilation of each state by the succeeding one. It doesn't. The present does need a special status, but its status can be unerwritten by its being the most recent existing moment, not by its being the only existing moment. So both 'past states' and 'future states' are 'radically absent'. My question is: what is left to be 'present'? Recent developments in string theory (M-theory) picture time in terms of a 'cinematographic' view of Planck-time segments. If these are all that exist at any given 'point in time', then haven'tf we as-near-as-dammit banished the universe from substantial existence? A small time-slice is not an infinitessimal time-slice, an infinitessimal time-slice is not a zero time-slice. You near as dammit is not supported by maths, indeed it is opposed by maths. After all, 'structure' when decomposed is in fact extraordinarily dense action - energy IOW. Is it ? what is dense about a photon sailing thorough empty space for amillion years ? In the 'salami-slicer' model, aren't we left the grin without the cat? I don't think so. It seems to me also that our subjective experience of 'the specious present' entails the compresent existence of Vast numbers of such temporal atoms - say one to one 1/2 seconds-worth. Or maybe it means that time isn't so atomic in the first place, Or maybe it means that the specious present is based on nothing more mysterious than physical latencies in our ultra-parallel, but rather slow, brain. Again, if we try to imagine our experience in the face of the razor of dynamic time, does it seem anything like this? Have you an alternative presentation of a dynamic model that resolves these issues? I think I have offered two models: 1) dynamic time is not necessarily salami-sliced time 2) even so, salami sliced time can be a smeared-out time-capsule. There are no restrictions on what a time-capsule can contain. if it can contain memories of harry Potter siutations, it can certainly contain memories of a blurry, specious present. That doesn't mean all contrast leads to dynamism ! You can get stasis out of dynamism by slowing things dwon to a halt; it is still a paradox to get dynamism out of stasis. Substrate/ differentiation is also a global/ local distinction. How? Locality is manufactured out of information and its manner of propagation. The global/ local contrast is inherently dynamic. Then everything else is inherently dynamic, presumably. Don't expect dynamism to reduce to primitive 'dynamic atoms'. It emerges from the tension between two contrastable states. Why ? So the argument is: 1) David is a person. 2) Because David is a person, some parts of David are conscious, and others unconscious. 3) Some parts of the universe are conscious, and others unconcisous. 4) Therefore the universe is a person, too. 4) should read: therefore the universe manifests personhood in macro as David does in micro. 'Indexical David' is a lens through which the conscious/ unconscious personhood of the universe concentrates a particular perspective. Errmm, yes. But the problem is the basic argument is invalid. it is like saying salt is white sugar is white, therefore, salt is sugar. 1) Persons aren't irreducible Persons are defined and delimited by the intersection of structure and substrate. Isn't everything else as well ? Or in dynamic language, persons are substrate behaving personally. Neither element is dispensible. It depends what you mean by reducible. It depends on what your grounds are for making first-personness ontologically fundamental. A substrate that adopts personal indexicality in this way, that claims 'I am indexical David', is something I 'take personally'. 2) Qualia aren't structural. Qualia are the instantiated experience of
RE: Are First Person prime?
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that the actual physical events are *exactly* the same, just their order is different. If the world were created 5 minutes ago, complete with fossils, ruins, false memories etc., you could not be aware of this on the basis of any observation - by definition, otherwise the illusion would not be perfect. This is of course no reason to believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago; but it does mean that the absence of a sensation of having just flickered into existence is no evidence *against* this theory. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Yes, and... Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... So if there is room for movement in infinitesimal intervals (or through combination of infinitesimal intervals) in a linear theory of time, why not with a block universe? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: On 8/13/06, 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but as I say, I can't help 'taking personally' the existent thing from which I and all persons are emanating. I think, imaginatvely, that if one pictures a 'block universe', Platonia, MW, or any non-process conception of reality, this is more intuitive, I don't see why it should be. It does not conform to our experience. because everything is 'just there' - superposed, as it were. So, sure there's a 'layer' at which the individual 1st-person 'emerges', but it's taking everything else 'working together' to manifest it. So in this sense, for me, it's all 'personal'. But maybe not for you. This business of what 'conforms to our experience' I think is fairly deep. I used to be adamant that, whether or not 'timeless' theories could be shown to be true or false on any other grounds, that they simply didn't 'conform to our experience'. I was, however, also suspicious of my own doubts: after all, we can't feel the earth moving, and everyone knows you need to keep pushing things or otherwise they grind to a halt. So I tried to go on an imaginative journey that might take me into this apparently static realm but nevertheless preserve something like 'what we experience'. In my mind's eye I placed myself in the various 'points of view' that 'timelessly' exist within these structures. What would I see? Well, whatever was manifested to me in virtue of 'my' local capabilities and the perceptual information available to this 'me'. Would these experiences be discrete, or would they be overlaid or 'smeared' with information from other perspectives? Well, it seemed to me that what is characteristic about our experience, what makes it seem 'sequential', is precisely what we *can no longer* or *can't yet* see, the information we *don't* have access to. In dynamic theories of time , that is explained by the fact that memory traces are laid down causally, and the future doesn't causally influence the present, so there are no traces of the future. A static universe could be structured the same way, although it would be coincidental. An Everythingist universe can't be. Every possible time capsule must be instantiated. There must be versions of you who ar the same in every erespect except that hey remember their subjective future. And so despite the 'superposed' existence of these other states, delimitations of access to information would act to make each capsule discrete. What does access to information mean ? In a dynamic universe, it means causality. In a Barbour-style universe it means some nows coincidentally contain patterns representing other nows just as , in a world consisting of every possible picture, there will be pictures containing pictures-within-a-picture. All the capsules capable of it are 'conscious', but the localisation of information prevents there being a 'totalising' point of view. what does the localisation of informatio mean ? What do 1's and -0's mean if they were not caused by anything ? The next puzzle for me was why any of this would 'feel' dynamic. This IMO is a subset of the qualia issue - i.e. why does anything feel anyhow? Now, given that the arena under consideration consists in a both a 'substrate' and the structures within it, it has both distributed and all-at-once aspects. Could it not be the the dynamic temporal 'feel' is the tension between these two? All dynamism derives from contrast, That doesn't mean all contrast leads to dynamism ! You can get stasis out of dynamism by slowing things dwon to a halt; it is still a paradox to get dynamism out of stasis. and this seems to offer it. Putting these elements together (over a period of time involving many 'thought voyages') has re-aligned my intuition to make the scenario seem more plausible, at least experientially. Finally we come to the question of all these 'mes'. They all exist, and they're all conscious (the ones that are, that is). What's different about the other parts of the structure? Why aren't *they* conscious? They're just organised differently, just like the parts *within* persons that aren't conscious (ever), or the part that just went to sleep, or died. So the whole structure, reflexively, *to itself*, is manifesting consciously, unconsciously, and no doubt every nuance in between and beyond. That's my capital-P Personal. I strongly suspect that you find this way of thinking uncongenial, which is absolutely fine by me. But I've tried to describe it as clearly as I can, and perhaps we can do no better than leave it at that. So the argument is: 1) David is a person. 2) Because David is a person, some parts of David are conscious, and others unconscious. 3) Some parts of the universe are conscious, and others unconcisous. 4) Therefore the universe is a person, too. That isn't at all clear to me - mainly because you are nto makign the all-improtant
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: What does access to information mean ? In a dynamic universe, it means causality. In a Barbour-style universe it means some nows coincidentally contain patterns representing other nows just as , in a world consisting of every possible picture, there will be pictures containing pictures-within-a-picture. This is a big topic difficult to do justice to. I'm sure we've both had the experience of re-perusing various treatments of the alternatives without necessarily being completely persuaded either way, but I for one have accomodated my intuitions to this fairly successfully. There's a brief discussion of this in 'not the roadmap' with Bruno and Colin which addresses these issues from the perspective of the 'gestalt'. The points discussed all seem paradoxical from the pov of a classical 'nameable 1st person', and this is IMO a powerful strike against this position. BTW, I have a question for you re 'intrinsically dynamic' views of reality. It has always seemed to me that this view commits one to a sort of continual annihilation of each state by the succeeding one. So both 'past states' and 'future states' are 'radically absent'. My question is: what is left to be 'present'? Recent developments in string theory (M-theory) picture time in terms of a 'cinematographic' view of Planck-time segments. If these are all that exist at any given 'point in time', then haven't we as-near-as-dammit banished the universe from substantial existence? After all, 'structure' when decomposed is in fact extraordinarily dense action - energy IOW. In the 'salami-slicer' model, aren't we left the grin without the cat? It seems to me also that our subjective experience of 'the specious present' entails the compresent existence of Vast numbers of such temporal atoms - say one to one 1/2 seconds-worth. Again, if we try to imagine our experience in the face of the razor of dynamic time, does it seem anything like this? Have you an alternative presentation of a dynamic model that resolves these issues? That doesn't mean all contrast leads to dynamism ! You can get stasis out of dynamism by slowing things dwon to a halt; it is still a paradox to get dynamism out of stasis. Substrate/ differentiation is also a global/ local distinction. Locality is manufactured out of information and its manner of propagation. The global/ local contrast is inherently dynamic. Don't expect dynamism to reduce to primitive 'dynamic atoms'. It emerges from the tension between two contrastable states. So the argument is: 1) David is a person. 2) Because David is a person, some parts of David are conscious, and others unconscious. 3) Some parts of the universe are conscious, and others unconcisous. 4) Therefore the universe is a person, too. 4) should read: therefore the universe manifests personhood in macro as David does in micro. 'Indexical David' is a lens through which the conscious/ unconscious personhood of the universe concentrates a particular perspective. 1) Persons aren't irreducible Persons are defined and delimited by the intersection of structure and substrate. Or in dynamic language, persons are substrate behaving personally. Neither element is dispensible. It depends what you mean by reducible. A substrate that adopts personal indexicality in this way, that claims 'I am indexical David', is something I 'take personally'. 2) Qualia aren't structural. Qualia are the instantiated experience of persons defined indexically. They are the appearance of the substrate behaving personally. They are the analogic instantiation of information. Information is derived from their mutual relations, and these relations are structural/ behavioural. They are the carriers of the metaphoric 'aboutness' of substrate-as-meaning. The meaning they express is 'like this!' From these origins all 'what it's like' is synthesised through structure/ behaviour/ process. 3) There needs to be some sort of Hard Problem attached to peronhhod to justify the manoeuvre of making the 1st-pesoanl primary. If a person is just a particualr structure, or a 1st person statement is just a statement made by a person, that is not the case. The HP is not hard if qualia are understood to be the substrate's unmediated, reflexive, self-referential, self-revelation of its internal structure/ behaviour. Each of the advectives I have used is non-dual in its intent. Even if the limitations of language create the artefact of an apparent dualism in the notion of 'self-reference', this is a linguistic mirage. We're talking equivalence, not 'property'. BTW I don't mean by this that we will ever 'understand' why qualia have any 'absolute' as opposed to relative appearance. This is in principle unanswerable. 4) Strenuous avoidance of dualism. Not all dualisms have the problems of Cartesian dualism. There are dualisms within physicalism. As soon as we allow 'dual ontology' we let in the notion of mediation between two realities, and an unstoppable
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: What does access to information mean ? In a dynamic universe, it means causality. In a Barbour-style universe it means some nows coincidentally contain patterns representing other nows just as , in a world consisting of every possible picture, there will be pictures containing pictures-within-a-picture. This is a big topic difficult to do justice to. Essentially IMO it means indexical 1st-person limitations on knowledge arising both from behavioural capability and information instantiated as a virtual world-model. Those are the limits of what we can know within a discrete indexical location, or time capsule. I'm sure we've both had the experience of re-perusing various treatments of the alternatives without necessarily being completely persuaded either way, but I for one have accomodated my intuitions to this fairly successfully. There's a brief discussion of this in 'not the roadmap' with Bruno and Colin which addresses these issues from the perspective of the 'gestalt'. The points discussed all seem paradoxical from the pov of a classical 'nameable 1st person' in a dynamic 'tensed' situation, and this is IMO a powerful strike against this position. BTW, I have a question for you re 'intrinsically dynamic' views of reality. It has always seemed to me that this view commits one to a sort of continual annihilation of each state by the succeeding one. So both 'past states' and 'future states' are 'radically absent'. My question is: what is left to be 'present'? Recent developments in string theory (M-theory) picture time in terms of a 'cinematographic' view of Planck-time segments. If these are all that exist at any given 'point in time', then haven't we as-near-as-dammit banished the universe from substantial existence? After all, 'structure' when decomposed is in fact extraordinarily dense action - energy IOW. In the 'salami-slicer' model, aren't we left with the grin but without the cat? It seems to me also that our subjective experience of 'the specious present' entails the compresent existence of Vast numbers of such temporal quanta - say one to one 1/2 seconds-worth. Again, if we try to imagine our experience in the face of the razor of dynamic time, does it seem anything like this? Have you an alternative presentation of a dynamic model that resolves these issues? That doesn't mean all contrast leads to dynamism ! You can get stasis out of dynamism by slowing things dwon to a halt; it is still a paradox to get dynamism out of stasis. Substrate/ differentiation is also a global/ local distinction. Locality is manufactured out of information and its manner of propagation. The global/ local contrast is inherently dynamic. Don't expect dynamism to reduce to primitive 'dynamic atoms'. It emerges from the tension between two contrastable states. So the argument is: 1) David is a person. 2) Because David is a person, some parts of David are conscious, and others unconscious. 3) Some parts of the universe are conscious, and others unconcisous. 4) Therefore the universe is a person, too. 4) should read: therefore the universe manifests personhood in macro as David does in micro. 'Indexical David' is a lens through which the conscious/ unconscious personhood of the universe concentrates a particular perspective. 1) Persons aren't irreducible Persons are defined and delimited by the intersection of structure and substrate. Or in dynamic language, persons are substrate behaving personally. Neither element is dispensible. It depends what you mean by reducible. A substrate that adopts personal indexicality in this way, that claims 'I am indexical David', is something I 'take personally'. 2) Qualia aren't structural. Qualia are the instantiated experience of persons defined indexically. They are the appearance of the substrate behaving personally. They are the analogic instantiation of information. Information is derived from their mutual relations, and these relations are structural/ behavioural. They are the carriers of the metaphoric 'aboutness' of substrate-as-meaning. The meaning they express is 'like this!' From these origins all 'what it's like' is synthesised through structure/ behaviour/ process. 3) There needs to be some sort of Hard Problem attached to peronhhod to justify the manoeuvre of making the 1st-pesoanl primary. If a person is just a particualr structure, or a 1st person statement is just a statement made by a person, that is not the case. The HP is not hard or a problem if qualia are understood to be the substrate's unmediated, reflexive, self-referential, self-revelation of its internal structure/ behaviour. Each of these adjectives is non-dual in its intent. Even if the limitations of language create the artefact of an apparent dualism in the notion of 'self-reference', this is a linguistic mirage. We're talking equivalence, not 'property'. BTW I don't mean by this that we will ever 'understand' why qualia have any 'absolute' as opposed
