Re: MGA 3
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:39:34AM +, Michael Rosefield wrote: This distinction between physicalism and materialism, with materialism allowing for features to emerge, it sounds to me like a join-the-dots puzzle - the physical substrate provides the dots, but the supervening system also contains lines - abstract structures implied by but not contained within the system implementing it. But does that not mean that this also implies further possible layers to the underlying reality? That no matter how many turtles you go down, there's always more turtles to come? I don't think it implies it, but it is certainly possible. Emergence is possible with just two incommensurate levels. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 09:43:47AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. In what sense are they emergent? They emerge from what? They emerge from the underlying physics (or chemistry, or whatever the syntactic layer is). Supervenience is AFAICT nothing other than the concept of emergence applied to consciousness. In many respects it could be considered to be synonymous. This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I don't see why. When I state the supervenience thesis, I explain that the type of supervenience does not play any role, be it a causal relation or an epiphenomenon. In your Lille thesis (sorry I still haven't read your Brussels thesis) you say at the end of section 4.4.1 that SUP-PHYS supposes at minimum a concrete physical world. I don't see how this follows at all from the concept of supervenience, but I accept that it is necessary for (naive) physicalism. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). I don' really understand. If such argument is correct, how could classical logic not be quantum like. The problem of the white rabbits is that they are consistent. Sorry, to be clear - the white rabbits themselves are consistent, and also also quite rare (ie improbable). However they also tend to come in equal and opposite (ie contradictory) forms so when combined contribute to the measure of a non-magical world. That is information destructve phenomena. As for logic, each individual observer sees a world according to classical logic. Only by quantifying over multiple observers does quantum logic come into play. This is a key point I make on page 219 of my book. I'm sorry I haven't found the best way to express the argument yet - it really is quite subtle. I know Youness had difficulties with this aspect as well. I apologise - I have been speaking in coded sentences which require a deal of unpacking if you are unfamiliar with the concepts. But I'm in good company here... -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 3
This distinction between physicalism and materialism, with materialism allowing for features to emerge, it sounds to me like a join-the-dots puzzle - the physical substrate provides the dots, but the supervening system also contains lines - abstract structures implied by but not contained within the system implementing it. But does that not mean that this also implies further possible layers to the underlying reality? That no matter how many turtles you go down, there's always more turtles to come? -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/12/7 Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 03:32:53PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Abram Demski wrote:
Bruno,
Thanks for the references.
You are welcome.
ps- it is final exam crunch time, so I haven't been checking email so
much as usual... I may get around to more detailed replies et cetera
this weekend or next week.
With pleasure.
Best,
Bruno
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
On 07 Dec 2008, at 06:19, Abram Demski wrote:
Bruno,
Yes, I think there is a big difference between making an argument
more
detailed and making it more understandable. They can go together or
be
opposed. So a version of the argument targeted at my complaint might
not be good at all pedagogically...
I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to
which
the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to
most
transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is
introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that
magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance.
My particular brand of magic appears to be a requirement of
counterfactual/causal structure that reflects the
counterfactual/causal structure of (abstract) computation.
Sometimes I think I should first explain what a computation is. I
take it
in the sense of theoretical computer science, a computation is
always define
relatively to a universal computation from outside, and an infinity
of
universal computations from inside. This asks for a bit of computer
science.
But there is not really abstract computation, there are always
relative
computation (both with comp and Everett QM). They are always concrete
relatively to the universal machine which execute them. The
starting point
in no important (for our fundamental concerns), you can take number
with
addition and multiplication, or lambda terms with abstraction and
application.
Stathis has
pointed out some possible ways to show such ideas incoherent (which I
am not completely skeptical of, despite my arguments).
I appreciate.
Since this type
of theory is the type that matches my personal intuition, MGA will
feel empty to me until such alternatives are explicitly dealt a
killing blow (after which the rest is obvious, since I intuitively
feel the contradiction in versions of COMP+MAT that don't require
counterfactuals).
Understanding UD(1...7) could perhaps help you to figure out what
happens
when we abandon the physical supervenience thesis, and embrace what
remains,
if keeping comp, that is the comp supervenience. It will explain
how the
physical laws have to emerge and why we believe (quasi-correctly)
in brains.
Of course, as you say, you'd be in a hard spot if you were required
to
deal with every various intuition that anybody had... but, for what
it's worth, that is mine.
I respect your intuition and appreciate the kind attitude. My
feeling is
that if front of very hard problems we have to be open to the fact
that we
could be surprised and that truth could be counterintuitive. The
incompleteness phenomena, from Godel and Lob, are surprising and
counterintuitive, and in the empirical world the SWE, whatever
interpretation we find more plausible, is always rather
counterintuitive
too.
I interpret the self-referentially correct scientist M by the
logic of
Godel's provability predicates beweisbar_M. But the intuitive
knower, the
first person, is modelled (or defined) by the Theatetus trick: the
machine M
knows p in case beweisbar_M('p') and p. Although extensionally
equivalent,
their are intensionally different. They prove the same arithmetical
propositions, but they obey different logics. This is enough for
showing
that the first person associated with the self-referentially correct
scientist will already disbelieve the comp hypothesis or find it very
doubtful. We are near a paradox: the correct machine cannot know or
believe
their are machine. No doubt comp will appear counterintuitive for
them. I
know it is a sort of trap/ the solution consists in admitting that
comp
needs a strong act of faith, and I try to put light on the
consequences for
a machine, when she makes the bet.
The best reference on the self-reference logics are
Boolos, G. (1979). The unprovability of consistency. Cambridge
University
Press, London.Boolos, G. (1993). The Logic of Provability. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.Smoryński, P. (1985). Self-Reference
and Modal
Logic. Springer Verlag, New York.Smullyan, R. (1987). Forever
Undecided.
Knopf, New York.
The last one is a recreative book, not so simple, and rather quick
in the
heart of the matter chapter. Smullyan wrote many lovely books,
recreative
and technical on that theme.
The bible, imo, is Martin Davis book The undecidable which
contains some
of the original papers by Gödel, Church, Kleene, Post and indeed
the most
key starting points of the parts of
Re: MGA 3
Bruno,
Thanks for the references.
--Abram
ps- it is final exam crunch time, so I haven't been checking email so
much as usual... I may get around to more detailed replies et cetera
this weekend or next week.
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 07 Dec 2008, at 06:19, Abram Demski wrote:
Bruno,
Yes, I think there is a big difference between making an argument more
detailed and making it more understandable. They can go together or be
opposed. So a version of the argument targeted at my complaint might
not be good at all pedagogically...
I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which
the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most
transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is
introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that
magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance.
My particular brand of magic appears to be a requirement of
counterfactual/causal structure that reflects the
counterfactual/causal structure of (abstract) computation.
Sometimes I think I should first explain what a computation is. I take it
in the sense of theoretical computer science, a computation is always define
relatively to a universal computation from outside, and an infinity of
universal computations from inside. This asks for a bit of computer science.
But there is not really abstract computation, there are always relative
computation (both with comp and Everett QM). They are always concrete
relatively to the universal machine which execute them. The starting point
in no important (for our fundamental concerns), you can take number with
addition and multiplication, or lambda terms with abstraction and
application.
Stathis has
pointed out some possible ways to show such ideas incoherent (which I
am not completely skeptical of, despite my arguments).
I appreciate.
Since this type
of theory is the type that matches my personal intuition, MGA will
feel empty to me until such alternatives are explicitly dealt a
killing blow (after which the rest is obvious, since I intuitively
feel the contradiction in versions of COMP+MAT that don't require
counterfactuals).
Understanding UD(1...7) could perhaps help you to figure out what happens
when we abandon the physical supervenience thesis, and embrace what remains,
if keeping comp, that is the comp supervenience. It will explain how the
physical laws have to emerge and why we believe (quasi-correctly) in brains.
Of course, as you say, you'd be in a hard spot if you were required to
deal with every various intuition that anybody had... but, for what
it's worth, that is mine.
I respect your intuition and appreciate the kind attitude. My feeling is
that if front of very hard problems we have to be open to the fact that we
could be surprised and that truth could be counterintuitive. The
incompleteness phenomena, from Godel and Lob, are surprising and
counterintuitive, and in the empirical world the SWE, whatever
interpretation we find more plausible, is always rather counterintuitive
too.
I interpret the self-referentially correct scientist M by the logic of
Godel's provability predicates beweisbar_M. But the intuitive knower, the
first person, is modelled (or defined) by the Theatetus trick: the machine M
knows p in case beweisbar_M('p') and p. Although extensionally equivalent,
their are intensionally different. They prove the same arithmetical
propositions, but they obey different logics. This is enough for showing
that the first person associated with the self-referentially correct
scientist will already disbelieve the comp hypothesis or find it very
doubtful. We are near a paradox: the correct machine cannot know or believe
their are machine. No doubt comp will appear counterintuitive for them. I
know it is a sort of trap/ the solution consists in admitting that comp
needs a strong act of faith, and I try to put light on the consequences for
a machine, when she makes the bet.
The best reference on the self-reference logics are
Boolos, G. (1979). The unprovability of consistency. Cambridge University
Press, London.Boolos, G. (1993). The Logic of Provability. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.Smoryński, P. (1985). Self-Reference and Modal
Logic. Springer Verlag, New York.Smullyan, R. (1987). Forever Undecided.
Knopf, New York.
The last one is a recreative book, not so simple, and rather quick in the
heart of the matter chapter. Smullyan wrote many lovely books, recreative
and technical on that theme.
The bible, imo, is Martin Davis book The undecidable which contains some
of the original papers by Gödel, Church, Kleene, Post and indeed the most
key starting points of the parts of theoretical computer science we are
confonted to. It has been reedited by Dover.
Bruno
Other references here:
Re: MGA 3
On 08 Dec 2008, at 00:59, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 03:32:53PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. In what sense are they emergent? They emerge from what? This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I don't see why. When I state the supervenience thesis, I explain that the type of supervenience does not play any role, be it a causal relation or an epiphenomenon. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). I don' really understand. If such argument is correct, how could classical logic not be quantum like. The problem of the white rabbits is that they are consistent. Your explanation would make the world quantum or not independently of the degree of independence of the computational histories. Observation would not make a logic classical, as it is the case in QM. 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: MGA 3
On 07 Dec 2008, at 06:19, Abram Demski wrote:
Bruno,
Yes, I think there is a big difference between making an argument more
detailed and making it more understandable. They can go together or be
opposed. So a version of the argument targeted at my complaint might
not be good at all pedagogically...
I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to
which
the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to
most
transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is
introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that
magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance.
My particular brand of magic appears to be a requirement of
counterfactual/causal structure that reflects the
counterfactual/causal structure of (abstract) computation.
Sometimes I think I should first explain what a computation is. I
take it in the sense of theoretical computer science, a computation is
always define relatively to a universal computation from outside, and
an infinity of universal computations from inside. This asks for a bit
of computer science. But there is not really abstract computation,
there are always relative computation (both with comp and Everett QM).
They are always concrete relatively to the universal machine which
execute them. The starting point in no important (for our fundamental
concerns), you can take number with addition and multiplication, or
lambda terms with abstraction and application.
Stathis has
pointed out some possible ways to show such ideas incoherent (which I
am not completely skeptical of, despite my arguments).
I appreciate.