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. We don't actually know that it is possible that there might be some flicker effect. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? There is still duration within blocks Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? There are such things as infintiessimal velocities... And note that the usual linear view of time is not so different from this: an infinite sequence of infinitesimals, which somehow add up to the effect of continuous activity. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 10-août-06, à 19:35, David Nyman a écrit : Colin Hales wrote: Perhaps the 3rd person is best called 'virtual'. It's role is one for 'as-if' it existed. Yes, that's a reasonable suggestion. Then 3rd person might be reserved for the type of observation in George's examples. The 'shareable knowledge base' is then an aspect of 'personal virtual reality', and those elements held in common by a community of 1st persons (common frame of reference) constitute 'consensual virtual reality'. David David Nyman: Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 11:20 AM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Are First Person prime? George Levy wrote: Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of identical contingencies on their existence. The notion of third person discussed here corresponds closely to what I am used to call first person plural discourse, and they are evidences that a non negligible part of the quantum reality belongs to that. Grosso modo first person discourse are given by the diary content of someone using teleportation, duplication etc, and first person plural is the same in the case where entire population of individuals are duplicated (like in Everett, in some sense). The main difference is that the pure first person *singular* indeterminacy is not third person communicable, at all. But inside duplicated populations, people can have clues about a form of locally communicable indeterminacy (in particular, they can make bets ...). But this is, strictly speaking, still first person. This should pleased those who like give a central role to the first person. The frontier between first person plural and third person is hard to fix a priori. It is akin to the difference between physics and geography. Pure third person physics is necessary: nothing contingent in it, but I agree at some point this is just a definition: I almost define geography by contingency, and physics by necessary observable in principle. Bruno --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 10-août-06, à 22:44, 1Z a écrit : With the materialist hypothesis there is also no dualism. This is defensible but necessitates a solution of the mind-body problem, to explain the relation between sensations and matter. The traditional implicit or explicit solution of the materialist is comp. And then I show it does not work. Even the traditional comp or standard comp (as you call it) makes matter epistemologically devoid of any explicative power (cf the UDA). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 10-août-06, à 22:59, 1Z a écrit : So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! OK. Thanks for being clear. I will not comment because David and others have already answer this clearly (I think). David Nyman, like David Deutsch and about half the physicists (let us say) agrees with this indexical notion of time. Let us just remember we agree that we disagree on this. My only conception of time which I am able to take as primitive is given by the litany of natural numbers (and here perhaps David, George and other First person central can disagree, but that's another thread). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 11-août-06, à 18:50, David Nyman a écrit : I had an interesting exchange with Julian Barbour about this a while back. Originally I was convinced he was wrong that a time capsule was sufficient to produce the subjective experience of the passage of time. I called it a 'sleight of intuition' because all the time-related words we use simply *assume* such a passage and hence slip this sense in by the back door. He said a lot of people agreed with me, but his static concept of Platonia meant he was committed to his view actually being the case, without further arguments. However, I've changed my original view. I think the fact we don't experience consciousness 'smeared' or 'overlaid' over the 4th dimension is a function of memory, which delimits what information is available to be made conscious at any given point. This source of information is different in each (conscious) time capsule, and determines the boundaries of the view from that capsule. This is analogous to why we don't experience multiple versions in MWI, or in teleportation. The relevant question is always 'what information is available to me here?', where 'me' and 'here' are correlated within a discrete structure (time capsule). But why does the information in a time capsule *feels* dynamic rather than static? You will recall my view that qualia are the fact of *being* particular structures within primitive substance. Structure of course has a relational as well as a static aspect, and it may be that the 'feel' of the relational aspect is temporal. It's as if there were a dynamic figure/ ground tension between the substance instantiating the capsules and their unfolding, memory-delimited, structural sequence. Given that persons emerge experientially at the intersection of substance and structure, it's not impossible to intuit that the 'feel' of this dynamism is what we experience as the 'flow of time'. And the delimited nature of each step of the unfolding structure would be central to this. A 'totalised' view would arguably not be experienced as dynamic. David OK. That's sum up what philosophers of science call sometimes the indexical view of time. I think Sanders wrote papers on this. Note that comp will lead toward a complete indexical view of most physical notions. Not only time, but space as well, and even energy, etc. This should suits centrality of first person notion, but with comp, as I try to explain, even that first person will emerge from more primitive non personal notion (like numbers ...), and this independently of the fact you like to recall and with which I agree which is that I have only access to a personal view on numbers. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Brent, That's an interesting explanation of a zero-information universe, which you suggest is implicit in the MWI of QM - yet (like me) you don't necessarily buy MWI.In your view, are there other explanations for quantum mysteries that are more credible? Norman Samish ~~~ - Original Message - From: "Brent Meeker" [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence, and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing. No. There being something rather than nothing is only 1 buit of information: not enough for a universe to supervene on. This may not be the problem you think it is. In quantum mechanics there can be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of information. It would still have to generate localised information, and complex supervenient properties would still need something complex to supervene on. A supervenience-base is more than a necessary precondition. Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled states by the inflation of the universe. Unitary evolution of the wave-function of the universe must preserve information. In these theories, as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, "The universe is just nothing, rearranged." But entanglement must generate localised information. It's a somewhat beyond my expertise, but as I understand these theories of cosmogony it's analogous to Hawking radiation: Pair production produces a virtual quantum particle/anti-particle pair. Inflation is so rapid that it pulls them apart and provides the energy to make the virtual particles real particles. They are entangled but they are now separated by billions of lightyears. So the information (complexity) of the world we see can in principle be cancelled out (net zero information as well as matter) as in a quantum erasure experiment, but in practice we cannot access the entangled particle to do so. I think this idea of a zero-information universe is implicit in the MWI of QM. Whenever a random event happens it provides information (per Shannon's defintion), but in MWI everything happens and that provides no information (not that I buy the MWI). Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Norman Samish wrote: Brent, That's an interesting explanation of a zero-information universe, which you suggest is implicit in the MWI of QM - yet (like me) you don't necessarily buy MWI. In your view, are there other explanations for quantum mysteries that are more credible? Norman Samish Of course there are other explanations - you probably know them. But I haven't bought them yet either. What they have in common is that some things really happen and others don't - randomly. Bohmian QM is a good example, although I won't buy it. Omnes' takes the view that QM is a probabilitic theory, it predicts probablities and probability means some things happen and some things don't. He has proposed a model for the nulling of off diagonal terms of the density matrix. It's just hueristic, but I have hopes that something like it might come out of einselection plus the information theoretic approach (see quant-ph/0212084). It seems to me than an information theoretic analysis should be able to place a lower bound on how small a probability can be and not be zero. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Peter Jones writes: Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: David Nyman wrote: ... Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence, and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing. No. There being something rather than nothing is only 1 buit of information: not enough for a universe to supervene on. This may not be the problem you think it is. In quantum mechanics there can be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of information. It would still have to generate localised information, and complex supervenient properties would still need something complex to supervene on. A supervenience-base is more than a necessary precondition. Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled states by the inflation of the universe. Unitary evolution of the wave-function of the universe must preserve information. In these theories, as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, The universe is just nothing, rearranged. But entanglement must generate localised information. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: David Nyman wrote: ... Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence, and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing. No. There being something rather than nothing is only 1 buit of information: not enough for a universe to supervene on. This may not be the problem you think it is. In quantum mechanics there can be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of information. It would still have to generate localised information, and complex supervenient properties would still need something complex to supervene on. A supervenience-base is more than a necessary precondition. Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled states by the inflation of the universe. Unitary evolution of the wave-function of the universe must preserve information. In these theories, as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, The universe is just nothing, rearranged. But entanglement must generate localised information. It's a somewhat beyond my expertise, but as I understand these theories of cosmogony it's analogous to Hawking radiation: Pair production produces a virtual quantum particle/anti-particle pair. Inflation is so rapid that it pulls them apart and provides the energy to make the virtual particles real particles. They are entangled but they are now separated by billions of lightyears. So the information (complexity) of the world we see can in principle be cancelled out (net zero information as well as matter) as in a quantum erasure experiment, but in practice we cannot access the entangled particle to do so. I think this idea of a zero-information universe is implicit in the MWI of QM. Whenever a random event happens it provides information (per Shannon's defintion), but in MWI everything happens and that provides no information (not that I buy the MWI). Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker wrote: It's a somewhat beyond my expertise, but as I understand these theories of cosmogony it's analogous to Hawking radiation: Pair production produces a virtual quantum particle/anti-particle pair. Inflation is so rapid that it pulls them apart and provides the energy to make the virtual particles real particles. They are entangled but they are now separated by billions of lightyears. So the information (complexity) of the world we see can in principle be cancelled out (net zero information as well as matter) as in a quantum erasure experiment, but in practice we cannot access the entangled particle to do so. I think this idea of a zero-information universe is implicit in the MWI of QM. Whenever a random event happens it provides information (per Shannon's defintion), Only inasmuch as other events are causally related to it. If you have nothing but random events, you would have maximum information by the Shannon/Entropy measure, and by the Kolmogorov/Chaitin measure... however by the information is always information about something pricniple (and the information is a difference that makes a difference principle), you would have no information at all! --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I don't know if block universe theories are true or not, but the subjective passage of time is not an argument against them. If mind is computation, do you believe that a conscious computation can tell if it is being run as a sequential series of steps or in parallel, without any external information? If it is being run at all, it is dynamic, not static. Parallel processes are still processes. But the important point is that the temporal sequence does not itself make a difference to subjective experience. Would you say that it is in theory possible for the subjective passage of time to be as we know it if the blocks were not infinitesimal, but lasted for a second, so that the whole ensemble of blocks lasted for a second? Then what if you make the blocks shorter in duration and larger in number, progressively down to infinitely many blocks of infinitesimal duration: is there room for dynamism in an infenitesimal interval? And note that the usual linear view of time is not so different from this: an infinite sequence of infinitesimals, which somehow add up to the effect of continuous activity. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: Why shouldn't they denote that ? And what has that to do with substances ? The inside/outside distinction can be asserted is a single-substance universe. The inside/outside distinction is enough to found the 1st/3rd person divide, what do you need a multiplicity of substances for. I agree. I was setting it up to knock it down. It is not clear why they should be that fact. For one thing, qualia seem not be structures in themselves. For another the perceiver-perceptual-model is 3rd-personal comprehensible and therefore part of the Easy problem. So you are simply declaring that the HP rides on the back of the EP, for reasons that canoot be undeerstood within the EP -- just as Chalmers does. I don't see why you're resistant to the idea that qualia could have a structural aspect. 1) the don't seem to have, and they *are* what they seem 2) they are incommunicable in mathematical, and hence sructrural terms. For one thing, they seem to be systematically correlated with physical phenomena (light, sound) which are structural/ relational. Correlation is not identity. Also, they seem experientially (at least to me) to display mutual distributive relations that are analogous to, say, the frequency distribution of the colour spectrum. Mutual relations are not internal relations. Purple lies between red and blue, but being told that doens't tell you what purple looks like unless you already know what red and blue look like. Realtional information about colours does not convey the colours themselves. So I don't see the suggestion that different qualia are different structural modulations of a substrate as so counter-intuitive. If that were the case, there would be no HP, and threfore no need for any first-personness worth arguing about. As to HP 'riding on the back of' EP, I'd rather put it that they are correlated, but probably don't map in a simple, one-to-one, 'identity' relation. That is still pure Chalmers -- natural supervenience is not identity, after all. If this is simply 'neutral monism', so be it. Insofar that have been disagreeing over terminology, this is entirely fruitless, and we should try not to dispute any more over words. Perhaps I could replace the form of words 'global 1st person primitivity' with 'global neutral (0-person if you like) primitivity', as long as this is understood to be the backgound from which 1st-persons, under suitable conditions, emerge. If you are going to continue being unable to specify what is personal about your primordial 1st peson, then that would be better, yes. AFAIC that amounts to saying they supervene on the physical -- on the 0-personal. No, that's going too far, IMO. I'd rather have them both mapping onto a neutral substrate that is basic. AFAICS, that *is* supervening. What do you think supervening is ? As I concede above, we could call this 0-personal, but this is surely not baldly equivalent to 'physical'. Just as we schematise the physical into chemical, biological, physiological levels etc, there may be analogous but different 'experiential layering' supporting the emergence of the conscious modalities we in fact encounter. If they are not all just structure, there must be, yes. The claim of physicalism (as opposed to materialism, or neutral monism) is that everything is just structured matter, and that all the layers reduce to physics. and different types of structure yield different types of qualia. How and why ? How - by relational modulation of the 0-personal substrate. If you modulate a bunch of relations , you get another bunch of relations. That is no departure from reductive physicalism. Why - because of the infinite (or at least Vast) possibilities of modalities, range, etc. inherent in this, on the analogy of the physical/ relational correlates (light, sound, taste, etc). That would be equally true of a 0-personal substance, ie matter. But a 'neutral (0-personal?) substrate' is not a rigidly 'physical' one, if that's what you intend by 'matter'. It all depends on what you mean by physical. For me, what physicalism means beyond materialism is that all properties are quantitiative and relational. A consequence is that there is no layering of any significant kind. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote:
1) the don't seem to have, and they *are* what they seem
2) they are incommunicable in mathematical, and hence
sructrural terms.
1) Well, this obviously depends on the subject of the seeming. To me,
'red', 'middle C', or 'bitter' all *do* seem to possess a sort of
directly sensed 'vibrational' quality that is essential, for example,
to why I would feel they were 'like' or 'unlike' other colours, sounds,
or tastes, or where they would *subjectively* lie in 'spectra'
analogous (but not identical) to those of 'physical' properties.
2) They are by definition incommunicable in mathematical or any other
language, but this does not in my *experience* equate to their being
'structureless' in *feel*. If I attempt to imagine what the 'bare
substrate' would *feel* like, I am frankly at a loss because it *seems*
to be devoid of content - what would there be to be 'felt'? But beyond
the substrate we have the equally fundamental IMO notion of
differentiation (a neutral term I'm using because it isn't committed to
a purely 'physical' view) and it seems to me that the intersection of
substrate and differentiation could well *be* the direct experience of
content. I also call such content 'structure' because it is
differentiated but if you'd rather reserve this for the relational
idea, so be it.
Correlation is not identity.
Precisely. But the correlation of qualia with structurally
differentiated 'physical' phenomena leads to the intuition that qualia
themselves may be an *experiential synthesis* based on structural
differentiation of the same bare ('property-less' in your own terms)
substrate. The substrate, as you say elsewhere, provides enduring
existence within which the properties manifest and change. I'm
suggesting that the *existence* of the differentiated substrate
*synthesises* the qualia (i.e. they entail multiple differentiations)
and the mutual *relations* of the differentiated substrate *are* the
'properties'.
BTW, when I meditate on a substrate whose differentiation resolves into
'me' 'you' and other persons, I tend to 'take it personally'. The
'impersonal' gaps between persons are IMO no different in kind than the
gaps between my own experiences at different times, places, branches of
MW, etc. The substrate is in these terms a single 'potential
experiencer'. The actual experiences it possesses are then a function
of an infinite network of differentiation. I've said something
elsewhere about the implications of this for the perception of time
both as discrete, rather than totalised, experiences, and as a
'dynamic' quale, mediated by discrete 'capsules' of locally-delimited
information.
Mutual relations are not internal relations. Purple
lies between red and blue, but being told that
doens't tell you what purple looks like unless you
already know what red and blue look like. Realtional
information about colours does not convey the colours
themselves.
Nothing can 'tell you what purple looks like'. Purple is a medium that
carries information, not information itself. However, the *feel* of
purple may seem related to the *feel* of blue. Isn't this ultimately a
matter for each 'seemer' to meditate on?
If that were the case, there would be no HP, and threfore no
need for any first-personness worth arguing about.
I don't think that the HP is a useful idea. I think there is existence
and this is something I 'take personally' because it *seems* to
manifest as me, and other mes, all of whom I find it intuitive to
conceive as subsets of a much Vaster me, with 'conscious regions' (e.g.
'me yesterday', 'me on the branch where I didn't have that last beer',
'Peter five minutes ago') and 'unconscious regions' (e.g. 'me after
that last beer', interstellar space, a rock). The EP is the observable
behaviour (information content) of all this, insofar as we have access
to and can make sense of it.
That is still pure Chalmers -- natural supervenience is not identity,
after all.
Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence,
and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both
ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing.
Further correlation is IMO an empirical issue from which might stem a
more robust theoretical model embracing both. If this is the substance
of Chalmers' claim then I suppose I would go along with it.
How - by relational modulation of the 0-personal substrate.
If you modulate a bunch of relations , you get another bunch
of relations. That is no departure from reductive physicalism.
Yes, but that's not what I meant. You experience as the fact of *being*
the 'modulated' (differentiated) substrate, not *observing* it (i.e. as
information). You do of course observe it, but that then is 2nd-order,
the relational level of information, not the substrate level of
existence. This is why I insist that differentiation is as 'primitive'
as the substrate, in the sense that there is nothing in the notion of
'substrate' as a
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote:
1Z wrote:
1) the don't seem to have, and they *are* what they seem
2) they are incommunicable in mathematical, and hence
sructrural terms.
1) Well, this obviously depends on the subject of the seeming. To me,
'red', 'middle C', or 'bitter' all *do* seem to possess a sort of
directly sensed 'vibrational' quality that is essential, for example,
to why I would feel they were 'like' or 'unlike' other colours, sounds,
or tastes, or where they would *subjectively* lie in 'spectra'
analogous (but not identical) to those of 'physical' properties.
They have some mathematical/structural properties, but they a
re underdefined by those properties -- theya
re far from the wholes tory.
2) They are by definition incommunicable in mathematical or any other
language, but this does not in my *experience* equate to their being
'structureless' in *feel*.
I disagree. I can discern no structure *within* the taste
of lemon or the colour red. There are relations between
tastes, colours and so on, but they underdiefine the tastes
and colurs themselves.
If I attempt to imagine what the 'bare
substrate' would *feel* like, I am frankly at a loss because it *seems*
to be devoid of content - what would there be to be 'felt'? But beyond
the substrate we have the equally fundamental IMO notion of
differentiation (a neutral term I'm using because it isn't committed to
a purely 'physical' view) and it seems to me that the intersection of
substrate and differentiation could well *be* the direct experience of
content.
The substrate could be differnentiated into properties
that have no further reducible structure -- ie qualities.
I also call such content 'structure' because it is
differentiated but if you'd rather reserve this for the relational
idea, so be it.
Correlation is not identity.
Precisely. But the correlation of qualia with structurally
differentiated 'physical' phenomena leads to the intuition that qualia
themselves may be an *experiential synthesis* based on structural
differentiation of the same bare ('property-less' in your own terms)
substrate.
What is an experiential synthesis ?
The substrate, as you say elsewhere, provides enduring
existence within which the properties manifest and change. I'm
suggesting that the *existence* of the differentiated substrate
*synthesises* the qualia (i.e. they entail multiple differentiations)
and the mutual *relations* of the differentiated substrate *are* the
'properties'.
BTW, when I meditate on a substrate whose differentiation resolves into
'me' 'you' and other persons, I tend to 'take it personally'. The
'impersonal' gaps between persons are IMO no different in kind than the
gaps between my own experiences at different times, places, branches of
MW, etc.
I have no idea why you would think that.
The substrate is in these terms a single 'potential
experiencer'.
It's a potential everything. Why an experiencer in particular ?
The actual experiences it possesses are then a function
of an infinite network of differentiation. I've said something
elsewhere about the implications of this for the perception of time
both as discrete, rather than totalised, experiences, and as a
'dynamic' quale, mediated by discrete 'capsules' of locally-delimited
information.
Mutual relations are not internal relations. Purple
lies between red and blue, but being told that
doens't tell you what purple looks like unless you
already know what red and blue look like. Realtional
information about colours does not convey the colours
themselves.
Nothing can 'tell you what purple looks like'. Purple is a medium that
carries information, not information itself. However, the *feel* of
purple may seem related to the *feel* of blue. Isn't this ultimately a
matter for each 'seemer' to meditate on?
If that were the case, there would be no HP, and threfore no
need for any first-personness worth arguing about.
I don't think that the HP is a useful idea.
That's hardly relevant! Problems are problems. They
don't slink away if you accuse them of uselessness.
I think there is existence
and this is something I 'take personally' because it *seems* to
manifest as me, and other mes, all of whom I find it intuitive to
conceive as subsets of a much Vaster me, with 'conscious regions' (e.g.
'me yesterday', 'me on the branch where I didn't have that last beer',
'Peter five minutes ago') and 'unconscious regions' (e.g. 'me after
that last beer', interstellar space, a rock).
Ontology is all about what you take as fundamental,
and why. Your grounds for taking the me/not-me
distinction as fundamental seem subjective and inutitive rather
than logical.
The EP is the observable
behaviour (information content) of all this, insofar as we have access
to and can make sense of it.
There must be a reason why the Ep is easy.
That is still pure Chalmers -- natural supervenience is not identity,
after all.
Well,
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: David Nyman wrote: ... Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence, and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing. No. There being something rather than nothing is only 1 buit of information: not enough for a universe to supervene on. This may not be the problem you think it is. In quantum mechanics there can be negative information and there are some (speculative) theories of the universe that have it originating from at state with only one bit of information. Then complexity we see is due to the separation of entangled states by the inflation of the universe. Unitary evolution of the wave-function of the universe must preserve information. In these theories, as my friend Yonatan Fishman put it, The universe is just nothing, rearranged. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't see that problem. In the block universe each subject is modelled as having different states at different times and hence subjectively experiences the passage of time. That doesn't follow. Time Capsules: Getting Flow from Sequence. Proponents of the Block Universe view believe that there is only a B-Series. Some think that alone is adequate to explain the subjective Flow-of-Time. It is easy enough to see how there could be a sequence in the B series. If we consider a series of 3 dimensional snapshots of someone's brain, each subsequent snapshot iwll contain information relating back to previous ones. But is this chain or sequence enough to establish flow ? A B-series without an A-series is like a spatial series. If you had a series of clones arranged spatially so that clone 2 has all of clone 1's memories (and more), clone 3 has all of clone 2's memories (and more) and so on, you would not expect anything to be flowing from one clone to another. The clones form a series of time capsules, and a such they have a natural sequence, but that is all. Without an A series, there is nothing to justify the idea that only one time capsule is conscious at a time. Either they all are, or none are. We know we are conscious, so we must reject the none are option. The Block Universe therefore predicts that all time capsules are conscious. This is in line with the way the Block Universe spatialises Time. It predicts that consciousness is a single 4-dimensional entity. I would not just be conscious now with memories of the past, I would have a consciousness in the past overlaid on my present consciousness. The objection that being arrayed along the 4th dimension would split consciousness up is week; we don't have a micro-conscousness associated with each neuron, despite their spatial separation. Why should temporal separation have ant atomising, fragmenting effect --wehn B-series time is so similar to space anyway ? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't see that problem. In the block universe each subject is modelled as having different states at different times and hence subjectively experiences the passage of time. That doesn't follow. Time Capsules: Getting Flow from Sequence. Proponents of the Block Universe view believe that there is only a B-Series. Some think that alone is adequate to explain the subjective Flow-of-Time. It is easy enough to see how there could be a sequence in the B series. If we consider a series of 3 dimensional snapshots of someone's brain, each subsequent snapshot iwll contain information relating back to previous ones. But is this chain or sequence enough to establish flow ? A B-series without an A-series is like a spatial series. If you had a series of clones arranged spatially so that clone 2 has all of clone 1's memories (and more), clone 3 has all of clone 2's memories (and more) and so on, you would not expect anything to be flowing from one clone to another. The clones form a series of time capsules, and a such they have a natural sequence, but that is all. Without an A series, there is nothing to justify the idea that only one time capsule is conscious at a time. Sure there is. Pick a time and I can show you which capsule is conscious at that time. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Without an A series, there is nothing to justify the idea that only one time capsule is conscious at a time. Either they all are, or none are. We know we are conscious, so we must reject the none are option. The Block Universe therefore predicts that all time capsules are conscious. This is in line with the way the Block Universe spatialises Time. It predicts that consciousness is a single 4-dimensional entity. I would not just be conscious now with memories of the past, I would have a consciousness in the past overlaid on my present consciousness. The objection that being arrayed along the 4th dimension would split consciousness up is week; we don't have a micro-conscousness associated with each neuron, despite their spatial separation. Why should temporal separation have ant atomising, fragmenting effect --wehn B-series time is so similar to space anyway ? I had an interesting exchange with Julian Barbour about this a while back. Originally I was convinced he was wrong that a time capsule was sufficient to produce the subjective experience of the passage of time. I called it a 'sleight of intuition' because all the time-related words we use simply *assume* such a passage and hence slip this sense in by the back door. He said a lot of people agreed with me, but his static concept of Platonia meant he was committed to his view actually being the case, without further arguments. However, I've changed my original view. I think the fact we don't experience consciousness 'smeared' or 'overlaid' over the 4th dimension is a function of memory, which delimits what information is available to be made conscious at any given point. This source of information is different in each (conscious) time capsule, and determines the boundaries of the view from that capsule. This is analogous to why we don't experience multiple versions in MWI, or in teleportation. The relevant question is always 'what information is available to me here?', where 'me' and 'here' are correlated within a discrete structure (time capsule). But why does the information in a time capsule *feels* dynamic rather than static? You will recall my view that qualia are the fact of *being* particular structures within primitive substance. Structure of course has a relational as well as a static aspect, and it may be that the 'feel' of the relational aspect is temporal. It's as if there were a dynamic figure/ ground tension between the substance instantiating the capsules and their unfolding, memory-delimited, structural sequence. Given that persons emerge experientially at the intersection of substance and structure, it's not impossible to intuit that the 'feel' of this dynamism is what we experience as the 'flow of time'. And the delimited nature of each step of the unfolding structure would be central to this. A 'totalised' view would arguably not be experienced as dynamic. David Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't see that problem. In the block universe each subject is modelled as having different states at different times and hence subjectively experiences the passage of time. That doesn't follow. Time Capsules: Getting Flow from Sequence. Proponents of the Block Universe view believe that there is only a B-Series. Some think that alone is adequate to explain the subjective Flow-of-Time. It is easy enough to see how there could be a sequence in the B series. If we consider a series of 3 dimensional snapshots of someone's brain, each subsequent snapshot iwll contain information relating back to previous ones. But is this chain or sequence enough to establish flow ? A B-series without an A-series is like a spatial series. If you had a series of clones arranged spatially so that clone 2 has all of clone 1's memories (and more), clone 3 has all of clone 2's memories (and more) and so on, you would not expect anything to be flowing from one clone to another. The clones form a series of time capsules, and a such they have a natural sequence, but that is all. Without an A series, there is nothing to justify the idea that only one time capsule is conscious at a time. Either they all are, or none are. We know we are conscious, so we must reject the none are option. The Block Universe therefore predicts that all time capsules are conscious. This is in line with the way the Block Universe spatialises Time. It predicts that
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 18:12, Tom Caylor a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Of course I have a problem with the word universe and especially with the expression being inside a universe. The reason is that I think comp forces us to accept we are supported by an infinity of computations and that the 1-(plural and singular) appearance of the universe emerges from that. cf UDA. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ I haven't been following this thread, but this caught my attention. Bruno, how can you have a real problem with something based on the fact that it seems to contradict the comp assumption? I thought that you make a point to stress that you only assume comp for purposes of argument to see where it leads. You are right. It is just that I feel somehow guilty to always mention the comp. hyp. From now on, you should always interpret me, when I say I think ..., by we can proved under the comp. assumption that OK. Are you implying that you personally have faith in comp to the point that words that don't agree with the comp assumption actually give you a problem? Or is the problem caused by a personal belief that is outside of the comp assumption, but that is manifested when talking about comp, if you follow me? About my personal opinion on comp, I am still going through the four days: The good one where I hope that comp is true and believe that comp is true; or when I hope comp to be false, and I believe it to be false. The bad one where it is the reverse. The problem is that comp almost entails such oscillations. Indeed, although I do not insist on that point I must admit there is something a little bit diabolical in comp (and which is similar to some godelian sentence) which is that comp predicts that the first person attached to a machine really cannot believe or know that comp is true. Strictly speaking comp is unbelievable. No consistent machine can take comp for granted, and that is why eventually saying yes to a doctor (for an artificial body) have to be based on an act of faith But isn't it true that we can't take anything for granted in an absolute sense? Isn't that part of the nature of belief? I don't see how something that is a good candidate for a model of reality can be impossible to believe, unless it is impossible to think about it. If you can't believe comp then how can you test it? If we do some tests and conclude that the tests refute comp, how can we be sure? My point is that we can't be 100% sure, but we can believe. On the other hand, I think that belief doesn't have much meaning until the rubber meets the road and the belief has implications to how we live life. Oscillating doesn't get us closer to truth. But I believe in a personal truth that solves this problem. (and that is also why I think it is better (more honest) to put comp in theology rather than in, say, psychology, like I was used to do before our conversation-thread on theology. It is diabolical in the sense that when someone tell me I don't believe in comp, well, strictly speaking, he confirms comp (but I *must* remain silent, or else I have to be more explicit on the G/G* differentiation and the way to translate the comp hyp itself in the language of arithmetic, but for this I have to dwelve a little bit more in the technics). Bruno PS Apology for letting you with some unsolved problem concerning the Wi and the Fi. I propose we come back on this latter (OK?). Meanwhile I suggest you could read the wonderful introduction to recursion theory made by N. J. Cutland, which is quite readable by undergraduate in math: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521294657/103-1630254-7840640? redirect=true I see you can buy it together with the bible of recursion theory, the book by Hartley Rogers, which, imo, is the book which exploits in the best possible manner Church's Thesis. OK. I will be content with following whatever you have for the roadmap for now. I may read the Cutland book if I can afford the time investment. I should at least probably try to get my own answers to my technical (but introductory) questions. Thanks for your willingness to explain. Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: Not only is it not necessary to treat such a 1st person as ontologically primative, it is hardly even coherent , since such a 1st person is clearly complex. I think I see where the confusion lies. My definitions rely on there being a unique ontologogical 'substance' because of my frustration that there is a pervasive use (not necessarily yours) of 1st-person and 3rd-person to denote, respectively, the 'inside' and 'outside' views of persons. Why shouldn't they denote that ? And what has that to do with substances ? The inside/outside distinction can be asserted is a single-substance universe. The inside/outside distinction is enough to found the 1st/3rd person divide, what do you need a multiplicity of substances for. This then leads to the idea that these derive from different ontological substances (e.g. Chalmers in effect, dualism in general). So my single substance is in that sense 'primitive'. Bruno would I think say that this substance is Number. Hmmm. I don't think Bruno believes in any kind of substance. I just say it's whatever it is and it's the same for everything. Of course, it's the intersection of this substance with structure that produces persons (and all other phenomena), which are, as you rightly say, complex. If persons are complex they are not already present in a simple primordial substance. The problem is, that while a)-c) is not all that can be said about first personhood, it is pretty much all that *is* said in your various definitions [*]. I quite agree, with the above proviso. I was merely trying to point out different uses of the term that I thought important, but you may well have found this superflous. The obvious is sometimes elusive. There is a still a mystery about what the role of primordial first-personness is. OK: now we seem to be getting to the nub of the problem. Consciousness and qualia. IOW, 1st-personhood divides into two problems: an Easy Problem of a)-c); and a Hard problem of d) qualia and e) incommunicable experiences. I would say that qualia are the fact of *being* structured substance *behaving* in a certain kind of 'perceiver+perceptual model' way. It is not clear why they should be that fact. For one thing, qualia seem not be structures in themselves. For another the perceiver-perceptual-model is 3rd-personal comprehensible and therefore part of the Easy problem. So you are simply declaring that the HP rides on the back of the EP, for reasons that canoot be undeerstood within the EP -- just as Chalmers does. As such they are themselves incommunicable, although existing in non-random mutual relations (e.g. that of red to blue, or middle C to bottom A). The information they encode relationally is what is communicable both to the 'self' and to others - epistemology from ontology. Empirically my assumption is that they must also map in some systematic way to material structure, which is not to say that qualitative and material structural levels map one-to-one. However I don't believe that qualia are 'substrate independent' (you may recall that this is where we began in the dear, dim days of the FOR group). AFAIC that amounts to saying they supervene on the physical -- on the 0-personal. Now: if qualia are the only aspect of 1st-personhood whose emergence form structured matter is fishy, why not make qualia ontologically fundamental, and keep the Easy aspects of 1p-hood as high-level emergent features ? (It's not just that we don't *need* to treat the a)-c) as primitive, it is also that we can't! A structure that contains representations of other structures is inherently complex!) I think I agree, as I say above. I know I lost you with my previous remarks about a primitive substance with primitive differentiation, but the fundamental nature of 'qualia' was what I was trying to convey. The substance on its own won't do, because it has no content, and semantically to have differentiation one needs to start with a substance. Hence qualia are to be found at the intersection, intersection of what and what ? and different types of structure yield different types of qualia. How and why ? ( I am taking it that qualia are basically non-structural [**] ) 'Fraid not. You mean qualia are not non-structural. Can you argue for that ? But now I can agree with you that 1p-hood in its Easy aspect is indeed a high level emergent feature of this structured ontology. Then the fact of *being* the structured substance is the 'qualia', and the relational aspects (information) constitute our knowledge of the structural entities so formed (i.e. 'the world'). I take the 'active principle' of information to be the relational aspects expressed as behaviour. IOW, one structure treats another as information when its behaviour is systematically changed by incorporating it. Is that idea even coherent ? How can a universal Person contain