Since this type
of theory is the type that matches my personal intuition, MGA will
feel empty to me until such alternatives are explicitly dealt a
killing blow (after which the rest is obvious, since I intuitively
feel the contradiction in versions of COMP+MAT that don't require
counterfactuals).
Understanding UD(1...7) could perhaps help you to figure out what
happens when we abandon the physical supervenience thesis, and embrace
what remains, if keeping comp, that is the comp supervenience. It will
explain how the physical laws have to emerge and why we believe (quasi-
correctly) in brains.
Of course, as you say, you'd be in a hard spot if you were required to
deal with every various intuition that anybody had... but, for what
it's worth, that is mine.
I respect your intuition and appreciate the kind attitude. My feeling
is that if front of very hard problems we have to be open to the fact
that we could be surprised and that truth could be counterintuitive.
The incompleteness phenomena, from Godel and Lob, are surprising and
counterintuitive, and in the empirical world the SWE, whatever
interpretation we find more plausible, is always rather
counterintuitive too.
I interpret the self-referentially correct scientist M by the logic
of Godel's provability predicates beweisbar_M. But the intuitive
knower, the first person, is modelled (or defined) by the Theatetus
trick: the machine M knows p in case beweisbar_M('p') and p.
Although extensionally equivalent, their are intensionally different.
They prove the same arithmetical propositions, but they obey different
logics. This is enough for showing that the first person associated
with the self-referentially correct scientist will already disbelieve
the comp hypothesis or find it very doubtful. We are near a paradox:
the correct machine cannot know or believe their are machine. No doubt
comp will appear counterintuitive for them. I know it is a sort of
trap/ the solution consists in admitting that comp needs a strong act
of faith, and I try to put light on the consequences for a machine,
when she makes the bet.
The best reference on the self-reference logics are
Boolos, G. (1979). The unprovability of consistency. Cambridge
University Press, London.
Boolos, G. (1993). The Logic of Provability. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Smoryński, P. (1985). Self-Reference and Modal Logic. Springer Verlag,
New York.
Smullyan, R. (1987). Forever Undecided. Knopf, New York.
The last one is a recreative book, not so simple, and rather quick in
the heart of the matter chapter. Smullyan wrote many lovely books,
recreative and technical on that theme.
The bible, imo, is Martin Davis book The undecidable which contains
some of the original papers by Gödel, Church, Kleene, Post and indeed
the most key starting points of the parts of theoretical computer
science we are confonted to. It has been reedited by Dover.
Bruno
Other references here:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/lillethesis/these/node79.html#SECTION00130
--Abram
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Le 05-déc.-08, à 22:11, Abram Demski a écrit :
Bruno,
Perhaps all I am saying is that you need to state more explicitly
Re: MGA 3
On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 10:06:30AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: Perhaps, but the whole point is that remains to be justify. It is *the* problem. If we assume comp, then we have to justify this. No doubt little programs play a key role, but the bigger one too, unless some destructive probability phenomenon occur. Now, interviewing the universal machine gives indeed a shadow of explanation of why such destructive phenomenon do occur indeed from the first person (plural) points of view of self-observing machine. I mainly agree with what you want, but we have to explain it. Bruno Destructive phenomena do occur. To see this, realise that an infinite set of histories will correspond to a given logical statement. Two inconsistent statements can be combined disjunctively (A or B), and their conjunction is false. Such a disjunction corresponds to the union of the two sets of histories consistent with each statement. The intersection of these sets of histories is, of course, empty. So the measure of the histories consistent with A or B is now just given by the sum of the measures of the two individual statements. Since the information is given by the negative logarithm of these measures, we see that the information of A or B is less than that of either A or B taken separately. Information has been destroyed by taking the inconsistent statements together. It is this triangle inequality nature of information that gives rise to the vector space structure in quantum mechanics. -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 03:32:53PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno Michael Lockwood distinguishes between materialism (consciousness supervenes on the physical world) and physicalism (the physical world suffices to explain everything). The difference between the two is that in physicalism, consciousness (indeed any emergent phenomenon) is mere epiphenomena, a computational convenience, but not necessary for explanation, whereas in non-physicalist materialism, there are emergent phenomena that are not explainable in terms of the underlying physics, even though supervenience holds. This has been argued in the famous paper by Philip Anderson. One very obvious distinction between the two positions is that strong emergence is possible in materialism, but strictly forbidden by physicalism. An example I give of strong emergence in my book is the strong anthropic principle. So - I'm convinced your argument works to show the contradiction between COMP and physicalism, but not so the more general materialism. I think you have confirmed this in some of your previous responses to me in this thread. Which is just as well. AFAICT, supervenience is the only thing preventing the Occam catastrophe. We don't live in a magical world, because such a world (assuming COMP) would have so many contradictory statements that we'd disappear in a puff of destructive logic! (reference to my previous posting about destructive phenomena). -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Le 05-déc.-08, à 20:51, Abram Demski a écrit :
Bruno,
Are you asserting this based on published findings concerning
provability logic? If so, I would be very interested in references. If
not, then your results obviously seem publishable :).
I have published this in french a long time ago, but then I have
discovered that it has been publishe before by Montague and Kaplan (see
also Thomason). It is related to the fact that Knowledge, like truth
(cf Tarski), is not definable through an arithmetical predicate. In
conscience and mécanisme I illustrate a similar fact by using
(informally) the Lowenheim Skolem theorems.
Then I think the provability logic put a immense light on this, in a
transparently clear (arithmetical) frame, and that is a big part of my
thesis (the AUDA part).
That is, if you
can show that huge amounts of set theory beyond ZFC emerge from
provability logic in some way...
I guess I have been unclear, because I am not saying that. I am saying
the more obvious (once we are familiar with incompleteness,
indefinissability, uncomputability etc) fact that a machine can infer
true but unprovable (by her) things about herself. It is just that a
provability machine, having furthermore inductive inference abilities
will generate more truth about itself than those which are provable by
the machine.
Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in hearing those ideas.
Those ideas constitute the AUDA part. It is an abstract translation of
UDA in the language of the universal machine. It is needed to extract
constructively physics from computer science. I only get the
propositional physics (which is a billionth of real physics, yet I
got both the communicable physical logic and the uncommunicable
physical logic, that is both the quanta and the qualia. In that sense
it is already more than usual physics, which (methodologically or
not) put the qualia and its subject under the rug.
Bruno
--Abram
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as
seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as
element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is
counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I am not sure. In my opinion, to have a platonia capable of describing
the first person views emerging from the UD entire work, even the
whole of Cantor Paradise will be too little. Even big cardinals (far
bigger than 2^(aleph_0)) will be like too constrained shoes. Actually
I believe that the first person views raised through the deployment
just escape the whole of human conceivable mathematics. It is big. But
it is also structured. It could even be structured as a person. I
don't know.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Yes the 3-Platonia can be very little, once we assume comp. But the
first view inside could be so big that eventually all notion of 1-
Platonia will happen to be inconsistent. It is for sure unameable (in
the best case). I discussed this a long time ago with George Levy: the
first person plenitude is big, very big, incredibly big. Nothing can
expressed or give an idea of that bigness.
At some point I will explain that the divine intellect of a lobian
machine as simple as Peano-Arithmetic is really far bigger than the
God of Peano-Arithmetic. I know it is bizarre (and a bit too
technical for being addressed right now I guess).
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: MGA 3
Le 05-déc.-08, à 22:11, Abram Demski a écrit : Bruno, Perhaps all I am saying is that you need to state more explicitly the assumptions about the connection between 1st and 3rd person, in both MEC and MAT. Simply taking them to be the general ideas that you take them to be does not obviously justify the argument. I don't see why nor how. The first person notions are defined in the three first steps of the UDA. Wait I come back on this in the discussion with Kim perhaps. In AUDA I define the first person by the knower, and I use the classical definition proposed by Theaetetus in the Theaetetus of Plato. Keep in mind that you arrived when I was explaining the real last step of an already long argument. Of course you may be right, and I would really appreciate any improvements. But making things more precise could also be a red herring sometimes, or be very confusing pedagogically, like with the easy 1004 fallacy which can obviously crop here. When I defended the thesis in France, it was already a work resulting from 30 years of discussions with open minded physicists, engineers, philosophers and mathematicians, and I have learned that what seems obvious for one of them is not for the others. I don't think there is anything controversial in my work. I got academical problems in Brussels for not having find an original result (but then I think they did not read the work). Pedagogical difficulties stem from the intrinsical difficulty of the mind body problem, and from the technical abyss between logicians and physicists to cite only them. It is more easy to collide two protons at the speed of light (minus epsilon) than to arrange an appointment between mathematical logicians and mathematical physicists (except perhaps nowadays on quantum computing issues thankfully). Furthermore, stating the assumptions more clearly will make it more clear where the contradiction is coming from, and thus which versions of MEC and MAT the argument applies to. I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno --Abram On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 04 Dec 2008, at 15:58, Abram Demski wrote: PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) A little bit more commentary may be in order then... I think my point may be halfway between pedagogical and serious... What I am saying is that people will come to the argument with some vague idea of which computations (or which physical entities) they pick out as conscious. They will compare this to the various hypotheses that come along during the argument-- MAT, MEC, MAT + MEC, Lucky Alice is conscious, Lucky Alice is not conscious, et cetera... These notions are necessarily 3rd-person in nature. It seems like there is a problem there. Your argument is designed to talk about 1st-person phenomena. The whole problem consists, assuming hypotheses, in relating 1-views with 3-views. In UDA, the 1-views are approximated by 1-discourses (personal diary notes, memories in the brain, ...). But I do rely on the minimal intuition needed to give sense to the willingness of saying yes to a digitalist surgeon, and the believe in a comp survival, or a belief in the unchanged feeling of my consciousness in such annihilation- (re)creation experiences. If a 1st-person-perspective is a sort of structure (computational and/or physical), what type of structure is it? The surprise will be: there are none. The 1-views of a machine will appears to be already not expressible by the machine. The first and third God have no name. Think about Tarski theorem in the comp context. A sound machine cannot define the whole notion of truth about me. If we define it in terms of behavior only, then a recording is fine. We certainly avoid the trap of behaviorism. You can see this as a weakness, or as the full strong originality of comp, as I define it. We give some sense, albeit undefined, to the word consciousness apart from any behavior. But to reason we have to assume some relation between consciousness and possible discourses (by machines). If we define it in terms of inner workings, then a recording is probably not fine, but we introduce magical dependence on things that shouldn't matter to us... ie, we should not care if we are interacting with a perfectly orchestrated recording, so long as to us the result is the same. It seems like this is independent of the differences between pure-comp / comp+mat. This is not yet quite clear for me. Perhaps, if you are patient enough, you will be able to
Re: MGA 3
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2008/12/6 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The causal structure of a recording still looks far different from the causal structure of a person that happens to follow a recording and also happens to be wired to a machine that will kill them if they deviate. Or, even, correct them if they deviate. (Let's go with that so that I can't point out the simplistic difference a recording will not die if some external force causes it to deviate.) 1. Realistic malfunctions of a machine playing a recording are far different from realistic malfunctions of the person-machine-combo. The person inherits the possible malfunctions of the machine, *plus* malfunctions in which the machine fails to modify the person's behavior to match the recording. (A malfunction can be defined in terms of cause-effect counterfactuals in two ways: first, if we think that cause/effect is somewhat probabilistic, we will think that any machine will occasionally malfunction; second, varying external factors can cause malfunctions.) 2. Even during normal functioning, the cause/effect structure is very different; the person-combo will have a lot of extra structure, since it has a functioning brain and a corrective mechanism, neither needed for the recording. Also-- the level of the correction matters quite a bit I think. If only muscle actions are being corrected, the person seems obviously conscious-- lots of computations ( corresponding causal structure) is still going on.. If each neuron is corrected, this is not so intuitively obvious. (I suppose my intuition says that the person would lose consciousness when the first correction occurred, though that is silly upon reflection.) Yes, there are these differences, but why should the differences be relevant to the question of whether consciousness occurs or not? And what about the case where the extra machinery that would allow the right sort of causal structure but isn't actually used in a particular situation is temporarily disengaged? It seems to me that everyone contributing to these threads has an intuition about consciousness, then works backwards from this: obviously, recordings aren't conscious; now what are the qualities that recordings have which distinguish them from entities that are conscious?. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this method, but it is possible to reach an impasse when the different parties have different intuitions. Exactly so. Consciousness is probably not the unified thing that we intuitively assume anyway. There was an article in the newspaper today that Henry Molaison died. He had lived some 50yrs with profound amnesia after an operation on his brain to cure severe seizures. He apparently could not form new memories. But that only applied to verbal, i.e. conscious memories. He could learn new tasks in the sense that he improved with practice even though if asked he would say he'd never done the task before. 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 [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: MGA 3
Stathis, Yes, you are right. My main point is to show that such a point of view is possible, not to actually argue for it... but I am largely just asserting my intuitions nonetheless. --Abram On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 4:05 AM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/12/6 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The causal structure of a recording still looks far different from the causal structure of a person that happens to follow a recording and also happens to be wired to a machine that will kill them if they deviate. Or, even, correct them if they deviate. (Let's go with that so that I can't point out the simplistic difference a recording will not die if some external force causes it to deviate.) 1. Realistic malfunctions of a machine playing a recording are far different from realistic malfunctions of the person-machine-combo. The person inherits the possible malfunctions of the machine, *plus* malfunctions in which the machine fails to modify the person's behavior to match the recording. (A malfunction can be defined in terms of cause-effect counterfactuals in two ways: first, if we think that cause/effect is somewhat probabilistic, we will think that any machine will occasionally malfunction; second, varying external factors can cause malfunctions.) 2. Even during normal functioning, the cause/effect structure is very different; the person-combo will have a lot of extra structure, since it has a functioning brain and a corrective mechanism, neither needed for the recording. Also-- the level of the correction matters quite a bit I think. If only muscle actions are being corrected, the person seems obviously conscious-- lots of computations ( corresponding causal structure) is still going on.. If each neuron is corrected, this is not so intuitively obvious. (I suppose my intuition says that the person would lose consciousness when the first correction occurred, though that is silly upon reflection.) Yes, there are these differences, but why should the differences be relevant to the question of whether consciousness occurs or not? And what about the case where the extra machinery that would allow the right sort of causal structure but isn't actually used in a particular situation is temporarily disengaged? It seems to me that everyone contributing to these threads has an intuition about consciousness, then works backwards from this: obviously, recordings aren't conscious; now what are the qualities that recordings have which distinguish them from entities that are conscious?. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this method, but it is possible to reach an impasse when the different parties have different intuitions. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno, Yes, I think there is a big difference between making an argument more detailed and making it more understandable. They can go together or be opposed. So a version of the argument targeted at my complaint might not be good at all pedagogically... I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. My particular brand of magic appears to be a requirement of counterfactual/causal structure that reflects the counterfactual/causal structure of (abstract) computation. Stathis has pointed out some possible ways to show such ideas incoherent (which I am not completely skeptical of, despite my arguments). Since this type of theory is the type that matches my personal intuition, MGA will feel empty to me until such alternatives are explicitly dealt a killing blow (after which the rest is obvious, since I intuitively feel the contradiction in versions of COMP+MAT that don't require counterfactuals). Of course, as you say, you'd be in a hard spot if you were required to deal with every various intuition that anybody had... but, for what it's worth, that is mine. --Abram On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 05-déc.-08, à 22:11, Abram Demski a écrit : Bruno, Perhaps all I am saying is that you need to state more explicitly the assumptions about the connection between 1st and 3rd person, in both MEC and MAT. Simply taking them to be the general ideas that you take them to be does not obviously justify the argument. I don't see why nor how. The first person notions are defined in the three first steps of the UDA. Wait I come back on this in the discussion with Kim perhaps. In AUDA I define the first person by the knower, and I use the classical definition proposed by Theaetetus in the Theaetetus of Plato. Keep in mind that you arrived when I was explaining the real last step of an already long argument. Of course you may be right, and I would really appreciate any improvements. But making things more precise could also be a red herring sometimes, or be very confusing pedagogically, like with the easy 1004 fallacy which can obviously crop here. When I defended the thesis in France, it was already a work resulting from 30 years of discussions with open minded physicists, engineers, philosophers and mathematicians, and I have learned that what seems obvious for one of them is not for the others. I don't think there is anything controversial in my work. I got academical problems in Brussels for not having find an original result (but then I think they did not read the work). Pedagogical difficulties stem from the intrinsical difficulty of the mind body problem, and from the technical abyss between logicians and physicists to cite only them. It is more easy to collide two protons at the speed of light (minus epsilon) than to arrange an appointment between mathematical logicians and mathematical physicists (except perhaps nowadays on quantum computing issues thankfully). Furthermore, stating the assumptions more clearly will make it more clear where the contradiction is coming from, and thus which versions of MEC and MAT the argument applies to. I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno --Abram On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 04 Dec 2008, at 15:58, Abram Demski wrote: PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) A little bit more commentary may be in order then... I think my point may be halfway between pedagogical and serious... What I am saying is that people will come to the argument with some vague idea of which computations (or which physical entities) they pick out as conscious. They will compare this to the various hypotheses that come along during the argument-- MAT, MEC, MAT + MEC, Lucky Alice is conscious, Lucky Alice is not conscious, et cetera... These notions are necessarily 3rd-person in nature. It seems like there is a problem there. Your argument is designed to talk about 1st-person phenomena. The whole problem consists, assuming hypotheses, in relating 1-views with 3-views. In UDA, the 1-views are approximated by 1-discourses (personal diary notes, memories in the brain, ...). But I do rely on the minimal intuition needed to give sense to the willingness of saying yes to a digitalist
Re: MGA 3
Bruno,
Thanks, I will look up those names. If you have the time to reference
specific papers, I would be grateful.
--Abram
On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Le 05-déc.-08, à 20:51, Abram Demski a écrit :
Bruno,
Are you asserting this based on published findings concerning
provability logic? If so, I would be very interested in references. If
not, then your results obviously seem publishable :).
I have published this in french a long time ago, but then I have
discovered that it has been publishe before by Montague and Kaplan (see
also Thomason). It is related to the fact that Knowledge, like truth
(cf Tarski), is not definable through an arithmetical predicate. In
conscience and mécanisme I illustrate a similar fact by using
(informally) the Lowenheim Skolem theorems.
Then I think the provability logic put a immense light on this, in a
transparently clear (arithmetical) frame, and that is a big part of my
thesis (the AUDA part).
That is, if you
can show that huge amounts of set theory beyond ZFC emerge from
provability logic in some way...
I guess I have been unclear, because I am not saying that. I am saying
the more obvious (once we are familiar with incompleteness,
indefinissability, uncomputability etc) fact that a machine can infer
true but unprovable (by her) things about herself. It is just that a
provability machine, having furthermore inductive inference abilities
will generate more truth about itself than those which are provable by
the machine.
Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in hearing those ideas.
Those ideas constitute the AUDA part. It is an abstract translation of
UDA in the language of the universal machine. It is needed to extract
constructively physics from computer science. I only get the
propositional physics (which is a billionth of real physics, yet I
got both the communicable physical logic and the uncommunicable
physical logic, that is both the quanta and the qualia. In that sense
it is already more than usual physics, which (methodologically or
not) put the qualia and its subject under the rug.
Bruno
--Abram
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as
seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as
element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is
counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I am not sure. In my opinion, to have a platonia capable of describing
the first person views emerging from the UD entire work, even the
whole of Cantor Paradise will be too little. Even big cardinals (far
bigger than 2^(aleph_0)) will be like too constrained shoes. Actually
I believe that the first person views raised through the deployment
just escape the whole of human conceivable mathematics. It is big. But
it is also structured. It could even be structured as a person. I
don't know.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Yes the 3-Platonia can be very little, once we assume comp. But the
first view inside could be so big that eventually all notion of 1-
Platonia will happen to be inconsistent. It is for sure unameable (in
the best case). I discussed this a long time ago with George Levy: the
first person plenitude is big, very big, incredibly big. Nothing can
expressed or give an idea of that bigness.
At some point I will explain that the divine intellect of a lobian
machine as simple as Peano-Arithmetic is really far bigger than the
God of Peano-Arithmetic. I know it is bizarre (and a bit too
technical for being addressed right now I guess).