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Why shouldn't they denote that ? And what has that to do with substances ? The inside/outside distinction can be asserted is a single-substance universe. The inside/outside distinction is enough to found the 1st/3rd person divide, what do you need a multiplicity of substances for. I agree. I was setting it up to knock it down. It is not clear why they should be that fact. For one thing, qualia seem not be structures in themselves. For another the perceiver-perceptual-model is 3rd-personal comprehensible and therefore part of the Easy problem. So you are simply declaring that the HP rides on the back of the EP, for reasons that canoot be undeerstood within the EP -- just as Chalmers does. I don't see why you're resistant to the idea that qualia could have a structural aspect. For one thing, they seem to be systematically correlated with physical phenomena (light, sound) which are structural/ relational. Also, they seem experientially (at least to me) to display mutual distributive relations that are analogous to, say, the frequency distribution of the colour spectrum. So I don't see the suggestion that different qualia are different structural modulations of a substrate as so counter-intuitive. As to HP 'riding on the back of' EP, I'd rather put it that they are correlated, but probably don't map in a simple, one-to-one, 'identity' relation. If this is simply 'neutral monism', so be it. Insofar that have been disagreeing over terminology, this is entirely fruitless, and we should try not to dispute any more over words. Perhaps I could replace the form of words 'global 1st person primitivity' with 'global neutral (0-person if you like) primitivity', as long as this is understood to be the backgound from which 1st-persons, under suitable conditions, emerge. AFAIC that amounts to saying they supervene on the physical -- on the 0-personal. No, that's going too far, IMO. I'd rather have them both mapping onto a neutral substrate that is basic. As I concede above, we could call this 0-personal, but this is surely not baldly equivalent to 'physical'. Just as we schematise the physical into chemical, biological, physiological levels etc, there may be analogous but different 'experiential layering' supporting the emergence of the conscious modalities we in fact encounter. and different types of structure yield different types of qualia. How and why ? How - by relational modulation of the 0-personal substrate. Why - because of the infinite (or at least Vast) possibilities of modalities, range, etc. inherent in this, on the analogy of the physical/ relational correlates (light, sound, taste, etc). That would be equally true of a 0-personal substance, ie matter. But a 'neutral (0-personal?) substrate' is not a rigidly 'physical' one, if that's what you intend by 'matter'. David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: Not only is it not necessary to treat such a 1st person as ontologically primative, it is hardly even coherent , since such a 1st person is clearly complex. I think I see where the confusion lies. My definitions rely on there being a unique ontologogical 'substance' because of my frustration that there is a pervasive use (not necessarily yours) of 1st-person and 3rd-person to denote, respectively, the 'inside' and 'outside' views of persons. Why shouldn't they denote that ? And what has that to do with substances ? The inside/outside distinction can be asserted is a single-substance universe. The inside/outside distinction is enough to found the 1st/3rd person divide, what do you need a multiplicity of substances for. This then leads to the idea that these derive from different ontological substances (e.g. Chalmers in effect, dualism in general). So my single substance is in that sense 'primitive'. Bruno would I think say that this substance is Number. Hmmm. I don't think Bruno believes in any kind of substance. I just say it's whatever it is and it's the same for everything. Of course, it's the intersection of this substance with structure that produces persons (and all other phenomena), which are, as you rightly say, complex. and different types of structure yield different types of qualia. How and why ? The problem is, that while a)-c) is not all that can be said about first personhood, it is pretty much all that *is* said in your various definitions [*]. I quite agree, with the above proviso. I was merely trying to point out different uses of the term that I thought important, but you may well have found this superflous. The obvious is sometimes elusive. There is a still a mystery about what the role of primordial first-personness is. OK: now we seem to be getting to the nub of the problem. Consciousness and qualia. IOW, 1st-personhood divides into two problems: an Easy Problem of a)-c); and a Hard problem of d) qualia and e) incommunicable experiences. I would say
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Time would be a primitive? What about relativist notion of space-time? BTW I agree with most of your post (of 09/08/2006) to David. At the same time I'm astonished that you seem attracted by the idea of making time a primitive one. I know that some respectable physicists do that (Prigogine, Bohm in some sense), but many physicist does not (Einstein, ...). Of course it is more easy to explain that consciousness supervene on number relations to someone who already accept consciousness could supervene to a block-universe than to someone who want time (or consciousness, or first person notion) to be primitive. Of course I believe that once we assume the comp hyp. there is no more choice in the matter. Let me comment your other post in the same reply (to avoid mail box explosion). The non-existence of HP universes still doesn't disprove comp. It shows we con't live in abig universe, whether a big phsyical univere or a big Platonia. Nice. It means you get the seven steps of the 8-steps version of the UDA. (Universal Dovetailer Argument). Thanks for resending the 15-steps version of it, it can help. Now I think that my SANE paper, which contains the 8 steps version of the UDA, is, despite minor errors, the closest english version of my Lille thesis, and even better with respect to readability. (Except that it lacks, like the 15 steps version) the movie-graph argument). Available here in html or pdf: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/ SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 09-août-06, à 18:08, Colin Geoffrey Hales a écrit : Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. The problem with such a conception is that it seems to need a form of dualism between Plato Heaven and terrestrial realities. With the comp hyp, all there is is (arithmetical) Platonia. Instanciation is relative and appears from inside. Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated. This seems, imo, contradicts what you I remember you said somewhere else (or I'm wrong?), mainly when you say, in a monist frame, that everything is relational. The fact is that there is no such thing as a 'third person'. Ontologically ? No, experientially. Nobody experiences 'third person'. Everybody has a 1st person experience only. There is no such thing as an objective view. I think that many people confuse third person view and 0 person view. I will probably (try to) clarify this in the roadmap-summary. I agree there is no objective *view*, but I think there is a notion of objective reality, although such a reality is not necessarily knowable as such. Furthermore it also seems to have us duped that further considerations of mathematical idealisations and abstractions in general likewise tells us something about the composition of the actual underlying natural world for example that it is the result of a computer running one of our abstractions. With comp I would say we can prove that the composition of the underlying world have to emerge, NOT as the result of a computer running one of our abstractions (like in Schmidhuber's theory for example) but on all possible computations existing in Platonia, and well defined through that miraculous Church's thesis. The quantum would emerge from digitalness seen from digital entity. Physical realities would be number theoretical realities as seen by relative numbers. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 09-août-06, à 18:12, Tom Caylor a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Of course I have a problem with the word universe and especially with the expression being inside a universe. The reason is that I think comp forces us to accept we are supported by an infinity of computations and that the 1-(plural and singular) appearance of the universe emerges from that. cf UDA. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ I haven't been following this thread, but this caught my attention. Bruno, how can you have a real problem with something based on the fact that it seems to contradict the comp assumption? I thought that you make a point to stress that you only assume comp for purposes of argument to see where it leads. You are right. It is just that I feel somehow guilty to always mention the comp. hyp. From now on, you should always interpret me, when I say I think ..., by we can proved under the comp. assumption that Are you implying that you personally have faith in comp to the point that words that don't agree with the comp assumption actually give you a problem? Or is the problem caused by a personal belief that is outside of the comp assumption, but that is manifested when talking about comp, if you follow me? About my personal opinion on comp, I am still going through the four days: The good one where I hope that comp is true and believe that comp is true; or when I hope comp to be false, and I believe it to be false. The bad one where it is the reverse. The problem is that comp almost entails such oscillations. Indeed, although I do not insist on that point I must admit there is something a little bit diabolical in comp (and which is similar to some godelian sentence) which is that comp predicts that the first person attached to a machine really cannot believe or know that comp is true. Strictly speaking comp is unbelievable. No consistent machine can take comp for granted, and that is why eventually saying yes to a doctor (for an artificial body) have to be based on an act of faith (and that is also why I think it is better (more honest) to put comp in theology rather than in, say, psychology, like I was used to do before our conversation-thread on theology. It is diabolical in the sense that when someone tell me I don't believe in comp, well, strictly speaking, he confirms comp (but I *must* remain silent, or else I have to be more explicit on the G/G* differentiation and the way to translate the comp hyp itself in the language of arithmetic, but for this I have to dwelve a little bit more in the technics). Bruno PS Apology for letting you with some unsolved problem concerning the Wi and the Fi. I propose we come back on this latter (OK?). Meanwhile I suggest you could read the wonderful introduction to recursion theory made by N. J. Cutland, which is quite readable by undergraduate in math: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521294657/103-1630254-7840640? redirect=true I see you can buy it together with the bible of recursion theory, the book by Hartley Rogers, which, imo, is the book which exploits in the best possible manner Church's Thesis. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Hales wrote: Perhaps the 3rd person is best called 'virtual'. It's role is one for 'as-if' it existed. Yes, that's a reasonable suggestion. Then 3rd person might be reserved for the type of observation in George's examples. The 'shareable knowledge base' is then an aspect of 'personal virtual reality', and those elements held in common by a community of 1st persons (common frame of reference) constitute 'consensual virtual reality'. David David Nyman: Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 11:20 AM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Are First Person prime? George Levy wrote: Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of identical contingencies on their existence. I'm glad you find agreement here. I don't think any of us deny the existence of a third person perspective. All three of us, I think, agree that it is secondary, but where your 'third person' comes into being through the sharing of a frame of reference, I'm applying the term to the totality of 'frames of reference', whether shared or not. Your 'shared frame of reference' would seem to be achieved through my 'shareable knowledge base', but for me a frame of reference is always third person from one perspective or many. So I'm saying that third person is an illusion brought about simply in virtue of having a 'frame of reference' at all - the illusion inherent in representing the world. I'm not quite sure what to do about this inconsistency of terminology. Perhaps the 'shared illusion' could be 'objectivity'? Perhaps the 3rd person is best called 'virtual'. It's role is one for 'as-if' it existed. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
Misc responses to 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Colin Hales wrote:
David Nyman:
snip
An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption.
I'd
say
that universe literally is a relational construct
A timeless relational construct or an evolving relational construct ?
Evolving. The evolution of the construct from state to state makes it feel
like there is time.
Why shouldn't it just *be* time ?
and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie.
Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are
in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia.
Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. Our universe may
act, somewhere, somehow, as if it were interacting with entities in
platonia, but that does not make platonic entities 'real' any more than
real/imaginary power vectors delivered out your power-outlet make the
square root of -1 real.
You are in line with my prejudices on that one!
I await an apriori deduction of qualia from
relational structures
Why stop there? What about an a-priori deduction of mass from relational
structures? Or space? Or electric fields? Or gravity?
Most of those just *are* relational
structrures, AFAICS.
All the same...and
none of these have been predicted by any abstract model or 'lumpy/thingy'
ontological thinking.
The physics we have is structural/relation from
top to bottom. It was predicted from observation, or rather
hypothesis/deduction/refutatin/confirmation...
The question is what can futher be predicted from that. If
qualia cannot, they are presumably fundamental in some way...
The abstract model predicts things that behave
'model'-ly. Parameters/variables in the model match adequately when
compared to reality. They do not describe what it is actually made of
I agree. Physics goes no further than isomorphism.
f = ma says nothing about what mass is. It says what mass _does_.
I agree.
Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant
evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial
volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on.
No. We have abundant evidence of some'thing' behaving as per an
abstraction of 'thing' at the scales we explore. We have NOT proven that
these laws apply at all scales..indeed we have abundant evidence to the
contrary! Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
That is not really the issue. The issue is that only
some things exist, only some laws apply, and so on.
Somethingism vs. everythingism.
Time, in particular, is not a mere mathematical construct. It is
actually
quite hard, if not impossible, to capture the passing (a series) of
time
mathematically. That is precisely why Platonists and othe mathematical
literalists tend argue that it doesn't exist.
Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist
does exist, are not well founded empirically.
No they are not. Again a mathematical model (quantum mechanics) that seems
to imply multiple universes does not mean that they exist
There is a big difference between multiple universes and everything.
Physical multi-world-ism is basically on the somethingist side of the
fence.
Schordinger's equation means some things are definitely impossible.
Only that the
model makes it look like it does. I can imagine any number of situations
where the fuzziness of the ultra-scale world obeys the rules of a QM-like
model.
For example, the perfectly deterministicly repeated trajectory of whatever
an electron is made of through 35.4 spatial dimensions is going to look
awfully fuzzy to critters observing it as course scales within 3
dimensions. QM depicts fuzziness... and 'aha' the universe is made of QM?
Not so. It merely appears to obey the abstraction QM provides us.
Fuzziness can be accomodated within physics in a way that
qualia can't.
A 35.4 dimensional universe is just a minute corner of Platonia.
QM says nothing about what the universe is actually constructed of. It is
not constructed of quantum mechanics! It is constructed of something that
behaves quantum mechanical-ly.
Physicalism in general assumes that there is some substrate to
to physical behaivour/porperties...but it is assumed to be only
a bare substratee with no interesting properties of its own.
Perhaps this:
Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a
circle
(for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a
computation
of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness,
Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ?
Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated.
hmmm. But if you wave a *real* thing around, it is surely
stuff, in itself...?