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: MGA 3
Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, Yes, I think there is a big difference between making an argument more detailed and making it more understandable. They can go together or be opposed. So a version of the argument targeted at my complaint might not be good at all pedagogically... I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. My particular brand of magic appears to be a requirement of counterfactual/causal structure that reflects the counterfactual/causal structure of (abstract) computation. Stathis has pointed out some possible ways to show such ideas incoherent (which I am not completely skeptical of, despite my arguments). Since this type of theory is the type that matches my personal intuition, MGA will feel empty to me until such alternatives are explicitly dealt a killing blow (after which the rest is obvious, since I intuitively feel the contradiction in versions of COMP+MAT that don't require counterfactuals). My intuition is similar, except I think it is causality that is necessary, rather than counterfactuals. I find persuasive the argument that the brains potential for dealing with a counterfactual that never occurs cannot have any bearing on consciousnes. After all there are infinitely many counterfactuals that never occur (that's why they're counterfactual) and my brain is no doubt unprepared to deal with most of them. Causality, ISTM, is a physical relation and it is not captured by mathematical or logical relations. That's probably why it has almost disappeared from physics theories, which are highly mathematical. Bruno may think this is invoking magic, like Peter's insistence that existence is contingent. So be it. Brent Of course, as you say, you'd be in a hard spot if you were required to deal with every various intuition that anybody had... but, for what it's worth, that is mine. --Abram On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 05-déc.-08, à 22:11, Abram Demski a écrit : Bruno, Perhaps all I am saying is that you need to state more explicitly the assumptions about the connection between 1st and 3rd person, in both MEC and MAT. Simply taking them to be the general ideas that you take them to be does not obviously justify the argument. I don't see why nor how. The first person notions are defined in the three first steps of the UDA. Wait I come back on this in the discussion with Kim perhaps. In AUDA I define the first person by the knower, and I use the classical definition proposed by Theaetetus in the Theaetetus of Plato. Keep in mind that you arrived when I was explaining the real last step of an already long argument. Of course you may be right, and I would really appreciate any improvements. But making things more precise could also be a red herring sometimes, or be very confusing pedagogically, like with the easy 1004 fallacy which can obviously crop here. When I defended the thesis in France, it was already a work resulting from 30 years of discussions with open minded physicists, engineers, philosophers and mathematicians, and I have learned that what seems obvious for one of them is not for the others. I don't think there is anything controversial in my work. I got academical problems in Brussels for not having find an original result (but then I think they did not read the work). Pedagogical difficulties stem from the intrinsical difficulty of the mind body problem, and from the technical abyss between logicians and physicists to cite only them. It is more easy to collide two protons at the speed of light (minus epsilon) than to arrange an appointment between mathematical logicians and mathematical physicists (except perhaps nowadays on quantum computing issues thankfully). Furthermore, stating the assumptions more clearly will make it more clear where the contradiction is coming from, and thus which versions of MEC and MAT the argument applies to. I would be pleased if you can give me a version of MAT or MEC to which the argument does not apply. For example, the argument applies to most transfinite variant of MEC. It does not apply when some magic is introduced in MAT, and MAT is hard to define in a way to exclude that magic. If you can help, I thank you in advance. Bruno --Abram On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 04 Dec 2008, at 15:58, Abram Demski wrote: PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) A little bit more commentary may be in order then... I think my point may be halfway between pedagogical and serious... What I am saying is
Re: MGA 3
2008/12/1 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Yes, consciousness supervenes on computation, but that computation needs to actually take place (meaning, physically). Otherwise, how could consciousness supervene on it? Now, in order for a computation to be physically instantiated, the physical instantiation needs to satisfy a few properties. One of these properties is clearly some sort of isomorphism between the computation and the physical instantiation: the actual steps of the computation are represented in physical form. A less obvious requirement is that the physical computation needs to have the proper counterfactuals: if some external force were to modify some step in the computation, the computation must progress according to the new computational state (as translated by the isomorphism). So if you destroy the counterfactual behaviour by removing components that are not utilised, you end up with a recording-equivalent, which isn't conscious. But what if you destroy the counterfactual behaviour by another means? For example, if I wear a device that will instantly kill me if I deviate from a particular behaviour, randomly determined by the device from moment to moment, but survive, will my consciousness be diminished as a result? You might say, no, because if the device were not there I would have been able to handle the counterfactuals. But then it might also be argued for the first example that if the unused components had not been removed, the recording-equivalent would also have been able to handle the counterfactuals; and you can make this more concrete by having the extra machinery waiting to be dropped into place in a counterfactual universe. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:50, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:19 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hmmm... It means you have still a little problem with step seven. I wish we share a computable environment, but we cannot decide this at will. I agree we have empirical evidence that here is such (partially) computable environment, and I am willing to say I trust nature for this. Yet, the fact is that to predict my next first person experience I have to take into account ALL computations which exist in the arithmetical platonia or in the universal dovetailing. Bruno, I am with you that none of us can decide which of the infinite number of histories contain/compute us; when I talk about a universe I refer to just a single such history. This is ambiguous. Even the unique history-computation of, let us say, the Everett Universal Wave, contains many (perhaps an infinity) of cosmic histories. There are there as many Jason than there are possible position of your electrons, even for equal energy level, and thus same molecular behavior, so that you cannot discern them, except in term or relative probabilities of (self) measurement outcomes. But then you have many others that we cannot eliminate, because even if you are right in assigning a bigger importance to little programs and their computations, the big programs occurring in the deployment have a role too, mainly due to the impossibility to be aware of delays made by the UD. Without the comp equivalent of random phase annihilating the aberrantly long path, we have to take them into account, a priori. Perhaps you use history to refer only to the computational history that implements the observer's mind where I use it to mean an object which computes the mind of one or more observers in a consistent and fully definable way. It seems to me that we have to take them all into account, or justify why we can throw away the pure aberrant histories. If not, it looks like putting infinities and white rabbits under the rug, by decision. But then we are cheating with respect of taking the digital hypopthesis completely seriously. We could miss a refutation of comp, or important consequences. It seems to me. What I am not clear on with regards to your position is whether or not you believe most observers (if we could locate them in platonia from a 3rd person view) exist in environments larger than their brains, and likely containing numerous other observers or if you believe the mind is the only thing reified by computation and it is meaningless to discuss the environments they perceive because they don't exist. Empirically I am rather sure environments plays a key role, yet, this remains to be proved. Strictly speaking I would say it is an open comp problem. The way I see it, using the example of this physical universe only, it is far more probable for a mind to come about from the self- ordering properties of a universe such as this than for there to be a computation where the mind is an initial condition. The program that implements the physics of this universe is likely to be far smaller than the program that implements our minds, or so my intuition leads me to believe. Perhaps, but the whole point is that remains to be justify. It is *the* problem. If we assume comp, then we have to justify this. No doubt little programs play a key role, but the bigger one too, unless some destructive probability phenomenon occur. Now, interviewing the universal machine gives indeed a shadow of explanation of why such destructive phenomenon do occur indeed from the first person (plural) points of view of self-observing machine. I mainly agree with what you want, but we have to explain it. 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: MGA 3
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as
seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as
element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I am not sure. In my opinion, to have a platonia capable of describing
the first person views emerging from the UD entire work, even the
whole of Cantor Paradise will be too little. Even big cardinals (far
bigger than 2^(aleph_0)) will be like too constrained shoes. Actually
I believe that the first person views raised through the deployment
just escape the whole of human conceivable mathematics. It is big. But
it is also structured. It could even be structured as a person. I
don't know.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Yes the 3-Platonia can be very little, once we assume comp. But the
first view inside could be so big that eventually all notion of 1-
Platonia will happen to be inconsistent. It is for sure unameable (in
the best case). I discussed this a long time ago with George Levy: the
first person plenitude is big, very big, incredibly big. Nothing can
expressed or give an idea of that bigness.
At some point I will explain that the divine intellect of a lobian
machine as simple as Peano-Arithmetic is really far bigger than the
God of Peano-Arithmetic. I know it is bizarre (and a bit too
technical for being addressed right now I guess).
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: MGA 3
On 04 Dec 2008, at 15:58, Abram Demski wrote: PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) A little bit more commentary may be in order then... I think my point may be halfway between pedagogical and serious... What I am saying is that people will come to the argument with some vague idea of which computations (or which physical entities) they pick out as conscious. They will compare this to the various hypotheses that come along during the argument-- MAT, MEC, MAT + MEC, Lucky Alice is conscious, Lucky Alice is not conscious, et cetera... These notions are necessarily 3rd-person in nature. It seems like there is a problem there. Your argument is designed to talk about 1st-person phenomena. The whole problem consists, assuming hypotheses, in relating 1-views with 3-views. In UDA, the 1-views are approximated by 1-discourses (personal diary notes, memories in the brain, ...). But I do rely on the minimal intuition needed to give sense to the willingness of saying yes to a digitalist surgeon, and the believe in a comp survival, or a belief in the unchanged feeling of my consciousness in such annihilation- (re)creation experiences. If a 1st-person-perspective is a sort of structure (computational and/or physical), what type of structure is it? The surprise will be: there are none. The 1-views of a machine will appears to be already not expressible by the machine. The first and third God have no name. Think about Tarski theorem in the comp context. A sound machine cannot define the whole notion of truth about me. If we define it in terms of behavior only, then a recording is fine. We certainly avoid the trap of behaviorism. You can see this as a weakness, or as the full strong originality of comp, as I define it. We give some sense, albeit undefined, to the word consciousness apart from any behavior. But to reason we have to assume some relation between consciousness and possible discourses (by machines). If we define it in terms of inner workings, then a recording is probably not fine, but we introduce magical dependence on things that shouldn't matter to us... ie, we should not care if we are interacting with a perfectly orchestrated recording, so long as to us the result is the same. It seems like this is independent of the differences between pure-comp / comp+mat. This is not yet quite clear for me. Perhaps, if you are patient enough, you will be able to clarify this along the UDA reasoning which I will do slowly with Kim. The key point will be the understanding of the ultimate conclusion: exactly like Everett can be said to justify correctly the phenomenal collapse of the wave, if comp is assumed, we have to justify in a similar way the wave itself. Assuming comp, we put ourself in a position where we have to explain why numbers develops stable and coherent belief in both mind and matter. We can presuppose neither matter, nor mind eventually, except our own consciousness, although even consciousness will eventually be reduced into our believe in 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 [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: MGA 3
Stathis, I think I can get around your objection by pointing out that the structure of counterfactuals is quite different for a recording vs. a full human who is wired to be killed if they deviate from a recording. Someone could fairly easily disarm the killing device, whereas it would be quite difficult to reconstruct the person from the recording (in fact there is not enough information to do so). A related way out would be to point out that all the computational machinery is present in one case (merely disabled), whereas it is totally absent in the other case. --Abram On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 3:05 AM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/12/1 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Yes, consciousness supervenes on computation, but that computation needs to actually take place (meaning, physically). Otherwise, how could consciousness supervene on it? Now, in order for a computation to be physically instantiated, the physical instantiation needs to satisfy a few properties. One of these properties is clearly some sort of isomorphism between the computation and the physical instantiation: the actual steps of the computation are represented in physical form. A less obvious requirement is that the physical computation needs to have the proper counterfactuals: if some external force were to modify some step in the computation, the computation must progress according to the new computational state (as translated by the isomorphism). So if you destroy the counterfactual behaviour by removing components that are not utilised, you end up with a recording-equivalent, which isn't conscious. But what if you destroy the counterfactual behaviour by another means? For example, if I wear a device that will instantly kill me if I deviate from a particular behaviour, randomly determined by the device from moment to moment, but survive, will my consciousness be diminished as a result? You might say, no, because if the device were not there I would have been able to handle the counterfactuals. But then it might also be argued for the first example that if the unused components had not been removed, the recording-equivalent would also have been able to handle the counterfactuals; and you can make this more concrete by having the extra machinery waiting to be dropped into place in a counterfactual universe. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno,
Are you asserting this based on published findings concerning
provability logic? If so, I would be very interested in references. If
not, then your results obviously seem publishable :). That is, if you
can show that huge amounts of set theory beyond ZFC emerge from
provability logic in some way...
Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in hearing those ideas.
--Abram
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as
seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as
element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I am not sure. In my opinion, to have a platonia capable of describing
the first person views emerging from the UD entire work, even the
whole of Cantor Paradise will be too little. Even big cardinals (far
bigger than 2^(aleph_0)) will be like too constrained shoes. Actually
I believe that the first person views raised through the deployment
just escape the whole of human conceivable mathematics. It is big. But
it is also structured. It could even be structured as a person. I
don't know.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Yes the 3-Platonia can be very little, once we assume comp. But the
first view inside could be so big that eventually all notion of 1-
Platonia will happen to be inconsistent. It is for sure unameable (in
the best case). I discussed this a long time ago with George Levy: the
first person plenitude is big, very big, incredibly big. Nothing can
expressed or give an idea of that bigness.
At some point I will explain that the divine intellect of a lobian
machine as simple as Peano-Arithmetic is really far bigger than the
God of Peano-Arithmetic. I know it is bizarre (and a bit too
technical for being addressed right now I guess).
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: MGA 3
2008/12/6 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Stathis, I think I can get around your objection by pointing out that the structure of counterfactuals is quite different for a recording vs. a full human who is wired to be killed if they deviate from a recording. Someone could fairly easily disarm the killing device, whereas it would be quite difficult to reconstruct the person from the recording (in fact there is not enough information to do so). This seems to be getting away from the simple requirement that the computer be able to handle counterfactuals. What if the device were not easy to disarm, but almost impossible to disarm? What if it had tentacles in every neurone, ready to destroy it if it fired at the wrong time? A related way out would be to point out that all the computational machinery is present in one case (merely disabled), whereas it is totally absent in the other case. So you agree that in the case where the extra machinery is waiting to be dropped into place, consciousness results? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Hi Stathis, This seems to be getting away from the simple requirement that the computer be able to handle counterfactuals. What if the device were not easy to disarm, but almost impossible to disarm? What if it had tentacles in every neurone, ready to destroy it if it fired at the wrong time? I do think you have a point there. I began by equating counterfactual structure with cause/effect structure, but now am drifting away from that... So, can I make the point purely talking about causality? I still think the answer may be yes... The causal structure of a recording still looks far different from the causal structure of a person that happens to follow a recording and also happens to be wired to a machine that will kill them if they deviate. Or, even, correct them if they deviate. (Let's go with that so that I can't point out the simplistic difference a recording will not die if some external force causes it to deviate.) 1. Realistic malfunctions of a machine playing a recording are far different from realistic malfunctions of the person-machine-combo. The person inherits the possible malfunctions of the machine, *plus* malfunctions in which the machine fails to modify the person's behavior to match the recording. (A malfunction can be defined in terms of cause-effect counterfactuals in two ways: first, if we think that cause/effect is somewhat probabilistic, we will think that any machine will occasionally malfunction; second, varying external factors can cause malfunctions.) 2. Even during normal functioning, the cause/effect structure is very different; the person-combo will have a lot of extra structure, since it has a functioning brain and a corrective mechanism, neither needed for the recording. Also-- the level of the correction matters quite a bit I think. If only muscle actions are being corrected, the person seems obviously conscious-- lots of computations ( corresponding causal structure) is still going on.. If each neuron is corrected, this is not so intuitively obvious. (I suppose my intuition says that the person would lose consciousness when the first correction occurred, though that is silly upon reflection.) How does that sound? --Abram On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7:58 PM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/12/6 Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Stathis, I think I can get around your objection by pointing out that the structure of counterfactuals is quite different for a recording vs. a full human who is wired to be killed if they deviate from a recording. Someone could fairly easily disarm the killing device, whereas it would be quite difficult to reconstruct the person from the recording (in fact there is not enough information to do so). This seems to be getting away from the simple requirement that the computer be able to handle counterfactuals. What if the device were not easy to disarm, but almost impossible to disarm? What if it had tentacles in every neurone, ready to destroy it if it fired at the wrong time? A related way out would be to point out that all the computational machinery is present in one case (merely disabled), whereas it is totally absent in the other case. So you agree that in the case where the extra machinery is waiting to be dropped into place, consciousness results? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno,
Could you possibly link to the conversation with George Levy you refer
to? I did not find it looking on my own.
--Abram
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 05 Dec 2008, at 03:56, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as
seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as
element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I am not sure. In my opinion, to have a platonia capable of describing
the first person views emerging from the UD entire work, even the
whole of Cantor Paradise will be too little. Even big cardinals (far
bigger than 2^(aleph_0)) will be like too constrained shoes. Actually
I believe that the first person views raised through the deployment
just escape the whole of human conceivable mathematics. It is big. But
it is also structured. It could even be structured as a person. I
don't know.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Yes the 3-Platonia can be very little, once we assume comp. But the
first view inside could be so big that eventually all notion of 1-
Platonia will happen to be inconsistent. It is for sure unameable (in
the best case). I discussed this a long time ago with George Levy: the
first person plenitude is big, very big, incredibly big. Nothing can
expressed or give an idea of that bigness.
At some point I will explain that the divine intellect of a lobian
machine as simple as Peano-Arithmetic is really far bigger than the
God of Peano-Arithmetic. I know it is bizarre (and a bit too
technical for being addressed right now I guess).
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: MGA 3
Hi Jason, Le 03-déc.-08, à 17:20, Jason Resch a écrit : On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and that by virtue of this imposed order, defines relations between particles. Computation depends on relations, be it electrons in silicon, Chinese with radios or a system of beer cans and ping-pong balls; Here you are talking about instantiations of computations relatively to our most probable computations, which have a physical look. But strictly speaking computations are only relation between numbers. Bruno, Thanks for your reply, I am curious what exactly you mean by the most probable computations going through our state if these computations cannot be part of a larger (shared universe) computation. Hmmm... It means you have still a little problem with step seven. I wish we share a computable environment, but we cannot decide this at will. I agree we have empirical evidence that here is such (partially) computable environment, and I am willing to say I trust nature for this. Yet, the fact is that to predict my next first person experience I have to take into account ALL computations which exist in the arithmetical platonia or in the universal dovetailing. Where does the data provided to the senses come from if not from a computation which also includes that of the environment as well? You don't know that. The data and their statistics come from all computational histories going through my state. The game is to take completely seriously the comp hyp, and if it contradicts facts, we will abandon it. But that day has not yet come Until then we have to derive the partial computability of our observable enviroment from a statistic on all computations made by the UD. Also, why does the computation have to be between numbers specifically, They don't. Sometimes I use the combinators. They have to be finite objects, and this comes from the *digital* aspect of the comp. hyp. could a program in the deployment that calculates the evolution of a universe This is something you have to define. If you do it I bet you will find a program equivalent to a universal dovetailer, a bit like Everett universal quantum wave. perform the necessary computations to generate an observer? Sure. The problem is that there will be an infinity of program generating the same observer, in the same state, and the observer cannot know in which computations it belongs. Never? Measurement particularizes, but never get singular. If they can, then it stands other mathematical objects besides pure turing machines and besides the UD could implement computations capable of generating observers. Not really. Those objects are internam construction made by programs relatively to trheir most probable history. I noticed in a previous post of yours you mentioned 'Kleene predicates' as a way of deriving computations from true statements, do you know of any good sources where I could learn more about Kleene predicates? A very good introduction is the book by N.J. Cutland. See the reference in my thesis. There are other books. I will think to make a list with some comments. Actually I really love Kleene's original Introduction to Metamathematics, but the notations used are a bit old fashioned. Hope I am not too short. I am a bit busy today, Best, 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: MGA 3
Brent, I try to single out where you depart from the comp hyp, to focus on the essential. I could add comments later on other paragraphs of your posts. Le 03-déc.-08, à 19:22, Brent Meeker a écrit : But there is causality. The sequence of events in the movie are directly caused by the projector, but they have a causal linkage back to Alice and the part of her environment that is captured in the movie. I see no principled reason to consider only the immediate cause and not refer back further in the chain of causation. If this were true, I don't see why I could say yes to a doctor for an artificial brain. I have to take account of the traceability of all part of the artificial brain. You have a problem with the qua computatio part of the MEC+MAT hypotheses, I think. This is coherent with the fact that you have still some shyness with the step six, if I remember well. They will be opportunity to come back. I have to go now. Bruno PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) 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: MGA 3
PS Abram. I think I will have to meditate a bit longer on your (difficult) post. You may have a point (hopefully only pedagogical :) A little bit more commentary may be in order then... I think my point may be halfway between pedagogical and serious... What I am saying is that people will come to the argument with some vague idea of which computations (or which physical entities) they pick out as conscious. They will compare this to the various hypotheses that come along during the argument-- MAT, MEC, MAT + MEC, Lucky Alice is conscious, Lucky Alice is not conscious, et cetera... These notions are necessarily 3rd-person in nature. It seems like there is a problem there. Your argument is designed to talk about 1st-person phenomena. If a 1st-person-perspective is a sort of structure (computational and/or physical), what type of structure is it? If we define it in terms of behavior only, then a recording is fine. If we define it in terms of inner workings, then a recording is probably not fine, but we introduce magical dependence on things that shouldn't matter to us... ie, we should not care if we are interacting with a perfectly orchestrated recording, so long as to us the result is the same. It seems like this is independent of the differences between pure-comp / comp+mat. --Abram --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:19 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hmmm... It means you have still a little problem with step seven. I wish we share a computable environment, but we cannot decide this at will. I agree we have empirical evidence that here is such (partially) computable environment, and I am willing to say I trust nature for this. Yet, the fact is that to predict my next first person experience I have to take into account ALL computations which exist in the arithmetical platonia or in the universal dovetailing. Bruno, I am with you that none of us can decide which of the infinite number of histories contain/compute us; when I talk about a universe I refer to just a single such history. Perhaps you use history to refer only to the computational history that implements the observer's mind where I use it to mean an object which computes the mind of one or more observers in a consistent and fully definable way. What I am not clear on with regards to your position is whether or not you believe most observers (if we could locate them in platonia from a 3rd person view) exist in environments larger than their brains, and likely containing numerous other observers or if you believe the mind is the only thing reified by computation and it is meaningless to discuss the environments they perceive because they don't exist. The way I see it, using the example of this physical universe only, it is far more probable for a mind to come about from the self-ordering properties of a universe such as this than for there to be a computation where the mind is an initial condition. The program that implements the physics of this universe is likely to be far smaller than the program that implements our minds, or so my intuition leads me to believe. I noticed in a previous post of yours you mentioned 'Kleene predicates' as a way of deriving computations from true statements, do you know of any good sources where I could learn more about Kleene predicates? A very good introduction is the book by N.J. Cutland. See the reference in my thesis. There are other books. I will think to make a list with some comments. Actually I really love Kleene's original Introduction to Metamathematics, but the notations used are a bit old fashioned. Thanks Bruno, I will look into those. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as seen
from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as element
nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is counter-intuitive,
but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the
quasi necessity with formal version of comp).
This point rather depends on what Platonia contains. If it contains
all sets of cardinality 2^{\aleph_0}, then the inside view of the
deployment will be conatained in it.
I do understand that your concept of Platonia (Arithmetic Realism I
believe you call it) is a Kronecker-like God made the integers, all
the rest was made by man, and so what you say would be true of that.