it instantiates
'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being
the
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: The problem with such a conception is that it seems to need a form of dualism between Plato Heaven and terrestrial realities. With the comp hyp, all there is is (arithmetical) Platonia. Instanciation is relative and appears from inside. With the materialist hypothesis there is also no dualism. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! Time would be a primitive? What about relativist notion of space-time? What indeed ? It means time is local, not that time is non-existent. BTW I agree with most of your post (of 09/08/2006) to David. At the same time I'm astonished that you seem attracted by the idea of making time a primitive one. I know that some respectable physicists do that (Prigogine, Bohm in some sense), but many physicist does not (Einstein, ...). The ones that do can expalain my subjective sensation of time, the ones that don't, can't. Of course it is more easy to explain that consciousness supervene on number relations to someone who already accept consciousness could supervene to a block-universe than to someone who want time (or consciousness, or first person notion) to be primitive. Indeed. Of course I believe that once we assume the comp hyp. there is no more choice in the matter. A computation (as opposed to an algorithm) is a process taking place in time. Not many people would say yes to a doctor who wanted to make a static image of their brain and store it in a filing cabinet. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
1Z: Why shouldn't it just *be* time ? A structure evolves from state to state in a regular way. The fact that an observer built of that structure inside that structure can formulate mathematical descriptions with a t in them that correlate well with what is observed does not mean that there is anything real in t any more than it means anything else in the maths is reified. Time is yet another 'as-if' construct. The universe (the structure) behaves as if a t was there when it's just an artifact of models. The experienced moment to moment progress of the state of the structure literally is what we perceive as time in the sense that there's no special entity pouring some 'timeness' into the structure. A metaphor experience for this occurs when you write industrial 'real-time' control software state machines. You can make the control system speed up and slow down (meaning that the control system sees the world slow-down and speed up, resp.) based on the rate the state machine is executed. and that it's appearance as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie. Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia. Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. Our universe may act, somewhere, somehow, as if it were interacting with entities in platonia, but that does not make platonic entities 'real' any more than real/imaginary power vectors delivered out your power-outlet make the square root of -1 real. You are in line with my prejudices on that one! I await an apriori deduction of qualia from relational structures Why stop there? What about an a-priori deduction of mass from relational structures? Or space? Or electric fields? Or gravity? Most of those just *are* relational structrures, AFAICS. No. They are descriptions of observations formulated by observers of 'the relational structure'. To an observer built of the structure inside the structure bits of the structure behave 'massly', gravitationally, electric field-ly, space-ly and so on. If the mathematics ca, in some sense, termed an expression of relationality, that's just an artifact of the maths, not a statement about the original structure exhibiting the behaviour. All the same...and none of these have been predicted by any abstract model or 'lumpy/thingy' ontological thinking. The physics we have is structural/relation from top to bottom. It was predicted from observation, or rather hypothesis/deduction/refutatin/confirmation... Yes, and none of that physics says anything at all about the intrinsic structural nature of the entities portrayed by the physics. The are descriptions of behaviour (WHAT HAPPENS) that correlate with observation. Correlation(WHAT HAPPENS) is not causation(WHY IT HAPPENS). Causation is what is happening in the underlying structure. Again: the universe is behaving 'as-if' physics was driving it to an observer inside the structure, of the structure. The question is what can futher be predicted from that. If qualia cannot, they are presumably fundamental in some way... The abstract model predicts things that behave 'model'-ly. Parameters/variables in the model match adequately when compared to reality. They do not describe what it is actually made of I agree. Physics goes no further than isomorphism. So you actually agree with my above comments. Methinks there's confusion in here somewhere! f = ma says nothing about what mass is. It says what mass _does_. I agree. And again. Now extrapolate the same thing to every mathematical model ever made by science. They all have the same status and exactly the same type of statement can be made of every parameter in very one of them. Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on. No. We have abundant evidence of some'thing' behaving as per an abstraction of 'thing' at the scales we explore. We have NOT proven that these laws apply at all scales..indeed we have abundant evidence to the contrary! Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. That is not really the issue. The issue is that only some things exist, only some laws apply, and so on. Somethingism vs. everythingism. There is an evolving structure, we are in it. It behaves with amazing amounts of regularity (even the persistence of randomness and chaotic behaviour is regularity!). The regularity as perceived (in the first person!)...that orderliness...correlates well with some models and not others, at some scales and not others. These models are descriptions only and are not explanations in the sense of causality. Time, in particular, is not a mere mathematical construct. It is actually quite hard, if not impossible, to capture the passing (a series) of time
RE: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal Le 09-août-06, à 18:08, Colin Geoffrey Hales a écrit : Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. The problem with such a conception is that it seems to need a form of dualism between Plato Heaven and terrestrial realities. With the comp hyp, all there is is (arithmetical) Platonia. Instanciation is relative and appears from inside. I'm interested in building an AI inside this structure with us. There may be a relationship between this AI and platonia in the same way (whatever way that is) our perceptions may make use of it. Evolution didnt need to be all fussed about it...neither am I. I could agree with you or disagree ...it would have no effect on the outcome. Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated. This seems, imo, contradicts what you I remember you said somewhere else (or I'm wrong?), mainly when you say, in a monist frame, that everything is relational. The stuff is the relation happening. The particular relational outcome we inhabit is it...the substrate...the structure of which we are part that appears like it does to us inside it. The fact is that there is no such thing as a 'third person'. Ontologically ? No, experientially. Nobody experiences 'third person'. Everybody has a 1st person experience only. There is no such thing as an objective view. I think that many people confuse third person view and 0 person view. I will probably (try to) clarify this in the roadmap-summary. I agree there is no objective *view*, but I think there is a notion of objective reality, although such a reality is not necessarily knowable as such. Nomenclature gnomes at work again! I think what you call objective reality is what I call the substrate...the relational structure that is the universe. Furthermore it also seems to have us duped that further considerations of mathematical idealisations and abstractions in general likewise tells us something about the composition of the actual underlying natural world for example that it is the result of a computer running one of our abstractions. With comp I would say we can prove that the composition of the underlying world have to emerge, NOT as the result of a computer running one of our abstractions (like in Schmidhuber's theory for example) but on all possible computations existing in Platonia, and well defined through that miraculous Church's thesis. The quantum would emerge from digitalness seen from digital entity. Physical realities would be number theoretical realities as seen by relative numbers. Bruno I'm interested in the 'natural mathematics' of the relational structure and how it can be utilised by us to make artifical versions of us and the creatures around us. The key to it is the messy, smelly meat called brain material, not considerations of platonic realms or postulated computations therein. It may be that what we find will be generalised later into COMP and other systems of abstraction, but that will change nothing for me trying to build an AI with the reality we inhabit. Like I said above...the structure built us on its own...and didnt need a maths book to do it..because it literally is the maths... Cheers Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't see that problem. In the block universe each subject is modelled as having different states at different times and hence subjectively experiences the passage of time. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime? - time
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bruno, I spent some (!) time on speculating on 'timelessness' - Let me tell up front: I did not solve it. Hi John For example, we can conceive of a consciousness generated by a computer operating in a time share mode where the time share occur every thousand years. The important thing is that there should be a logical flow in the computation, and it really does not matter what is the time scale, the sampling, in which dimension you operate or the level of computation. (you could be operating across several levels) The only thing that matters is that each point of the computation be connected to the next one by a valid logical link, as in a network. This logical network in fact frees you from having to specify a dimension such as time or a level of computation. The logical connections (or consistent histories as Bruno calls them) in the network are in fact emergent according to the Anthropic principle. The logical links (or consistencies) exist because you are there to observe them. Just as a Rorschach test . You are making the links as you go along. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: Not only is it not necessary to treat such a 1st person as ontologically primative, it is hardly even coherent , since such a 1st person is clearly complex. I think I see where the confusion lies. My definitions rely on there being a unique ontologogical 'substance' because of my frustration that there is a pervasive use (not necessarily yours) of 1st-person and 3rd-person to denote, respectively, the 'inside' and 'outside' views of persons. This then leads to the idea that these derive from different ontological substances (e.g. Chalmers in effect, dualism in general). So my single substance is in that sense 'primitive'. Bruno would I think say that this substance is Number. I just say it's whatever it is and it's the same for everything. Of course, it's the intersection of this substance with structure that produces persons (and all other phenomena), which are, as you rightly say, complex. The problem is, that while a)-c) is not all that can be said about first personhood, it is pretty much all that *is* said in your various definitions [*]. I quite agree, with the above proviso. I was merely trying to point out different uses of the term that I thought important, but you may well have found this superflous. The obvious is sometimes elusive. OK: now we seem to be getting to the nub of the problem. Consciousness and qualia. IOW, 1st-personhood divides into two problems: an Easy Problem of a)-c); and a Hard problem of d) qualia and e) incommunicable experiences. I would say that qualia are the fact of *being* structured substance *behaving* in a certain kind of 'perceiver+perceptual model' way. As such they are themselves incommunicable, although existing in non-random mutual relations (e.g. that of red to blue, or middle C to bottom A). The information they encode relationally is what is communicable both to the 'self' and to others - epistemology from ontology. Empirically my assumption is that they must also map in some systematic way to material structure, which is not to say that qualitative and material structural levels map one-to-one. However I don't believe that qualia are 'substrate independent' (you may recall that this is where we began in the dear, dim days of the FOR group). Now: if qualia are the only aspect of 1st-personhood whose emergence form structured matter is fishy, why not make qualia ontologically fundamental, and keep the Easy aspects of 1p-hood as high-level emergent features ? (It's not just that we don't *need* to treat the a)-c) as primitive, it is also that we can't! A structure that contains representations of other structures is inherently complex!) I think I agree, as I say above. I know I lost you with my previous remarks about a primitive substance with primitive differentiation, but the fundamental nature of 'qualia' was what I was trying to convey. The substance on its own won't do, because it has no content, and semantically to have differentiation one needs to start with a substance. Hence qualia are to be found at the intersection, and different types of structure yield different types of qualia. ( I am taking it that qualia are basically non-structural [**] ) 'Fraid not. But now I can agree with you that 1p-hood in its Easy aspect is indeed a high level emergent feature of this structured ontology. Then the fact of *being* the structured substance is the 'qualia', and the relational aspects (information) constitute our knowledge of the structural entities so formed (i.e. 'the world'). I take the 'active principle' of information to be the relational aspects expressed as behaviour. IOW, one structure treats another as information when its behaviour is systematically changed by incorporating it. Is that idea even coherent ? How can a universal Person contain representations of what is outside itself ? It can't of course. Only of what is inside itself. My intuition about the 'Big Person' was simply to express the idea that the 'substance' is universally available to be structured into persons. Persons are just zones so structured. We needn't mention the BP ever again. Thank you for your excellent treatment of the physicalism/ mentalism issues, with which I pretty much entirely agree. I'd just like to comment on a couple of things: But it is almost tautologous that the real world cannot be made of those ingredients alone (particularly that is can't be a mere abstraction). Thus we have candidates for real properties of the world not captured by physics: concreta, intrinsic properties and qualities. The last is of the most interest, of course. The resemblance between qualia and quality might not be coincidental. Qualities might be intrinsic to matter yet incapable of being seen through the spectacles of physics. Our own qualia might be a direct insight into these qualities, not something else in disguise. We need not suppose that all qualities are like human qualia; qualia might be only a tiny subset of the
RE: Are First Person prime?
Brent Meeker: 1Z wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-août-06, à 12:46, 1Z a écrit : Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. So we should understand that you would criticize any notion, sometimes brought by physicists, of block-universe. Yes, I certainly would! It is unable to explain the subjective passage of time. Dismissing the subjective sensation of the passge of time as merely subjective or illusional is a surreptitious appeal to dualism and therefore un-physicalistic! I don't see that problem. In the block universe each subject is modelled as having different states at different times and hence subjectively experiences the passage of time. Brent Meeker Exactly! See my other post. Being of an evolving structure completely defined by state transitions makes it amenable to the treatment by the concept of time, but does not reify time in any part of the structure...it's intrinsic to its operation. Then, to those entities inside, observing and evolving along with the structure/part of it 'what it is like' qualia of time I dont think is a property of the qualia per se, but the rate/depth to which they are analysed. A high novelty environment means faster/more brain process, time apparently goes slowly (eg during an accident). In a low novelty environment the brain analysis rate/depth drops. Time appears to go more quickly. Cheers Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
George Levy wrote: Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. I understand this way of putting it. Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same frame of reference. I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse. What you are saying above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy and the nature of 3-person. Any comments on those? David David Nyman wrote: George Levy wrote: Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. Hi George I think I agree with this. It could correspond with what I'm trying to model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as: First person perception of the world comes about when our own observation and existence are mutually contingent Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence is not contingent on our observation. Now here I'm not so clear. In sum, I'm not clear what sort of observation is *not* contingent on our existence, except someone else's observation, and so far as I can see this is always first person by your definition. Do you simply mean to define any observation not involving ourselves as 'third person' from our point-of-view? Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same frame of reference. I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. George --090108010504010602090806 Content-Type: text/html X-Google-AttachSize: 2970 !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN html head meta content=text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type title/title /head body bgcolor=#ff text=#00 David Nyman wrote:br blockquote cite=[EMAIL PROTECTED] type=cite pre wrap=George Levy wrote: /pre blockquote type=cite pre wrap=Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. /pre /blockquote pre wrap=! Hi George I think I agree with this. It could correspond with what I'm trying to model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as: First person perception of the world comes about when our own observation and existence are mutually contingent /pre /blockquote Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: Ifnbsp; the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. br br blockquote cite=[EMAIL PROTECTED] type=cite pre wrap= /pre blockquote
Re: Not yet the roadmap (was: Are First Person prime?)
Le 08-août-06, à 17:00, David Nyman a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: FP2: I do periphrases to talk about it. It is a confusing notion (cf Chalmers delusion). Mathematically it needs bimodal logics (or just G handled with care); Bruno Thanks for the summary, I'll look out for the roadmap. I'd just like to clarify the role of FP2 above: Where FP1i is an individual first-person-as-instantiated, FP2 is its analog in what I've termed the 'shareable knowledge base' (SKB) that is part of the structure of FP1i. The reason I make this distinction is that when I make some unqualified reference simply to 'Bruno', it is not thereby clear whether this is meant to indicate 'FP2 Bruno' - i.e the representation you or I have of 'Bruno' in the SKB - or 'FP1 Bruno', the unique entity to which my FP2 analog refers. In inter-personal dialogue, this can become really confusing because one party may be conceptualising in an FP2-manner - i.e. thinking in a 'naturalistic' way purely in terms of the FP2 representation of the world and its embedded FP2 representations of first persons - when the other (usually me, I must confess) is thinking in an FP1-manner - i.e. extrapolating from the FP2 representations to their FP1 referents. Such confusion may be implicated in 'Chalmers' delusion' and other puzzles. I say something about this in my comments on your earlier posts. To be consistent, what I'm calling FP2 should be split along the lines of FP1 into: FP2g - representations in the SKB of FP1g FP2i - representations in the SKB of FP1i Does the above clarification make a difference? I still believe I can follow you, but I fear your vocabulary/acronym proliferation. I will not add comments, because those would be anticipation on critics you will do (no doubt) about the (future) roadmap post. But thanks for trying to be clear and for being patient about that roadmap, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 09-août-06, à 01:49, Colin Hales a écrit : Why is everyone talking about abstract computation? Of _course_ 1st person is prime = Has primacy in description of the universe. Being a portion of any structure (ME) trying to model the structure (the UNIVERSE) from within it (ME as scientist inside/part of the universe) is intrinsically and innately presented with that which is _not_ the structure of ME (NOT ME). This applies at all scales (eg ME = an atom, ME = a galaxy). An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a portion of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will see the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of X, the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not that of 'being' a quantity N. The only computation going on around us is literally the universe. WE are computations within it. We can only ever acquire data about it from the perspective of being in it. Maybe you're not talking about the same universe as me. We're trying to get to grips with our universe, yes? I don't get it. Then again I seem not to get a lot. :-) Colin hales Of course I have a problem with the word universe and especially with the expression being inside a universe. The reason is that I think comp forces us to accept we are supported by an infinity of computations and that the 1-(plural and singular) appearance of the universe emerges from that. cf UDA. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Hales wrote:
David Nyman:
snip
An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a
portion
of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will
see
the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of
X,
the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer
holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not
that of 'being' a quantity N.
Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather
than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of
hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely
relational 'program-level' view?
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption. I'd say
that universe literally is a relational construct
A timeless relational construct or an evolving relational construct ?
and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie.
Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are
in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia.
I await an apriori deduction of qualia from
relational structures
There's no such
'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there are
such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is that
the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated lumpy
'thingness' is rather pervasive.
Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant
evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial
volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on.
Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist
does exist, are not well founded empirically.
Perhaps this:
Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a circle
(for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a computation
of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness,
Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ?
it instantiates
'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being the
'stuff' (1st person) and the behaviour 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' (3rd
person). Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st person
perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play acting.
The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the beholder.
Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd person
not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that there
is no such thing as a 'third person'.
Ontologically ?
What you have is a communicable 1st
person perspective that yet another 'first person perspective' can find if
it looks. No-one ever has a 'third person' perspective.
Epistemologically ?
Ernest Nagel named a
book after it: 'the view from nowhere'. If 3rd person does not exist, then
1st person is all there is left, isn't it?
Colin Hales
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Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: (PS could you write *less* next time ? I find tha the more you write, the less I understand!) I sympathise! However, I'm not sure how much further we're destined to get with this particular dialogue. Each time we have another go I think I see where we're going past each other, and I attempt to re-cast what I'm saying to address this - hence the prolixity, which frustrates me probably as much as it does you! On this occasion, I'll say simply this: whilst of course not unconscious of other treatments of these issues, particularly those addressing the physical or computational issues, there's always seemed to me to be something philosophically fishy about how the 'first person' is supposed to just 'turn up' in a situation which is fundamentally something else - a world fundamentally composed of impersonal 'things'. How fishy that is depends on what is meant by first person. If a person is just: a) a structure which is b) part of wider structure, and which c) has an internal representation of the wider structure; there is no great problem. The situation is entirely structure and relational, and can therefore easily be dealt with by physicalism -- by matter forming various differnt kinds of structure. The problem is, that while a)-c) is not all that can be said about first personhood, it is pretty much all that *is* said in your various definitions [*]. Not only is it not necessary to treat such a 1st person as ontologically primative, it is hardly even coherent , since such a 1st person is clearly complex. I'm convinced this puzzles and confuses others too, leading to IMO pseudo-problems like 'intelligent zombies', and pseudo-solutions like dualism. OK: now we seem to be getting to the nub of the problem. Consciousness and qualia. IOW, 1st-personhood divides into two problems: an Easy Problem of a)-c); and a Hard problem of d) qualia and e) incommunicable experiences. Now: if qualia are the only aspect of 1st-personhood whose emergence form structured matter is fishy, why not make qualia ontologically fundamental, and keep the Easy aspects of 1p-hood as high-level emergent features ? (It's not just that we don't *need* to treat the a)-c) as primitive, it is also that we can't! A structure that contains representations of other structures is inherently complex!) ( I am taking it that qualia are basically non-structural [**] ) So it occurred to me: supposing one were to think of the world not as a collection of 'things' (or as I think physics teaches us a 'field' differentiated into apparently individual 'things') but as a 'big person' (or a big personal field, differentiated into apparently individual persons). Is that idea even coherent ? How can a universal Person contain representations of what is outside itself ? I'm sorry if this sounds like Teletubbies, but I'm not going to deploy my jargon this time! We're here because the 'big person' is here and we're a part of him (her/ us?). Now this 'big person' would have to be conscious in parts, and unconscious in other parts, but it then ocurred to me that this is *exactly* analogous to our own situation: we are indeed conscious in parts and at times, and unconscious in other parts and at other times. The distinction seems to arise from local strucure and function. And therefore doesn't require any personhood apart from those structures and funtions. Everything else really follows from this, and personally I've found that thinking in this way dissolves the sort of conceptual confusions that I've mentioned - same structure, same function, same first personhood (no zombies, no dualism). But always *some* first-personhood, or how else could it be universal ? The rest of course, is the infamous 'easy problem', on which I have no particular purchase. Now that I've put it in this I hope disarmingly naive way, you may wish to request clarification on any point, or you may feel that you simply disagree, or aren't interested. As ever, I'd be pleased to hear from you. David [*] 1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context 2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation (which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical level) 3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a unique entity. 4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to structure-demarcating-an-entity 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i
Re: Are First Person prime?
Misc responses to 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Colin Hales wrote:
David Nyman:
snip
An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of
a
portion
of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE)
will
see
the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the
machinations of
X,
the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a
computer
holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a
computer,
not
that of 'being' a quantity N.
Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather
than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of
hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely
relational 'program-level' view?
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption.
I'd
say
that universe literally is a relational construct
A timeless relational construct or an evolving relational construct ?