Cheers
--
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au
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Re: MGA 3
Hi Abram, On 02 Dec 2008, at 20:33, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, I am a bit confused. To me, you said Or, you are weakening the physical supervenience thesis by appeal to a notion of causality which seems to me a bit magical, and contrary to the local functionalism of the computationalist. This seems to say that the version of MAT that MGA is targeted at does not include causal requirements. MAT is the usual idea that there is a physical world described through physical laws. Those capture physical causality, generally under the form of differential equations. If there were no causality in physics, the very notion of physical supervenience would not make sense. Nor MEC +MAT, at the start. Sorry if I have been unclear, but I was criticizing only the *magical* causality which is necessary for holding both the physical supervenience thesis and the mechanist hypothesis, like attribution of prescience to the neurons (in MGA 1), or attributing a computational role in inert Material. To Günther, you said: Do you have different definition for MAT? Do you require causal dynamics for MAT? MAT is very general, but indeed it requires the minimum amount of causality so that we can implement a computation in the physical world, if not I don't see how we could talk on physical supervenience. Does the MAT you are talking about include causal requirements or not? Of course. About your other questions-- OK, so now you have to disagree with MGA 1. No problem. But would you still say yes to the mechanist doctor? I don't see how, because now you appeal to something rather magic like influence in real time of inactive material. So long as that inert material preserves the correct counterfactuals, everything is fine. The only reason things seem strange with olympized Alice is because *normally* we do not know in advance which path cause and effect will take for something as intricate as a conscious entity. The air bags in a car are inert in the same way-- many cars never get in a crash, so the air bags remain unused. But since we don't know that ahead of time, we want the air bags. Similarly, when talking to the mechanist doctor, I will not be convinced that a recording will suffice... Me too. But that remark is out of the context of the argument. If I want an artificial brain (MEC) I expect it to handle the counterfactuals, because indeed we don't know things in advance. But in the context of the proof we were in a situation where we did know the things in advance. Suppose that my doctor discovers in my brain some hardware build for managing my behavior only in front of dinosaurs, like old unused subroutine being only relic of the past, then it seems to me that the doctor, in the spirit of mechanist functionalism can decide of dropping those subroutine for building me a cheaper artificial brain. And that is all we need for the argument for going through. Consciousness relies on the computation which always kept the right counterfactuals, and never on their relative implementations which will only change their relative measures. The real question I have to ask to you, Günther and others is this one: does your new supervenience thesis forced the UD to be physically executed in a real universe to get the UDA conclusion? Yes. Then it seems to me you are relying on some magical causality attached to a magical notion of matter. I don't understand how you can still say yes to a doctor with such a notion of mechanism. See above. I would no more even trust a Darwinian brain. Does MGA, even just as a refutation of naïve mat eliminate the use of the concrete UD in UDA? No. (By the way, I have read UDA now, but have refrained from posting a commentary since there has been a great deal of discussion about it on this list and I could just be repeating the comments of others...) Then you can read the answers I have given to the others. It seems to me UDA(1..7) does no more pose any problem, except for those who have decided to not understand, or believes religioulsy in matter and comp. In public forum group you always end up discussing with those who like cutting the hairs. Also: Günther mentioned SMAT, which actually sounds like the CMAT I proposed... so I'll refer to it as SMAT from now on. I am sorry if I have been unclear, but MAT is taken in a very large sense. MAT is the belief in a physical universe obeying physical laws, be it quantum, classical, or whatever. Actually, for a computationalist (especially after UDA+MGA), MAT seems to be just a way to single out one special computations above the others. Kim Jones has convinced me to explain UDA, and the general idea, a new time. It could be an opportunity to let us known your commentaries. To be sure, some mathematicians get more easily the point when I introduce the arithmetical translation of the UDA. You can study it in
Re: MGA 3
On 02 Dec 2008, at 22:24, Brent Meeker wrote: Alice's brain and body are just local stable artifacts belonging to our (most probable) computational history, and making possible for Alice consciousness to differentiate through interactions with us, relatively to us. Bruno OK, that clarifies things and it corresponds with my intuition that consciousness is relative to an environment. I can't seem to answer the question is MG-Alice conscious yes or no, but I can say she is conscious within the movie environment, but not within our environment. This is similar to Stathis asking about consciousness within a rock. We could say the thermal motions of atoms within the rock may compute consciousness, but it is a consciousness within the rock environment, not in ours. Your consciousness is related to all computations going through your (current) brain states. I have not find any reason to think that a rock implement some consciousness, but if this is the case you have to take it into account for the general measure, given that in this case the UD will generate the rock computations too. Now, I don't think there is any consciousness in the movie, even it is generated in the UD. There is just no computation or relevant physical causality linkable to a computation in a movie. So consciousness can never be ascribed to anything physical, and thus we have reduce the mind body problem into the comp body problem; how does the appearance of matter emerge from the (immaterial) execution of the platonic deployment. 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: MGA 3
On 03 Dec 2008, at 05:58, Jason Resch wrote: On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All this is a bit complex because we have to take well into account the distinction between A computation in the real world, A description of a computation in the real world, And then most importantly: A computation in Platonia A description of a computation in Platonia. I argue that consciousness supervenes on computation in Platonia. Even in Platonia consciousness does not supervene on description of the computation, even if those description are 100% precise and correct Bruno, this is interesting and I have had similar thoughts of late regarding along this vein. The trouble is, I don't see how the real world can be differentiated from Platonia. It is hard to answer this. I think that after UDA+MGA the real (physical) world is the sum on all computations going through my state or our sharable comp state. With comp, Platonia, 3-Platonia (to be sure), can be represented by a tiny part of arithmetic, or just by the deployment of the UD. The physical world will be an inside construction made by inside machines/numbers. It will appear that such an inside view will be much bigger than 3-platonia. Like in Skolem paradox, platonia can be rather little from outside, and *very* big from inside. Just as the UD contains instances of itself, and hence computations within computations, I guess you mean the deployment. UD is the finite program which generates the deployment. At some point we will have to be cautious not identifying those two things. But it is OK. And indeed, the deployment contains an infinity of deployment which themselves contain an infinity off deployment ... can't mathematical objects contain mathematical objects? Some can. Exemples: well, the deployment :) But many fractals, universal or not, etc. Actually they are more included in themselves than element of themselves. But this is a bit math tech. If so then aren't our actions in this universe just as mathematcally or computationally fundamental as any other instantiation in platonia? No more after UDA+MGA, or UDA(1...8). Our consciousness is attached' to all (relative) instantiation in Platonia. If you make the usual static picture of the deployment, a big 3-dimensional or 2-dimensional cone, each of our states appears infinitely in a quasi dense way on its border. The notion of this universe does no even make a clear sense, we can talk only about our most probable histories. And, by doing measurement, we never select one history among an infinity, we always select an infinity of histories among an infinity of histories. Platonia might be highly interconnected even fractal and so performing a computation in this universe in a sense hasn't created anything new, but created a link to other identical things which have always been there, and in the timelessness of platonia one can't say which came before, or which is the original or most real. Yes. Moreover, we are never singular. I think this is the startling part which is nevertheless confirmed by QM (Everett). After wrestling with block time, the MGA, and computationalism I'm starting to wonder how computations are implemented in a 4 dimensional and static mathematical object. Why do you want to do that? We have to do the contrary: extract the physics and the math-physics, from the much simpler (yet non trivial) notions of computation and of computation as seen from inside. To be sure, it is not even obvious that a notion of block-physical-universe will remain possible (I have no idea on this). Our sharable dreams glue well locally, but it is an open question to know if the gluing can be made global and define an objective general physical reality. The best I can come up with is that the mathematical structure is defined by some equation or equations, I really don't know. I expect that the mathematical structure, as seen from inside, is so big that Platonia cannot have it neither as element nor as subpart. (Ah, well, I am aware that this is counter-intuitive, but here mathematical logic can help to see the consistency, and the quasi necessity with formal version of comp). and that by virtue of this imposed order, defines relations between particles. Computation depends on relations, be it electrons in silicon, Chinese with radios or a system of beer cans and ping-pong balls; Here you are talking about instantiations of computations relatively to our most probable computations, which have a physical look. But strictly speaking computations are only relation between numbers. from the outside there is little or no indication what is going on is forming consciousness, it is only relative from the inside, and since these relations carry state and information across one of the 4 dimensions
Re: MGA 3
On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and that by virtue of this imposed order, defines relations between particles. Computation depends on relations, be it electrons in silicon, Chinese with radios or a system of beer cans and ping-pong balls; Here you are talking about instantiations of computations relatively to our most probable computations, which have a physical look. But strictly speaking computations are only relation between numbers. Bruno, Thanks for your reply, I am curious what exactly you mean by the most probable computations going through our state if these computations cannot be part of a larger (shared universe) computation. Where does the data provided to the senses come from if not from a computation which also includes that of the environment as well? Also, why does the computation have to be between numbers specifically, could a program in the deployment that calculates the evolution of a universe perform the necessary computations to generate an observer? If they can, then it stands other mathematical objects besides pure turing machines and besides the UD could implement computations capable of generating observers. I noticed in a previous post of yours you mentioned 'Kleene predicates' as a way of deriving computations from true statements, do you know of any good sources where I could learn more about Kleene predicates? Thanks, Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Abram, On 02 Dec 2008, at 20:33, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, I am a bit confused. To me, you said Or, you are weakening the physical supervenience thesis by appeal to a notion of causality which seems to me a bit magical, and contrary to the local functionalism of the computationalist. This seems to say that the version of MAT that MGA is targeted at does not include causal requirements. MAT is the usual idea that there is a physical world described through physical laws. Those capture physical causality, generally under the form of differential equations. If there were no causality in physics, the very notion of physical supervenience would not make sense. Nor MEC +MAT, at the start. Sorry if I have been unclear, but I was criticizing only the *magical* causality which is necessary for holding both the physical supervenience thesis and the mechanist hypothesis, like attribution of prescience to the neurons (in MGA 1), or attributing a computational role in inert Material. This seems to assume there is causality apart from physical causality, but there is no causality in logic or mathematics (except in a metaphorical, I might say magical, sense). So I don't see that Gunther is relying on anything magical. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 Dec 2008, at 22:24, Brent Meeker wrote: Alice's brain and body are just local stable artifacts belonging to our (most probable) computational history, and making possible for Alice consciousness to differentiate through interactions with us, relatively to us. Bruno OK, that clarifies things and it corresponds with my intuition that consciousness is relative to an environment. I can't seem to answer the question is MG-Alice conscious yes or no, but I can say she is conscious within the movie environment, but not within our environment. This is similar to Stathis asking about consciousness within a rock. We could say the thermal motions of atoms within the rock may compute consciousness, but it is a consciousness within the rock environment, not in ours. Your consciousness is related to all computations going through your (current) brain states. I have not find any reason to think that a rock implement some consciousness, but if this is the case you have to take it into account for the general measure, given that in this case the UD will generate the rock computations too. Now, I don't think there is any consciousness in the movie, even it is generated in the UD. There is just no computation or relevant physical causality linkable to a computation in a movie. But there is causality. The sequence of events in the movie are directly caused by the projector, but they have a causal linkage back to Alice and the part of her environment that is captured in the movie. I see no principled reason to consider only the immediate cause and not refer back further in the chain of causation. So consciousness can never be ascribed to anything physical, Doesn't your argument imply the opposite? Consciousness can only be ascribed to physical things because consciousness is computation and computation requires causal links and causality if a physical relation. Brent and thus we have reduce the mind body problem into the comp body problem; how does the appearance of matter emerge from the (immaterial) execution of the platonic deployment. 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: MGA 3
On 02 Dec 2008, at 01:05, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, It sounds like what you are saying in this reply is that my version of COMP+MAT is consistent, but counter to your intuition (because you cannot see how consciousness could be attached to physical stuff). I have no problem a priori in attaching consciousness to physical stuff. I do have problem when MEC + MAT forces me to attach consciousness to an empty machine (with no physical activity) together with inert material. If this is the case, then it sounds like MGA only works for specific versions of MAT-- say, versions of MAT that claim consciousness hinges only on the matter, not on the causal relationships. On the contrary. I want consciousness related to the causal relationship. But with MEC the causal relationship are in the computations. The thought experiment shows that the physical implementation plays the role of making them able to manifest relatively to us, but are not responsible for their existence. In other words, what Günther called NMAT. So you need a different argument against-- let's call it CMAT, for causal MAT. The olympization argument only works if COMP+CMAT can be shown to imply the removability of inert matter... which I don't think it can, because that inert matter here has a causal role to play in the counterfactuals, and is therefore essential to the physical computation. OK, so now you have to disagree with MGA 1. No problem. But would you still say yes to the mechanist doctor? I don't see how, because now you appeal to something rather magic like influence in real time of inactive material. Or, you are weakening the physical supervenience thesis by appeal to a notion of causality which seems to me a bit magical, and contrary to the local functionalism of the computationalist. The real question I have to ask to you, Günther and others is this one: does your new supervenience thesis forced the UD to be physically executed in a real universe to get the UDA conclusion? Does MGA, even just as a refutation of naïve mat eliminate the use of the concrete UD in UDA? It is true that by weakening MEC or MAT, the reasoning doesn't go through, but it seems to me the conclusion goes with any primitive stuff view of MAT or Matter activity to which we could attach consciousness through causal links. Once you begin to define matter through causal links, and this keeping comp, and linking the experience to those causal relation, perhaps made in other time at other occasion, you are not a long way from the comp supervenience. But if you don't see this, I guess the conversation will continue. 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: MGA 3
On 02 Dec 2008, at 03:33, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a block universe. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have thought. I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t). Stated this way seems to assume that the causal relations between the states are irrelevant, only the states matter. Ah, please, add the delta again (see my previews post). I did wrote (dx,dt), but Anna thought it was infinitesimal. It could be fuzzy deltas or whatever you want. Unless you attach your consciousness, from here and now, to the whole block multiverse, the reasoning will go through, assuming of course that the part of the multiverse, on which you attach your mind, is Turing emulable (MEC). The idea is that consciousness can be created in real time by the physical running of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe). Well we're pretty sure that brains do this. Well, my point is that for believing this, you have to abandon the MEC hypothesis, perhaps in a manner like Searle or Penrose. Consciousness would be the product of some non Turing emulable chemical reactions. But if everything in the brain (or the genralized brain) is turing emulable, then the reasoning (uda+mga) is supposed to explain why consciousness (an immaterial thing) is related only to the computation made by the brain, but not the brain itself nor to its physical activity during the physical implementation. Your locally physical brain just makes higher the probability that your consciousness remains entangled with mine (and others). With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation. I was thinking along the same lines. But then the question is what does capture a computation. Where in the thought experiments, starting with natural Alice and ending with a pictures of Alice's brain states, did we lose computation? Is it important that the sequence be time rather than space or some other order? Is it the loss causal relations or counterfactuality? We lose a computation relatively to us when the computation is not executed by a stable (relatively to us) universal machine nearby, be it a cell, a brain, a natural or artificial universal computer. In the case of the movie, it is no so bad. Consciousness does not supervene on the movie or its projection, but the movie can be used as a backup of Alice's state. We can re-project a frame, of that movie, on a functionally well working Boolean optical graph, and Alice will be back ... with us. Of course the computations themselves, and their many possible differentiations, are already in Platonia (= in the solution of the universal Diophantine equation, in the processing of the UD, or perhaps in the Mandelbrot set). Alice's brain and body are just local stable artifacts belonging to our (most probable) computational history, and making possible for Alice consciousness to differentiate through interactions with us, relatively to us. 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: MGA 3
Hi Günther, On 01 Dec 2008, at 22:53, Günther Greindl wrote: Hi Bruno, but no! Then we wouldn't have a substrate anymore. Oh( That is not true! We still have the projector and the film. We can project the movie in the air or directly in your eyes. Ok I see now where our intuitions differ (always the problem with thought experiment) - but maybe we can clear this up and see where it leads... OK. it is really something people have to meditate. I could have conclude in the absurdity of MAT (with MEC) at MGA 2. It is hard for me to take people seriously when they argue that the consciousness of Alice supervenes on a movie of its brain activity. There is no causality, nor computations, during the *projection* of the movie. If that is how you see MAT (you require causality) - then I would also agree - MGA 2 shows absurdity. Well I require at least a minimum of physical causality to implement physically the computational causality (which incarnates platonic relation existing among numbers). MAT presupposes anything primitively material and causal of course. Remember that I am using Materialism and physicalism (and naturalsim) as synonymous, because the argument is very general. The (naïve) idea is that the brain *does* compute something when you dream, for example, and that it is the physical causality which is responsible for the implementation of the computation. Alice's experience is related to ALL computations going through those states, not to descriptions of those states which can been made and collected in other histories. Locally it makes sense to ascribe *that* consciousness when you have the mean to interpret (through some universal machine) her computational states. That is already part of your theory (UDA and all) (as I understand it), but not included already in COMP or in MAT. Not at all. This could be confusing for those who don't know UDA. Once MEC+MAT is shown to be incompatible, we then chose MEC and thus abandon MAT. (why? just for not going out of the range of my working hypothesis, ok) With MEC, there is no more physical supervenience thesis, on the kind compatible with MEC. But we keep MEC, so we have to continue to related consciousness with the computation, right? We do no more have a notion of physical computation, so we attach consciousness to the computation itself, LIKE it has already been done in the UDA, except that we don't need no more to run the UD. [Consciousness of (x,t)] is never [physical states] at (x,t) For me, the above expresses the essence of (naive) MAT - let's call it NMAT. So, clearly: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And on physical states only! Not on the causal relations of these states (block universe view). You are perhaps taking me too much literally here. It is just difficult, lengthy and confusing to make a precise definition of the physical supervenience which would work for the different views of the universe. The physical supervenience thesis just says that 1) there is a physical universe, 2) it can compute, and consciousness requires some special local computations made *in* that universe. Your argument goes like this: it is: [Consciousness of (x,t)] is always all computational states (in the UD °) corresponding to that experience. (It is an indexical view of reality). And I share it IF we can show that MAT+MEC is inconsistent. But I am not convinced yet. For me, the essence of MEC (COMP) is this: COMP: there is a level at which a person can be substituted at a digital level (we don't have to go down to infinity), and where this digital description is enough to reconsitute this person elsewhere and elsewhen, independent of substrate. NMAT additionally requires that the substrate for COMP be some mysterious substance, and not only a platonic relation. Not so mysterious. It just seems to require some particular computations. The physical one. People are used to think about it in term of waves or particles, or field, geometrical dynamical object. They believe those are particulars (which become mysterious only with comp, but a priori with Mat they are rather natural); My intuition tells me this can't be - we have to drop either MEC or NMAT. But MGA 3, when dropping the boolean gates, violates NMAT, because: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And the physical states relevant where the _states of the boolean graph_ (the movie projector was just the lucky cosmic ray). Do you have different definition for MAT? Do you require causal dynamics for MAT? MAT is very general, but indeed it requires the minimum amount of causality so that we can implement a computation in the physical world, if not I don't see how we could talk on physical supervenience. The problem with NMAT as I define
Re: MGA 3
Bruno, I am a bit confused. To me, you said Or, you are weakening the physical supervenience thesis by appeal to a notion of causality which seems to me a bit magical, and contrary to the local functionalism of the computationalist. This seems to say that the version of MAT that MGA is targeted at does not include causal requirements. To Günther, you said: Do you have different definition for MAT? Do you require causal dynamics for MAT? MAT is very general, but indeed it requires the minimum amount of causality so that we can implement a computation in the physical world, if not I don't see how we could talk on physical supervenience. Does the MAT you are talking about include causal requirements or not? About your other questions-- OK, so now you have to disagree with MGA 1. No problem. But would you still say yes to the mechanist doctor? I don't see how, because now you appeal to something rather magic like influence in real time of inactive material. So long as that inert material preserves the correct counterfactuals, everything is fine. The only reason things seem strange with olympized Alice is because *normally* we do not know in advance which path cause and effect will take for something as intricate as a conscious entity. The air bags in a car are inert in the same way-- many cars never get in a crash, so the air bags remain unused. But since we don't know that ahead of time, we want the air bags. Similarly, when talking to the mechanist doctor, I will not be convinced that a recording will suffice... The real question I have to ask to you, Günther and others is this one: does your new supervenience thesis forced the UD to be physically executed in a real universe to get the UDA conclusion? Yes. Does MGA, even just as a refutation of naïve mat eliminate the use of the concrete UD in UDA? No. (By the way, I have read UDA now, but have refrained from posting a commentary since there has been a great deal of discussion about it on this list and I could just be repeating the comments of others...) Also: Günther mentioned SMAT, which actually sounds like the CMAT I proposed... so I'll refer to it as SMAT from now on. --Abram On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 02 Dec 2008, at 01:05, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, It sounds like what you are saying in this reply is that my version of COMP+MAT is consistent, but counter to your intuition (because you cannot see how consciousness could be attached to physical stuff). I have no problem a priori in attaching consciousness to physical stuff. I do have problem when MEC + MAT forces me to attach consciousness to an empty machine (with no physical activity) together with inert material. If this is the case, then it sounds like MGA only works for specific versions of MAT-- say, versions of MAT that claim consciousness hinges only on the matter, not on the causal relationships. On the contrary. I want consciousness related to the causal relationship. But with MEC the causal relationship are in the computations. The thought experiment shows that the physical implementation plays the role of making them able to manifest relatively to us, but are not responsible for their existence. In other words, what Günther called NMAT. So you need a different argument against-- let's call it CMAT, for causal MAT. The olympization argument only works if COMP+CMAT can be shown to imply the removability of inert matter... which I don't think it can, because that inert matter here has a causal role to play in the counterfactuals, and is therefore essential to the physical computation. OK, so now you have to disagree with MGA 1. No problem. But would you still say yes to the mechanist doctor? I don't see how, because now you appeal to something rather magic like influence in real time of inactive material. Or, you are weakening the physical supervenience thesis by appeal to a notion of causality which seems to me a bit magical, and contrary to the local functionalism of the computationalist. The real question I have to ask to you, Günther and others is this one: does your new supervenience thesis forced the UD to be physically executed in a real universe to get the UDA conclusion? Does MGA, even just as a refutation of naïve mat eliminate the use of the concrete UD in UDA? It is true that by weakening MEC or MAT, the reasoning doesn't go through, but it seems to me the conclusion goes with any primitive stuff view of MAT or Matter activity to which we could attach consciousness through causal links. Once you begin to define matter through causal links, and this keeping comp, and linking the experience to those causal relation, perhaps made in other time at other occasion, you are not a long way from the comp supervenience. But if you don't see this, I guess the conversation will continue. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: MGA 3