Evolving. The evolution of the construct from state to state makes it feel
like there is time.
and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie.
Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are
in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia.
Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. Our universe may
act, somewhere, somehow, as if it were interacting with entities in
platonia, but that does not make platonic entities 'real' any more than
real/imaginary power vectors delivered out your power-outlet make the
square root of -1 real.
I await an apriori deduction of qualia from
relational structures
Why stop there? What about an a-priori deduction of mass from relational
structures? Or space? Or electric fields? Or gravity? All the same...and
none of these have been predicted by any abstract model or 'lumpy/thingy'
ontological thinking. The abstract model predicts things that behave
'model'-ly. Parameters/variables in the model match adequately when
compared to reality. They do not describe what it is actually made of
f = ma says nothing about what mass is. It says what mass _does_.
There's no such
'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there
are
such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is
that
the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated
lumpy
'thingness' is rather pervasive.
Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant
evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial
volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on.
No. We have abundant evidence of some'thing' behaving as per an
abstraction of 'thing' at the scales we explore. We have NOT proven that
these laws apply at all scales..indeed we have abundant evidence to the
contrary! Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist
does exist, are not well founded empirically.
No they are not. Again a mathematical model (quantum mechanics) that seems
to imply multiple universes does not mean that they existOnly that the
model makes it look like it does. I can imagine any number of situations
where the fuzziness of the ultra-scale world obeys the rules of a QM-like
model.
For example, the perfectly deterministicly repeated trajectory of whatever
an electron is made of through 35.4 spatial dimensions is going to look
awfully fuzzy to critters observing it as course scales within 3
dimensions. QM depicts fuzziness... and 'aha' the universe is made of QM?
Not so. It merely appears to obey the abstraction QM provides us.
QM says nothing about what the universe is actually constructed of. It is
not constructed of quantum mechanics! It is constructed of something that
behaves quantum mechanical-ly.
Perhaps this:
Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a
circle
(for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a
computation
of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness,
Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ?
Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated.
it instantiates
'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being
the
'stuff' (1st person) and the behaviour 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly'
(3rd
person). Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st
person
perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play
acting.
The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the
beholder.
Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd
person
not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that
there
is no such thing as a 'third person'.
Ontologically ?
No, experientially.
Nobody experiences 'third person'. Everybody has a 1st person experience
only.
Re: Are First Person prime?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Of course I have a problem with the word universe and especially with the expression being inside a universe. The reason is that I think comp forces us to accept we are supported by an infinity of computations and that the 1-(plural and singular) appearance of the universe emerges from that. cf UDA. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ I haven't been following this thread, but this caught my attention. Bruno, how can you have a real problem with something based on the fact that it seems to contradict the comp assumption? I thought that you make a point to stress that you only assume comp for purposes of argument to see where it leads. Are you implying that you personally have faith in comp to the point that words that don't agree with the comp assumption actually give you a problem? Or is the problem caused by a personal belief that is outside of the comp assumption, but that is manifested when talking about comp, if you follow me? Tom --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: I'm hoping this also addresses some of David Nyman's queries. Thanks, yes it does. However, for the sake of clarity: Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ? Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated. So, given your view that there is only 1st-person, and also given that our experience is 1st-person, does that imply: 1) That we are instantiated as the substrate behaving in some specific ways that are in principle empirically determinable? 2) That such behaviour, presumably, can be construed both as our 'ability to perceive' and as our 'perceptions'? 3) If the foregoing two points are ontologogical (what we are), then does our epistemology (what we can know) derive from the internal relata of the perceptually-derived models thus instantiated + their inferred relation to 1st-person referents? 4) If there is only 1st person, what is the most coherent way to distinguish the ontology of persons (e.g. you, me) from that of non-persons (e.g. some volume of interstellar space)? Or, in what way is the ontology of non-persons still 1st-person? David Misc responses to 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] Colin Hales wrote: David Nyman: snip An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a portion of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will see the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of X, the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not that of 'being' a quantity N. Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely relational 'program-level' view? Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption. I'd say that universe literally is a relational construct A timeless relational construct or an evolving relational construct ? Evolving. The evolution of the construct from state to state makes it feel like there is time. and that it's appearance as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie. Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia. Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. Our universe may act, somewhere, somehow, as if it were interacting with entities in platonia, but that does not make platonic entities 'real' any more than real/imaginary power vectors delivered out your power-outlet make the square root of -1 real. I await an apriori deduction of qualia from relational structures Why stop there? What about an a-priori deduction of mass from relational structures? Or space? Or electric fields? Or gravity? All the same...and none of these have been predicted by any abstract model or 'lumpy/thingy' ontological thinking. The abstract model predicts things that behave 'model'-ly. Parameters/variables in the model match adequately when compared to reality. They do not describe what it is actually made of f = ma says nothing about what mass is. It says what mass _does_. There's no such 'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there are such things as things is not useful...we survive that way... 'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is that the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated lumpy 'thingness' is rather pervasive. Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on. No. We have abundant evidence of some'thing' behaving as per an abstraction of 'thing' at the scales we explore. We have NOT proven that these laws apply at all scales..indeed we have abundant evidence to the contrary! Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist does exist, are not well founded empirically. No they are not. Again a mathematical model (quantum mechanics) that seems to imply multiple universes does not mean that they existOnly that the model makes it look like it does. I can imagine any number of situations where the fuzziness of the ultra-scale world obeys the rules of a QM-like model. For example, the perfectly deterministicly repeated trajectory of whatever an electron is made of through 35.4 spatial dimensions is going to look awfully fuzzy to critters observing it as course scales within 3 dimensions. QM depicts fuzziness... and 'aha' the universe is made of QM? Not so. It merely appears to obey the abstraction QM provides us. QM says nothing about what the universe is actually constructed of. It is not
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse. What you are saying above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy and the nature of 3-person. Any comments on those? I am sorry David, I have not been following all threads very closely - It would take a full time commitment to do so. Perhaps each post, especially the long ones, should be preceded by an abstract. ;-) Could you point me in the right direction? George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
George Yes, it is getting quite prolix! The relevant posts are 9, 11 and 14 David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: George Levy wrote: Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. I understand this way of putting it. Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse. What you are saying above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy and the nature of 3-person. Any comments on those? David Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of identical contingencies on their existence. I have a little bit of trouble understanding your terms: "shared knowledge base" and interpersonal discourse. One way to force your nomenclature and mine to be identical is to say that "share knowledge base" and interpersonal discourse" are completely dependent on physical laws which are completely dependent of the shared contingencies. Thus our basic thinking process is rooted in the physical objects comprising our brain. These physical objects owe their existence to our shared contingencies. Here we are developing an equivalence between mental processes and physical processes. In other words I can imagine any process that the universe is capable of supporting, and it is possible to simulate in the universe any thought process that I am capable of imagining. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
Prolixing on regardless! David Nyman: Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: I'm hoping this also addresses some of David Nyman's queries. Thanks, yes it does. However, for the sake of clarity: Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ? Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated. So, given your view that there is only 1st-person, and also given that our experience is 1st-person, does that imply: 1) That we are instantiated as the substrate behaving in some specific ways that are in principle empirically determinable? Yes, but only in brain material. It is only there that we get anomalous presentation of two aspects to the one process... brain and mind. Only there can a model of appearances and a model of structure be bound intimately by the special behaviour delivering qualia to us. Brain material is epistemologically anomalous and unique. 2) That such behaviour, presumably, can be construed both as our 'ability to perceive' and as our 'perceptions'? I think I know what you are after. I'd say that one expression of the 'relational structure' is atoms, cells etc which literally are the brain which, as a result of its behaviour provides 'ability to perceive'. The 'perceptions' are also an aspect of the very same structure behaving 'brainly' but only perceived from the perspective of being the brain. 3) If the foregoing two points are ontologogical (what we are), then does our epistemology (what we can know) derive from the internal relata of the perceptually-derived models thus instantiated + their inferred relation to 1st-person referents? Yes. I know my own and Bruno's terminology is mixed and probably at odds. Nevertheless I'd couch it as saying that the relational structure is literally what we are. It provides a first person presentation of a slice across the structure at a given scale. Our brains are brilliant at capturing apparent causality within the appearances. That 'capture' formulated into a statement of regularity in the universe using scientific method becomes what we 'know' (natural 'laws'), which is identical to a belief. We are not justified in claiming that we have captured the structure itself, only that we have captured the behaviour of a representational slice across it (eg at the level of an atom via instruments, or an elephant by eyeball). 4) If there is only 1st person, what is the most coherent way to distinguish the ontology of persons (e.g. you, me) from that of non-persons (e.g. some volume of interstellar space)? Or, in what way is the ontology of non-persons still 1st-person? There are 2 questions that can be asked of every'thing' X in the universe. Q1 What is X? A1) That which behaves Xly Q2 What is it like to be X? A2) It is like Xness Mind is to brain as ? is to a coffee cup? The fact that we can only distinguish between the two questions from the point of view of being a brain does not mean that the two questions are valid for everything. Space included. It may not 'be like anything' to be, say, a coffee cup. That is not the point. The point is that the structure supports the possibility of 1st person presentation and, once we understand whether the structure of a coffee cup we can than make a scientific statement about W.I.I.L. to be a hot coffee cup vs a cold coffee cup. It may be 'nothing', but at least it will be justified to some extent. There's a real issue here with language. We have words like ontology and epistemology and atom, mind and brain. I'd like to simply ignore them all. Being embedded in a relational structure off the type we are enables us to hold beliefs. Some of those beliefs are phenomenal presentations (redness), some are visceral(a belief that I have 10 toes, the expression of which is phenomenally void until recall, the belief is brain material configuration). Beleifs can be innate (genetically programmed such as the capacity to breath) and some learned (language). Beliefs can be about the self or about the natural world outside the self. My fervent hope is that some of those beliefs will, in the future, include models of the relational structure that delivers the phenomenality containing/depicting the behaviours then used to assemble the existing set of scientific beliefs. All as one consistent system. A 'Dual aspect science' without all the anomalous thinking and empirically backed throughout (but initiated in a science of brain material inclusive of a physics of qualia) That's as complicated as it needs to be. I think you and I are on the same wavelength here. Speaking of coffee . I'm off! Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at
Re: Are First Person prime?
George Levy wrote: Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of identical contingencies on their existence. I'm glad you find agreement here. I don't think any of us deny the existence of a third person perspective. All three of us, I think, agree that it is secondary, but where your 'third person' comes into being through the sharing of a frame of reference, I'm applying the term to the totality of 'frames of reference', whether shared or not. Your 'shared frame of reference' would seem to be achieved through my 'shareable knowledge base', but for me a frame of reference is always third person from one perspective or many. So I'm saying that third person is an illusion brought about simply in virtue of having a 'frame of reference' at all - the illusion inherent in representing the world. I'm not quite sure what to do about this inconsistency of terminology. Perhaps the 'shared illusion' could be 'objectivity'? I have a little bit of trouble understanding your terms: shared knowledge base and interpersonal discourse. I mean 'frames of reference' or models of the world, as our medium for communicating with ourselves and each other - i.e. 'inter-personal discourse'. Our personal epistemology is a function of our instantiating such models, and such individual perpectives can become correlated through pooling their contents in a 'shared knowledge base'. This affords the possibility of a common frame of reference. Thus our basic thinking process is rooted in the physical objects comprising our brain. These physical objects owe their existence to our shared contingencies. This is consistent with what I've said above - the 'models' are instantiated in 'the physical objects comprising our brain', at least under certain descriptions, although I don't take these descriptions to be irreducible. Here we are developing an equivalence between mental processes and physical processes. OK with the same proviso. In other words I can imagine any process that the universe is capable of supporting I'm not sure how one would demonstrate this. and it is possible to simulate in the universe any thought process that I am capable of imagining. According to some! However, I would agree with the proviso that 'simulate' can include making an atom-for-atom copy of your brain. Possibly in other ways too, but I'd be prepared to settle for the atoms! I think we can agree that what is modelled or imagined in one brain can be shared by another, although some might see these dialogues as a strike against this! I've suggested in earlier posts, in effect, that because what we can imagine and what we can share are constrained to exactly the same 'language', all members of a community of persons are thereby on an equal epistemic footing (i.e. the third person perspective, in my terms) with respect to 'knowledge about the world'. This is what I meant by the 'shareable knowledge base', but the term itself is dispensable. David David Nyman wrote: George Levy wrote: Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. I understand this way of putting it. Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same frame of reference. I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. Again I agree here. In the terminology I've been using, the frame of reference would be communicated in terms of the 'shareable knowledge base', or inter-personal (third person) discourse. What you are saying above seems consistent with Colin Hales' views both on 1-person primacy and the nature of 3-person. Any comments on those? David Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third
RE: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman: Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 11:20 AM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Are First Person prime? George Levy wrote: Colin Hales remarks seem to agree with what I say. However, I do not deny the existence of a third person perspective. I only say that it is secondary and an illusion brought about by having several observers share the same frame of reference. This frame of reference consists of identical contingencies on their existence. I'm glad you find agreement here. I don't think any of us deny the existence of a third person perspective. All three of us, I think, agree that it is secondary, but where your 'third person' comes into being through the sharing of a frame of reference, I'm applying the term to the totality of 'frames of reference', whether shared or not. Your 'shared frame of reference' would seem to be achieved through my 'shareable knowledge base', but for me a frame of reference is always third person from one perspective or many. So I'm saying that third person is an illusion brought about simply in virtue of having a 'frame of reference' at all - the illusion inherent in representing the world. I'm not quite sure what to do about this inconsistency of terminology. Perhaps the 'shared illusion' could be 'objectivity'? Perhaps the 3rd person is best called 'virtual'. It's role is one for 'as-if' it existed. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 07-août-06, à 20:59, 1Z a écrit : George Levy wrote: 1Z wrote: George Levy wrote: A conscious entity is also information. I am assuming here that a conscious entity is essentially software. You can assume it of you like. It isn't computationalism, which is the claim that congition is running a programme, not the claim that disemobodied algorithms are conscious. OK but the point is that if cognition is running a programme, then it can be shown that the very notion of running a program and embodiment are necessarily relative notions. I do agree with you that a disembodied soul in your branche cannot have consciousness with respect to you and to your branch. But from the first perspective of any soul, the sould will survive in any computational history capable of relatively embodying it through some consistent history. And so we arrive at the 1-indetermincay comp measure problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Not yet the roadmap (was: Are First Person prime?)
Le 07-août-06, à 22:12, David Nyman a écrit : 1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context 2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation (which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical level) 3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a unique entity. 4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to structure-demarcating-an-entity OK, I copy this in some file so as to be able to come back on it later. If I comment it here, before the roadmap-summary, it will be confusing. Still, before I send the roadmap I give the correspondence for those who have followed your posts and remember my earlier summaries. FP1g will most probably correspond to the time/knowledge modal logic S4Grz; FP1i will not be explicitly treated, but can correspond to any particular relative implementation of a self-referentially correct machine. Then S4Grz will still work, but its arithmetical interpretations can vary; FP2: I do periphrases to talk about it. It is a confusing notion (cf Chalmers delusion). Mathematically it needs bimodal logics (or just G handled with care); TP: will correspond to the G and G* logic of arithmetical reference, including self-reference. Of course the dissociation of the corresponding logics into G and G* (and the non-dissociation of the 1 person logic S4Grz = S4Grz*, is a key phenomenon which is forced by the incompleteness phenomenon. G corresponds to the provable self-referential statements and G* will correspond to the true self-referential statements. That the set of true statements minus the set of provable statements (that is G* \ G) is not empty is due to Godel incompleteness. But there are other hypostases (person pov): the 0-person pov (More or less Nagel's pov from nowhere) which can be just arithmetical truth with the comp. hyp. It plays the role of the neoplatonist ONE in the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus's hypostases. Then there is the matter or 1-plural-pov where matter becomes apparent ... I will try to present a roadmap tomorrow or the day after. In the meantime you could consult my SANE paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/ SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html You can also download the UDA slides for reference to its 8 steps presentation. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Not yet the roadmap (was: Are First Person prime?)
Bruno Marchal wrote: FP2: I do periphrases to talk about it. It is a confusing notion (cf Chalmers delusion). Mathematically it needs bimodal logics (or just G handled with care); Bruno Thanks for the summary, I'll look out for the roadmap. I'd just like to clarify the role of FP2 above: Where FP1i is an individual first-person-as-instantiated, FP2 is its analog in what I've termed the 'shareable knowledge base' (SKB) that is part of the structure of FP1i. The reason I make this distinction is that when I make some unqualified reference simply to 'Bruno', it is not thereby clear whether this is meant to indicate 'FP2 Bruno' - i.e the representation you or I have of 'Bruno' in the SKB - or 'FP1 Bruno', the unique entity to which my FP2 analog refers. In inter-personal dialogue, this can become really confusing because one party may be conceptualising in an FP2-manner - i.e. thinking in a 'naturalistic' way purely in terms of the FP2 representation of the world and its embedded FP2 representations of first persons - when the other (usually me, I must confess) is thinking in an FP1-manner - i.e. extrapolating from the FP2 representations to their FP1 referents. Such confusion may be implicated in 'Chalmers' delusion' and other puzzles. I say something about this in my comments on your earlier posts. To be consistent, what I'm calling FP2 should be split along the lines of FP1 into: FP2g - representations in the SKB of FP1g FP2i - representations in the SKB of FP1i Does the above clarification make a difference? David Le 07-août-06, à 22:12, David Nyman a écrit : 1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context 2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation (which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical level) 3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a unique entity. 4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to structure-demarcating-an-entity OK, I copy this in some file so as to be able to come back on it later. If I comment it here, before the roadmap-summary, it will be confusing. Still, before I send the roadmap I give the correspondence for those who have followed your posts and remember my earlier summaries. FP1g will most probably correspond to the time/knowledge modal logic S4Grz; FP1i will not be explicitly treated, but can correspond to any particular relative implementation of a self-referentially correct machine. Then S4Grz will still work, but its arithmetical interpretations can vary; FP2: I do periphrases to talk about it. It is a confusing notion (cf Chalmers delusion). Mathematically it needs bimodal logics (or just G handled with care); TP: will correspond to the G and G* logic of arithmetical reference, including self-reference. Of course the dissociation of the corresponding logics into G and G* (and the non-dissociation of the 1 person logic S4Grz = S4Grz*, is a key phenomenon which is forced by the incompleteness phenomenon. G corresponds to the provable self-referential statements and G* will correspond to the true self-referential statements. That the set of true statements minus the set of provable statements (that is G* \ G) is not empty is due to Godel incompleteness. But there are other hypostases (person pov): the 0-person pov (More or less Nagel's pov from nowhere) which can be just arithmetical truth with the comp. hyp. It plays the role of the neoplatonist ONE in the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus's hypostases. Then there is the matter or 1-plural-pov where matter becomes apparent ... I will try to present a roadmap tomorrow or the day after. In the meantime you could consult my SANE paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/ SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html You can also download the UDA slides for reference to its 8 steps presentation. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: I'll try to nail this here. I take 'ontology' to refer to issues of existence or being, where 'epistemology' refers to knowledge, or 'what and how we know'. When I say that our 'ontology' is manifest, I'm claiming (perhaps a little more cautiously than Descartes): 'I am that which experiences here'. I take these to be an ontological continuum or set of equivalences, not properties: I -experience - here. For reasons of economy, I see no need to postulate any other ontological status. What about all the stuff that appears, subjectively , to be not-me ? If I ignore it, I am not making full use of my only epistemologial resource. If I treat is as 1st-personal as well as third-personal, I am overcomplicating things. Hi Peter I'd like to be really careful here to avoid getting into some of the same loops that so frustrated Alan on the FOR list! I may well be dead wrong in what I'm claiming, but at least I'd like us both to be clear on precisely what in fact this is. Firstly, my overall enterprise is to arrive at some general description of things that relies on as few explanatory entities as possible. Now, IMO we cannot avoid taking first person into account - I find I can't begin to have an intelligible discussion with anyone who doesn't accept this (not you clearly). I don't even know what you mean by first person. You seem to think that the boundraries of the self are given by secondary, non-fundamental structures and properties, likewise qualia. From this, if first person is to be a given, the simplest approach is to explore whether, ontologically speaking, we could take it to be the sole given, and my project has been to see where this leads. One of the difficulties has been to pin down the language to distinguish the different meanings associated with the term 'first person', so I've attempted to define certain usages (which I'm happy at any time to abandon for better ones). These are: 1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context 2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation (which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical level) 3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a unique entity. 4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to structure-demarcating-an-entity Later on in the reply to Bruno from which you quote, and in some of the earlier posts, I make the point that starting from such a generalised or undifferentiated first person context we can see that certain sorts of structural differentiation can create delimited zones within the whole. Some of these zones take the form of individual first persons (FP1i). Why shoukdn't FP1i be the most primitive 1st-person, arising from 0-personality ? Within each FP1i person so constituted exists a 'set of capabilities' and a 'structural model of the world'. Which part of the FP1i acts as 'perceiver' and which 'perceptual model' is simply an aspect of function-from-structure. It happens to be the former that has the organisation for representing information and self-reporting, so it's the one that gets to enjoy 'experience'. Within the structural model of the world - our only means of representing, and through 'downloading', sharing information with other first persons - there will of course be regions that we variously label 'self' (e.g. 'my arm') or 'other' (e.g. Peter Jones'). The latter, I presume, would be an example of what you call 'stuff that appears, subjectively , to be not-me'. Of course I agree that 'If I ignore it, I am not making full use of my only epistemologial resource'. So, I don't ignore it. However, you go on: 'If I treat is as 1st-personal as well as third-personal, I am overcomplicating things'. My response to this is two-fold. First, of course, it is simply not the case that my representation of 'Peter Jones' is the same as its presumed referent in the world 'Peter Jones'. My assumption is that it is informationally connected with this referent, and to an extent co-varies with it, but it is well for me to remember that such representations are my reponsibility and not yours. But more fundamentally, and this is why I recapitulated my overall project at the outset, the intention is to simplify, not complicate. My representation of 'Peter Jones' is a part of my subjectivity, and it is a part I label 'third person' to distinguish it from 'self', an evolutionarily useful distinction. All of that is structural and therefore seconfary to any prime substance. Peter Jones in the world I take to be another first person entity (FP1i) that derives this status in virtue of being another delimited zone, appropriately structured, within FP1g, the single ontological context. Outside of my subjective model of the world,
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by first person. Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what I mean by first person'! However, I'll have another go. I'm concerned to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes a lot of confusion: 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. My speculation is that both of the above arise through specific sorts of differentiation of an axiomatically FP1 context (FP1g). My reason for this speculation is to simplify the ontological assumptions. If our existential context is FP1 then any zone within it is also FP1 and consequently, when structured into FP1i persons, yields the direct experience with which we all claim familiarity. I have been at pains to point out that the nature and content of experience are a function of such structure, and we shouldn't think in terms of 'conscious rocks' or whatever. Having established such an FP1 context, we can then go on to show that FP2 and third person (TP) are simply other zones, not themselves organised for self-experience/ self-reporting, that are categorised in specific ways for specific purposes. They are not novel ontological states. You seem to think that the boundraries of the self are given by secondary, non-fundamental structures and properties, likewise qualia. This is a good point. However, it prompts me to deny that the structures you refer to are 'secondary'. In claiming the FP1 context to be 'primitive', I'm saying that it is irreducible. We have to begin somewhere. Likewise, in relying on 'differentiation' of this context (and here I'm designedly agnostic about whether this 'differentiation' resolves into comp, strings, or whatever) I'm also claiming the independent irreducibility of primitive differentiation. I've discussed this in one of my replies to Bruno in this thread. Clearly the undifferentiated FP1g context can yield no experience since thus conceived it can have no 'content', either 'perceiver' or 'what-is-perceived'. So it must be differentiated. Now it seems to me that such a basic notion of differentiation (prior to any schematisation into fundamental-object-of-the-month) is primitive and irreducible, not to say semantically paradoxical (since an undifferentiated whole that is the sum of everything cannot in logic rely on symmetry-breaking from any source whatsoever). Such apparent paradoxicality is a good test of 'primitiveness'. Both primitives are required, because without the 'whole', the mutual transmutability of all phenomena is incomprehensible, and without the 'part', no phenomena can arise at all. Consequently the differentiation process, and the structures to which it gives rise, are as fundamental as the context itself. As to 'qualia', I'd like to put it as follows. In my account of things, our existence within the FP1g context is what gives us our purchase on the (rest of the) world, what enables us to 'grasp it'. Whatever we perceive, we do so in terms of our existence in this form. Such direct access, what we sometimes call 'experience', is by this token both incorrigible, and literally indescribable. To take one of the favourite examples, the 'experience of red', this is something which we know by 'direct grasp', and as such it takes its place within our 'shareable knowledge base', or SKB. But we cannot 'describe' (i.e. reduce) this direct experience, even to ourselves. What we can do is to refer to it ostensively - to 'point' to it - and to relate it to other elements within the SKB. This puts us on precisely the same footing as the other members of the FP1i community with whom we can share the SKB. So IMO 'qualia' are an attribute of the FP2-type modelling of the SKB. You know what I mean by the term because we can both 'point' to parts of the SKB that in our view possess this attribute. But the 'redness-of-red' is the medium, the 'means whereby', we grasp some element of the world directly, and is in itself not transmissible - it's not part of the SKB information content, it's the *medium* of the SKB (and everything else). In this direct FP1 aspect 'red' is a fundamental structure based on a primitive context with a primitive process of differentiation. Why shoukdn't FP1i be the most primitive 1st-person, arising from 0-personality ? It depends what you want 0-personality to mean. Of course I don't claim that FP1g has 'personality' in the FP1i sense of a single individual point-of-view. What I'm claiming is that both have the same ontological status, and since when we come to the
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by "first person". David Nyman wrote: Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what I mean by first person'! However, I'll have another go. I'm concerned to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes a lot of confusion: 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. Here is an explanation more grounded in Physics: The concept of "first person" comes directly from the Everett manyworlds, Schoedinger cat experiment and the quantum suicide (thought) experiment. In a quantum suicide the subject of the experiment does not see himself dying. He can only see himself continuing living along a branch of the manyworld in which his experiment went awry. His perception is first person. Witnesses to the experiment are likely to see the subject die and their point of view is third person. Thus first person and third person imply some kind of "relativity" contingent on the observer's own existence. More generally, one can assume that the laws of physics themselves are contingent on the observer -ie. the world is being destroyed every nanoseconds or faster when it diverges into MW branches not supporting life. - the only worlds we can observe are those worlds upholding those physical laws supporting life. According to this hypothesis our primary perception of the world is first person. Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence is not contingent on our observation. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by first person. Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what I mean by first person'! Haven't I been saying that all along. However, I'll have another go. I'm concerned to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes a lot of confusion: 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. A sense of 1st person that cannot possibly be more fundamental than a person. And persons are not fundamental 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. Or whose presumed referent is just a person. My speculation is that both of the above arise through specific sorts of differentiation of an axiomatically FP1 context (FP1g). FP1 depend on a particular kind of structure, a person, with a particular kind of mental apparatus allowing it to have such a thing as a point of view. How could FP1-ness be more fundamental than those structures and apparatuses ? My reason for this speculation is to simplify the ontological assumptions. If our existential context What is an existential context ? is FP1 then any zone within it is also FP1 and consequently, when structured into FP1i persons, yields the direct experience with which we all claim familiarity. I have been at pains to point out that the nature and content of experience are a function of such structure, and we shouldn't think in terms of 'conscious rocks' or whatever. Having established such an FP1 context, we can then go on to show that FP2 and third person (TP) are simply other zones, not themselves organised for self-experience/ self-reporting, that are categorised in specific ways for specific purposes. They are not novel ontological states. If 3rdP zones are 3rdP because of the way they are organised, the 1stP zones are 1stP becasueof the way they are organised. The fundamental situation, absent variation in organsation, is surely 0-personal. You seem to think that the boundraries of the self are given by secondary, non-fundamental structures and properties, likewise qualia. This is a good point. However, it prompts me to deny that the structures you refer to are 'secondary'. How can structures fail to be secondary ? Surely whatever they are constructed out is primary ? In claiming the FP1 context to be 'primitive', I'm saying that it is irreducible. An irreducible structure or an irreducible non-structure ? How can you have an irreducible structure ? How can you hav e a person without a structure ? We have to begin somewhere. Indeed. But why not begin with something simpler than a person ? Likewise, in relying on 'differentiation' of this context (and here I'm designedly agnostic about whether this 'differentiation' resolves into comp, strings, or whatever) A much graver question is whether you can have personhod without differentiation, and first-personhood without personhood. I'm also claiming the independent irreducibility of primitive differentiation. I've discussed this in one of my replies to Bruno in this thread. Clearly the undifferentiated FP1g context can yield no experience since thus conceived it can have no 'content', either 'perceiver' or 'what-is-perceived'. So it must be differentiated. Assuming that it is 1st-personal. Dropping that assumption allows you to state the more intuitive conlusion that differentiation a plurality are not fundamental. (That is, it allows you to explain the complex in terms of the simple, rather than the complex) Now it seems to me that such a basic notion of differentiation (prior to any schematisation into fundamental-object-of-the-month) is primitive and irreducible, not to say semantically paradoxical (since an undifferentiated whole that is the sum of everything cannot in logic rely on symmetry-breaking from any source whatsoever). Err. Hmm. Whatever. I still think that if you are not reducing the complex to the simple, you are not really *explaining*. Such apparent paradoxicality is a good test of 'primitiveness'. Both primitives are required, Huh ? What's the other one ? because without the 'whole', the mutual transmutability of all phenomena is incomprehensible, and without the 'part', no phenomena can arise at all. Consequently the differentiation process, and the structures to which it gives rise, are as fundamental as the context itself. You've lost me. As to 'qualia', I'd like to put it as follows. In my account of things, our existence within the FP1g context is what gives us our purchase on the (rest of the) world, what enables
Re: Are First Person prime?
George Levy wrote: Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. Hi George I think I agree with this. It could correspond with what I'm trying to model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as: First person perception of the world comes about when our own observation and existence are mutually contingent Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence is not contingent on our observation. Now here I'm not so clear. I understand what you mean in terms of the quantum suicide. The observers observe the deceased version of the suicide and he does not, but here surely it is *their* observations that are relevant, and these are first person by your definition. The suicide doesn't get to have any further 'observations' on this branch - not because the ontology of his dead body has magically changed out of FP1, but because the 'observational activity' within his first-personal domain has shut down. To make this perhaps intuitively clearer, suppose it turns out that although he is definitively 'dead' by the medical standards of the observers, Mr Spock from Star Trek turns up and resuscitates him with advanced technology. In this case, he starts to 'observe' again, but once more we need posit no change of ontology. In sum, I'm not clear what sort of observation is *not* contingent on our existence, except someone else's observation, and so far as I can see this is always first person by your definition. Do you simply mean to define any observation not involving ourselves as 'third person' from our point-of-view? OK but I don't see where it gets us. We appear to agree that all observations are first person from the point-of-view of the observer, IMO in virtue of instantiation in a primitive first person context (FP1g). All representations of such observations in the 'shareable knowledge base' (SKB) of an FP1i person are likewise instantiated in this context with the rest of his model of the world, and are flexibly metaphorised as 'third' (TP) or 'first' person (but importantly in this latter case FP2, as I discuss below - the representation of 'my arm' is not my arm). An example of a flexible re-metaphorisation is that I may shift the representation of 'my arm' from FP2 to TP if it is amputated. Thus third person in my schema refers exclusively to the relata comprising the content of a first person observation (i.e. one that is contingent on our existence). Consequently all observations entail third person relata, but both the observations and the relata are exclusively instantiated in a first person context. The structure of the context *comprises* the third person relational model, which through inter-personal communication (instantiation of the SKB) is thus mutually interrogable on a precisely equal epistemological footing by ourselves or others. This is the third person world which is the content of our experience and discourse, and its referential correspondence with the remainder of the FP1g context could be modelled semantically as a network of co-varying nodes. Those 'nodes' modelled within the SKB as other 'first persons' I term FP2i to crucially distinguish them from embodied FP1i first persons. FP2i are thus co-varying third person analogs of embodied or instantiated first persons. I believe that terminological confusion around these issues leads directly to many conceptual problems. More generally, one can assume that the laws of physics themselves are contingent on the observer -ie. the world is being destroyed every nanoseconds or faster when it diverges into MW branches not supporting life. - the only worlds we can observe are those worlds upholding those physical laws supporting life. Do you mean: The observer is contingent on the laws of physics (i.e. there can be observation only where the laws of physics permit this)? According to this hypothesis our primary perception of the world is first person. I agree that perception is first person, and as I have already said I don't understand what could be meant by an observation not contingent on our existence, except that it is some other observer's (first person) observation. However I'm not sure that your hypothesis replaces my schema. What you appear to be saying is that we can't observe situations where either we're not present or alive to observe (but in either case someone else could be observing), or situations which in their nature cannot sustain observers (in which case nobody is observing). I would agree with all of this, but I would like you to comment further on the implications for the basic ontology of existence per se - e.g. what you consider 'real' as opposed to metaphorical distinctions of ontology, which is what my schema attempts to address. David 1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by first person. David Nyman wrote: Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: (PS could you write *less* next time ? I find tha the more you write, the less I understand!) I sympathise! However, I'm not sure how much further we're destined to get with this particular dialogue. Each time we have another go I think I see where we're going past each other, and I attempt to re-cast what I'm saying to address this - hence the prolixity, which frustrates me probably as much as it does you! On this occasion, I'll say simply this: whilst of course not unconscious of other treatments of these issues, particularly those addressing the physical or computational issues, there's always seemed to me to be something philosophically fishy about how the 'first person' is supposed to just 'turn up' in a situation which is fundamentally something else - a world fundamentally composed of impersonal 'things'. I'm convinced this puzzles and confuses others too, leading to IMO pseudo-problems like 'intelligent zombies', and pseudo-solutions like dualism. So it occurred to me: supposing one were to think of the world not as a collection of 'things' (or as I think physics teaches us a 'field' differentiated into apparently individual 'things') but as a 'big person' (or a big personal field, differentiated into apparently individual persons). I'm sorry if this sounds like Teletubbies, but I'm not going to deploy my jargon this time! We're here because the 'big person' is here and we're a part of him (her/ us?). Now this 'big person' would have to be conscious in parts, and unconscious in other parts, but it then ocurred to me that this is *exactly* analogous to our own situation: we are indeed conscious in parts and at times, and unconscious in other parts and at other times. The distinction seems to arise from local strucure and function. Everything else really follows from this, and personally I've found that thinking in this way dissolves the sort of conceptual confusions that I've mentioned - same structure, same function, same first personhood (no zombies, no dualism). The rest of course, is the infamous 'easy problem', on which I have no particular purchase. Now that I've put it in this I hope disarmingly naive way, you may wish to request clarification on any point, or you may feel that you simply disagree, or aren't interested. As ever, I'd be pleased to hear from you. David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by first person. Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what I mean by first person'! Haven't I been saying that all along. However, I'll have another go. I'm concerned to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes a lot of confusion: 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. A sense of 1st person that cannot possibly be more fundamental than a person. And persons are not fundamental 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. Or whose presumed referent is just a person. My speculation is that both of the above arise through specific sorts of differentiation of an axiomatically FP1 context (FP1g). FP1 depend on a particular kind of structure, a person, with a particular kind of mental apparatus allowing it to have such a thing as a point of view. How could FP1-ness be more fundamental than those structures and apparatuses ? My reason for this speculation is to simplify the ontological assumptions. If our existential context What is an existential context ? is FP1 then any zone within it is also FP1 and consequently, when structured into FP1i persons, yields the direct experience with which we all claim familiarity. I have been at pains to point out that the nature and content of experience are a function of such structure, and we shouldn't think in terms of 'conscious rocks' or whatever. Having established such an FP1 context, we can then go on to show that FP2 and third person (TP) are simply other zones, not themselves organised for self-experience/ self-reporting, that are categorised in specific ways for specific purposes. They are not novel ontological states. If 3rdP zones are 3rdP because of the way they are organised, the 1stP zones are 1stP becasueof the way they are organised. The fundamental situation, absent variation in organsation, is surely 0-personal. You seem to think that the boundraries of the self are given by secondary, non-fundamental structures and properties, likewise qualia. This is a good point. However, it prompts me to deny that the structures you refer to are 'secondary'.
RE: Are First Person prime?
Why is everyone talking about abstract computation? Of _course_ 1st person is prime = Has primacy in description of the universe. Being a portion of any structure (ME) trying to model the structure (the UNIVERSE) from within it (ME as scientist inside/part of the universe) is intrinsically and innately presented with that which is _not_ the structure of ME (NOT ME). This applies at all scales (eg ME = an atom, ME = a galaxy). An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a portion of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will see the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of X, the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not that of 'being' a quantity N. The only computation going on around us is literally the universe. WE are computations within it. We can only ever acquire data about it from the perspective of being in it. Maybe you're not talking about the same universe as me. We're trying to get to grips with our universe, yes? I don't get it. Then again I seem not to get a lot. :-) Colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
1Z wrote: It is only directly manifest inasmuch as it how the brain seems to itself. That does not make it ontologically fundamental. What is epistemologically basic -- subjective expereince -- is ontologically very complex and very far from basic. A lot of philosophy goes into the weeds when it confuses epistemic prioirty with ontological priority. Peter On re-perusing your comments, there is one specific issue I would like to tackle here. When you say 'it is how the brain seems to itself', you are of course deploying a third person analog of 'a brain' that you and I can hold in common, which is how we are able to communicate about it. This analog is not itself 'a brain', but something that refers to 'a brain-in-the-world', and I'd be content, for the sake of this argument, to take this brain-in-the-world to be, for example 'me'. Now, if I find myself to be equivalent, broadly, to this brain-in-the-world, then these must share a common ontology, and *some* ontology must be logically prior to *any* epistemology - what doesn't exist can't know. So if the equivalence 'me=this-brain-in-the-world' is to be in a position to *know* anything from a first person position, logically it must first *be* a person. Rather than 'confusing' ontological with epistemological priority, I'm claiming that any epistemological capability must entail some prior ontology: 'To know, first I must be'. I assume that when you (rightly IMO) say that epistomology is 'ontologically complex', the aspect of ontology you have in mind is structural/ functional. But my point is that *all this has to take place somewhere*, and the 'somewhere' is what I've been calling the first-person field or context, analogous to (and possibly logically coterminous with) the physical field or context. It may be that we can simply agree to call this the 0-personal context, without loss, if we can agree on the entailments of this. My general sense, oddly, is that we could agree, but what has been going wrong is that I've been trying to make explicit in some way what is intended to be 'understood' in standard discourse in terms of implicit assumptions. The problem with this IMO is that in practice not everyone shares the same implicit assumptions - hence confusion. Unfortunately, the unfamiliar semantics of explicitness seem often to cause even more confusion - but I enjoy the attempt, in a weird masochistic sort of way! David David Nyman wrote: 1Z wrote: I don't even know what you mean by first person. Peter It's a bit late in the day perhaps to tell me you 'don't even know what I mean by first person'! Haven't I been saying that all along. However, I'll have another go. I'm concerned to distinguish two basic meanings, which failing to specify IMO causes a lot of confusion: 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. A sense of 1st person that cannot possibly be more fundamental than a person. And persons are not fundamental 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. Or whose presumed referent is just a person. My speculation is that both of the above arise through specific sorts of differentiation of an axiomatically FP1 context (FP1g). FP1 depend on a particular kind of structure, a person, with a particular kind of mental apparatus allowing it to have such a thing as a point of view. How could FP1-ness be more fundamental than those structures and apparatuses ? My reason for this speculation is to simplify the ontological assumptions. If our existential context What is an existential context ? is FP1 then any zone within it is also FP1 and consequently, when structured into FP1i persons, yields the direct experience with which we all claim familiarity. I have been at pains to point out that the nature and content of experience are a function of such structure, and we shouldn't think in terms of 'conscious rocks' or whatever. Having established such an FP1 context, we can then go on to show that FP2 and third person (TP) are simply other zones, not themselves organised for self-experience/ self-reporting, that are categorised in specific ways for specific purposes. They are not novel ontological states. If 3rdP zones are 3rdP because of the way they are organised, the 1stP zones are 1stP becasueof the way they are organised. The fundamental situation, absent variation in organsation, is surely 0-personal. You seem to think that the boundraries of the self are given by secondary, non-fundamental structures and properties, likewise qualia. This is a good point.
Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Hales wrote: Of _course_ 1st person is prime = Has primacy in description of the universe. Being a portion of any structure (ME) trying to model the structure (the UNIVERSE) from within it (ME as scientist inside/part of the universe) is intrinsically and innately presented with that which is _not_ the structure of ME (NOT ME). This applies at all scales (eg ME = an atom, ME = a galaxy). The only computation going on around us is literally the universe. WE are computations within it. We can only ever acquire data about it from the perspective of being in it. Very well put IMO. We could discuss the details of the computational schema (or Bruno could anyway), but broadly, yes. An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a portion of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will see the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of X, the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not that of 'being' a quantity N. Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely relational 'program-level' view? Maybe you're not talking about the same universe as me. We're trying to get to grips with our universe, yes? I don't get it. Then again I seem not to get a lot. :-) You get it pretty well IMO. David Maybe you're not talking about the same universe as me. We're trying to get to grips with our universe, yes? I don't get it. Then again I seem not to get a lot. :-) Why is everyone talking about abstract computation? Of _course_ 1st person is prime = Has primacy in description of the universe. Being a portion of any structure (ME) trying to model the structure (the UNIVERSE) from within it (ME as scientist inside/part of the universe) is intrinsically and innately presented with that which is _not_ the structure of ME (NOT ME). This applies at all scales (eg ME = an atom, ME = a galaxy). An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a portion of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will see the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of X, the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not that of 'being' a quantity N. The only computation going on around us is literally the universe. WE are computations within it. We can only ever acquire data about it from the perspective of being in it. Maybe you're not talking about the same universe as me. We're trying to get to grips with our universe, yes? I don't get it. Then again I seem not to get a lot. :-) Colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman:
snip
An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a
portion
of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will
see
the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of
X,
the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer
holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not
that of 'being' a quantity N.
Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather
than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of
hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely
relational 'program-level' view?
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption. I'd say
that universe literally is a relational construct and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie. There's no such
'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there are
such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is that
the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated lumpy
'thingness' is rather pervasive.
Perhaps this:
Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a circle
(for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a computation
of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness, it instantiates
'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being the
'stuff' (1st person) and the behaviour 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' (3rd
person). Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st person
perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play acting.
The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the beholder.
Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd person
not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that there
is no such thing as a 'third person'. What you have is a communicable 1st
person perspective that yet another 'first person perspective' can find if
it looks. No-one ever has a 'third person' perspective. Ernest Nagel named a
book after it: 'the view from nowhere'. If 3rd person does not exist, then
1st person is all there is left, isn't it?
Colin Hales
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Re: Are First Person prime?
Colin Hales wrote:
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption. I'd say
that universe literally is a relational construct and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie. There's no such
'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there are
such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is that
the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated lumpy
'thingness' is rather pervasive.
Agreed, I think. 'Hardware' or 'substrate' are ultimately relational
aspects of the computation, but possibly experientially relevant in
some circumstances.
Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st person
perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play acting.
The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the beholder.
Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd person
not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that there
is no such thing as a 'third person'. What you have is a communicable 1st
person perspective that yet another 'first person perspective' can find if
it looks. No-one ever has a 'third person' perspective. Ernest Nagel named a
book after it: 'the view from nowhere'. If 3rd person does not exist, then
1st person is all there is left, isn't it?
This is broadly what I've been attempting to present in my various
posts in this thread, although IMO you have suceeded in summarising it
much more succintly. I would be interested in your comments on this,
and in George's and Bruno's view of your own presentation of this
position.
David
David Nyman:
snip
An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of a
portion
of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE) will
see
the universe as NOT COMPUTER, not some function of the machinations of
X,
the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a computer
holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a computer, not
that of 'being' a quantity N.
Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather
than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of
hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely
relational 'program-level' view?
Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption. I'd say
that universe literally is a relational construct and that it's appearance
as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie. There's no such
'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there are
such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is that
the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated lumpy
'thingness' is rather pervasive.
Perhaps this:
Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a circle
(for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a computation
of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness, it instantiates
'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being the
'stuff' (1st person) and the behaviour 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' (3rd
person). Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st person
perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play acting.
The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the beholder.
Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd person
not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that there
is no such thing as a 'third person'. What you have is a communicable 1st
person perspective that yet another 'first person perspective' can find if
it looks. No-one ever has a 'third person' perspective. Ernest Nagel named a
book after it: 'the view from nowhere'. If 3rd person does not exist, then
1st person is all there is left, isn't it?
Colin Hales
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Re: Are First Person prime?
David Nyman wrote: George Levy wrote: Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. Hi George I think I agree with this. It could correspond with what I'm trying to model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as: First person perception of the world comes about when our own observation and existence are mutually contingent Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence is not contingent on our observation. Now here I'm not so clear. In sum, I'm not clear what sort of observation is *not* contingent on our existence, except someone else's observation, and so far as I can see this is always first person by your definition. Do you simply mean to define any observation not involving ourselves as 'third person' from our point-of-view? Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. George --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Are First Person prime?
Le 05-août-06, à 17:03, David Nyman a écrit :
Hi Bruno
I think you're right about the complexity. It's because at this stage
I'm just trying to discover whether this is a distinction that any of
us think is true or useful, so I'm deliberately (but perhaps not always
helpfully alas) using a variety of terms in the attempt to get my
meaning across (you will recall the difficulties this caused in the FOR
group). However, even 'vaguely' is a start, so I'll count it as a
success!
All right. (I hope you realize that you are very ambitious, but then
that is how we learn).
To make my own summary, I think my key points are:
1) I take some sort of 'first person', in the direct sense I've termed
'FP1', to be primitive because IMO this establishes our 'manifest'
ontology (i.e. that given to us in direct experience)
My terminological problem here is that experience and knowledge
are usually put in the epistemology instead of ontology. Of course I
know that you (and George, perhaps Stephen and Lee) would like to make
primitive the first person notion(s) ... or the first persons
themselves ?
To be sure I have some problem to interpret this.
without either
dualism, or 'emergence' from the third person (which IMO is
incoherent). This amounts to saying that any situation or context
which is able to manifest the direct experience of 'I' is in some
fundamental sense 'I all the way down'.
This could make sense, but in many more than one way given the point
above.
2) However, I don't by this token believe that such a 'global I' (FP1g)
is a 'person' with individual experiential content. The reason is that
FP1g is undifferentiated, and such differentiation is what IMO
demarcates 'perceivers' and their 'perceptual models'. A conceptual
model might be a network where 'persons' are nodes that co-vary, by
sharing information, with other parts of the network to which they are
energetically connected. These nodes are then what I have termed FP1i.
This makes sense, except that with comp, by UDA, you will have to
(re)define entirely energetically connected by the coherence
conditions on the notions of person. Perhaps you could wait I say more
on this in my own future summary-roadmap which I have promise to Tom
and George.
3) About the details of differentiation schemas (comp, physics,
whatever) I'm deliberately agnostic, because my key point is simply to
propose the emergence of 'persons' from the contrast between a seamless
'context' and its differentiated 'content'.
That looks like a description of emergence of 1-person from 3-persons,
unless you define context and 'differentiation exclusively from your
primary 1-person notion.
I take such persons to
have a 'dyadic' structure ('perceiver' + 'perceptual model') that is
directly experienced, and elements of such direct experience are also
what we call 'third person' when 'read' as information.
We can talk in a third person manner about first person notions. But
some care is needed for not falling in Chalmers delusion who forces
him to accept some universal first person telepathy, so as to be able
to be at two places at once from a first person point of view. With
comp this is just impossible.
I do, as you
know, hold certain opinions about the equivalence properties of
experience, but they are not IMO critical in establishing this more
fundamental point.
4) A consequence of the foregoing is that such experiential content can
be 'experienced' (or *is* experience) but not 'known', in the sense of
'if p is true'.
Here I prefer to simplify and to treat sentences like I experience p
by I know p. And keeping added nuances only when it is obligatory.
This is because experience is 'incorrigible', and
consequently is not open to falsification.
So at least we agree on the main axiom of standard knowledge theory.
This is capture by a formula like Kp - p: meaning If I know p then
p is true. We can know only true proposition. It is conform with the
traditional use of the verb to know. Nobody says John knew that (5 +
4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error. We say instead John
believed (5 + 4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error.
'Knowing' is then an
emergent aspect of the 'third' person - experience read as information.
A key point is that this applies equally to the 'self' as it does to
others, since both are in the same position vis-a-vis the 'shareable
knowledge base' (SKB) that IMO is the basis of 'consensual reality'.
My point here is that the relation of both 'self' and 'others' to
'knowledge' consists of indicating and manipulating parts of the SKB.
'Experience' is the 'means whereby' we grasp this communicable base,
and is consequently itself not communicable.
I'm not sure what you mean. As far as I understand it, it seems to
contradict what you say above.
5) Finally, I think that many conceptual problems come from confusing
the SKB with