Günther, Why does MGA 2 show that SMAT + MEC is inconsistent? The way I see it, SMAT + MEC should say that a recording of Alice does not count as conscious, because it lacks the proper causal structure (or equivalently, the proper counterfactual behavior). --Abram On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Günther Greindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Bruno, but no! Then we wouldn't have a substrate anymore. Oh( That is not true! We still have the projector and the film. We can project the movie in the air or directly in your eyes. Ok I see now where our intuitions differ (always the problem with thought experiment) - but maybe we can clear this up and see where it leads... it is really something people have to meditate. I could have conclude in the absurdity of MAT (with MEC) at MGA 2. It is hard for me to take people seriously when they argue that the consciousness of Alice supervenes on a movie of its brain activity. There is no causality, nor computations, during the *projection* of the movie. If that is how you see MAT (you require causality) - then I would also agree - MGA 2 shows absurdity. Alice's experience is related to ALL computations going through those states, not to descriptions of those states which can been made and collected in other histories. Locally it makes sense to ascribe *that* consciousness when you have the mean to interpret (through some universal machine) her computational states. That is already part of your theory (UDA and all) (as I understand it), but not included already in COMP or in MAT. [Consciousness of (x,t)] is never [physical states] at (x,t) For me, the above expresses the essence of (naive) MAT - let's call it NMAT. So, clearly: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And on physical states only! Not on the causal relations of these states (block universe view). Your argument goes like this: it is: [Consciousness of (x,t)] is always all computational states (in the UD °) corresponding to that experience. (It is an indexical view of reality). And I share it IF we can show that MAT+MEC is inconsistent. But I am not convinced yet. For me, the essence of MEC (COMP) is this: COMP: there is a level at which a person can be substituted at a digital level (we don't have to go down to infinity), and where this digital description is enough to reconsitute this person elsewhere and elsewhen, independent of substrate. NMAT additionally requires that the substrate for COMP be some mysterious substance, and not only a platonic relation. My intuition tells me this can't be - we have to drop either MEC or NMAT. But MGA 3, when dropping the boolean gates, violates NMAT, because: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And the physical states relevant where the _states of the boolean graph_ (the movie projector was just the lucky cosmic ray). Do you have different definition for MAT? Do you require causal dynamics for MAT? The problem with NMAT as I define it raises the issue as in the Putnam paper - does every rock implement every finite state-automaton? Chalmers makes the move to implementation, so introduces causal dynamics. So, sophisticated MAT would probably be: SMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) over a timespan delta(t) _if_ sufficiently complex causal dynamics are at work during this timespan relating the physical states. Then I would say: MGA 2 (already) shows that SMAT+MEC are not compatible. No need for MGA 3. For NMAT+MEC (which is problematic for other reasons) MGA 3 is not convincing. Would you agree with this? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 02 Dec 2008, at 03:33, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a block universe. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have thought. I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t). Stated this way seems to assume that the causal relations between the states are irrelevant, only the states matter. Ah, please, add the delta again (see my previews post). I did wrote (dx,dt), but Anna thought it was infinitesimal. It could be fuzzy deltas or whatever you want. Unless you attach your consciousness, from here and now, to the whole block multiverse, the reasoning will go through, assuming of course that the part of the multiverse, on which you attach your mind, is Turing emulable (MEC). The idea is that consciousness can be created in real time by the physical running of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe). Well we're pretty sure that brains do this. Well, my point is that for believing this, you have to abandon the MEC hypothesis, perhaps in a manner like Searle or Penrose. Consciousness would be the product of some non Turing emulable chemical reactions. But if everything in the brain (or the genralized brain) is turing emulable, then the reasoning (uda+mga) is supposed to explain why consciousness (an immaterial thing) is related only to the computation made by the brain, but not the brain itself nor to its physical activity during the physical implementation. Your locally physical brain just makes higher the probability that your consciousness remains entangled with mine (and others). With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation. I was thinking along the same lines. But then the question is what does capture a computation. Where in the thought experiments, starting with natural Alice and ending with a pictures of Alice's brain states, did we lose computation? Is it important that the sequence be time rather than space or some other order? Is it the loss causal relations or counterfactuality? We lose a computation relatively to us when the computation is not executed by a stable (relatively to us) universal machine nearby, be it a cell, a brain, a natural or artificial universal computer. In the case of the movie, it is no so bad. Consciousness does not supervene on the movie or its projection, but the movie can be used as a backup of Alice's state. We can re-project a frame, of that movie, on a functionally well working Boolean optical graph, and Alice will be back ... with us. Of course the computations themselves, and their many possible differentiations, are already in Platonia (= in the solution of the universal Diophantine equation, in the processing of the UD, or perhaps in the Mandelbrot set). Alice's brain and body are just local stable artifacts belonging to our (most probable) computational history, and making possible for Alice consciousness to differentiate through interactions with us, relatively to us. Bruno OK, that clarifies things and it corresponds with my intuition that consciousness is relative to an environment. I can't seem to answer the question is MG-Alice conscious yes or no, but I can say she is conscious within the movie environment, but not within our environment. This is similar to Stathis asking about consciousness within a rock. We could say the thermal motions of atoms within the rock may compute consciousness, but it is a consciousness within the rock environment, not in ours. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Re: MGA 3
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All this is a bit complex because we have to take well into account the distinction between A computation in the real world, A description of a computation in the real world, And then most importantly: A computation in Platonia A description of a computation in Platonia. I argue that consciousness supervenes on computation in Platonia. Even in Platonia consciousness does not supervene on description of the computation, even if those description are 100% precise and correct Bruno, this is interesting and I have had similar thoughts of late regarding along this vein. The trouble is, I don't see how the real world can be differentiated from Platonia. Just as the UD contains instances of itself, and hence computations within computations, can't mathematical objects contain mathematical objects? If so then aren't our actions in this universe just as mathematcally or computationally fundamental as any other instantiation in platonia? Platonia might be highly interconnected even fractal and so performing a computation in this universe in a sense hasn't created anything new, but created a link to other identical things which have always been there, and in the timelessness of platonia one can't say which came before, or which is the original or most real. After wrestling with block time, the MGA, and computationalism I'm starting to wonder how computations are implemented in a 4 dimensional and static mathematical object. The best I can come up with is that the mathematical structure is defined by some equation or equations, and that by virtue of this imposed order, defines relations between particles. Computation depends on relations, be it electrons in silicon, Chinese with radios or a system of beer cans and ping-pong balls; from the outside there is little or no indication what is going on is forming consciousness, it is only relative from the inside, and since these relations carry state and information across one of the 4 dimensions of the universe we end up with DNA and brains which record and process information in sequence, or so it appears to us being trapped on within this equation defined in platonia. In the case of a movie that is in this physical world, no mathematical equation defines progression between frames and there is no conveyance of information, the alteration of one frame does not affect any other which would not be the case nor possible with a timeless mathematical object. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On 30 Nov 2008, at 19:14, Günther Greindl wrote: Hello Bruno, I must admit you have completely lost me with MGA 3. With MGA 1 and 2, I would say that, with MEC+MAT, also the the projection of the movie (and Lucky Alice in 1) are conscious - because it supervenes on the physical activity. MEC says: it's the computation that counts, not the substrate. MAT says: we need some substrate to perform a computation. In MGA 1 and 2 we have substrates (neurons or optical boolean graph that performs the computation). Now in MGA 3 you say: Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. Agreed. Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. We can remove those optical boolean nodes which are not relevant for the caterpillar dream Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. but no! Then we wouldn't have a substrate anymore. Oh( That is not true! We still have the projector and the film. We can project the movie in the air or directly in your eyes. I agree for this for this when the film itself is made empty, but then I can recover a conterfactually correct computation by adding inert material! You are dropping MAT at this step, No. Only when I got that Alice's consciousness supervene on the empty film (with or without inert material). not leading MEC+MAT to a contradiction. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. We can talk about this part after I understand why you can drop our optical boolean network *grin* it is really something people have to meditate. I could have conclude in the absurdity of MAT (with MEC) at MGA 2. It is hard for me to take people seriously when they argue that the consciousness of Alice supervenes on a movie of its brain activity. There is no causality, nor computations, during the *projection* of the movie. Alice's experience is related to ALL computations going through those states, not to descriptions of those states which can been made and collected in other histories. Locally it makes sense to ascribe *that* consciousness when you have the mean to interpret (through some universal machine) her computational states. [Consciousness of (x,t)] is never [physical states] at (x,t) it is: [Consciousness of (x,t)] is always all computational states (in the UD °) corresponding to that experience. (It is an indexical view of reality). And computational states can be defined by true platonic relation between numbers. (The usual way is done with Kleene predicate). 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: MGA 3
Hi Abram, On 30 Nov 2008, at 19:17, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, No, she cannot be conscious that she is partially conscious in this case, because the scenario is set up such that she does everything as if she were fully conscious-- only the counterfactuals change. But, if someone tested those counterfactuals by doing something that the recording didn't account for, then she may or may not become conscious of the fact of her partial consciousness-- in that case it would be very much like brain damage. A very serious brain damage! Anyway, yes, I am admitting that the film of the graph lacks counterfactuals and is therefore not conscious. OK. My earlier splitting of the argument into an argument about (1) and a separate argument against (2) was perhaps a bit silly, because the objection to (2) went far enough back that it was also an objection to (1). I split the argument like that just because I saw an independent flaw in the reasoning of (1)... anyway... Basically, I am claiming that there is a version of COMP+MAT that MGA is not able to derive a contradiction from. The version goes something like this: Yes, consciousness supervenes on computation, but that computation needs to actually take place (meaning, physically). Otherwise, how could consciousness supervene on it? Yes but with UDA the contrary happens. Even if a material world, the question becomes: how could consciousness remain attached on this matter. (It is simpler to understand this issue by supposing some concrete universal deployment in the real universe, and this provides the motivation for MGA. the concreteness of the UD is a red herring. You seem to forget that the MAT mind-body problem is not solved. I mean this is what all experts in the field agree on. To invoke matter to have something on which consciousness can supervene on, seems to me a gap explanation. It introduces more mystery than needed. Now, in order for a computation to be physically instantiated, the physical instantiation needs to satisfy a few properties. One of these properties is clearly some sort of isomorphism between the computation and the physical instantiation: the actual steps of the computation are represented in physical form. A less obvious requirement is that the physical computation needs to have the proper counterfactuals: if some external force were to modify some step in the computation, the computation must progress according to the new computational state (as translated by the isomorphism). You will be led to difficulties, like giving a computational role to inert material. It is ok, because it saves the counterfactual (and thus MEC), but on the price of attributing a flow of conscious experience (in real time) to inert material. I can't swallow that, especially if the motivation is going back to the unsolved problems of mind, matter and their relations. By dropping MAT, we have an explanation of consciousness or of the reason why numbers, due to their true relations with many other numbers, can develop from inside stable (from their views) believes on reality and realities including, evidences can be found, physical realities. Numbers, or combinators, etc. 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: MGA 3
On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a block universe. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have thought. I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t). The idea is that consciousness can be created in real time by the physical running of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe). With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation. The universal interpreter is lacking. It could even correspond to another experience, if the graph was a movie of another sort of computer, for example with NAND substituted for the NOR. The film, however does need to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot). OK. Such a film could be said to be a computation. Of course you are not talking about a stationary thing, which, be it physical or immaterial, cannot handle counterfactuals. If true, then a block universe could not represent the Multiverse. Maybe so, but I think a lot of people might be surprised at this one. I am not sure I can give sense to an expression like the multiverse or the block universe can or cannot handle counterfactuals. They have no inputs, nor outputs. 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: MGA 3
Hi Bruno, but no! Then we wouldn't have a substrate anymore. Oh( That is not true! We still have the projector and the film. We can project the movie in the air or directly in your eyes. Ok I see now where our intuitions differ (always the problem with thought experiment) - but maybe we can clear this up and see where it leads... it is really something people have to meditate. I could have conclude in the absurdity of MAT (with MEC) at MGA 2. It is hard for me to take people seriously when they argue that the consciousness of Alice supervenes on a movie of its brain activity. There is no causality, nor computations, during the *projection* of the movie. If that is how you see MAT (you require causality) - then I would also agree - MGA 2 shows absurdity. Alice's experience is related to ALL computations going through those states, not to descriptions of those states which can been made and collected in other histories. Locally it makes sense to ascribe *that* consciousness when you have the mean to interpret (through some universal machine) her computational states. That is already part of your theory (UDA and all) (as I understand it), but not included already in COMP or in MAT. [Consciousness of (x,t)] is never [physical states] at (x,t) For me, the above expresses the essence of (naive) MAT - let's call it NMAT. So, clearly: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And on physical states only! Not on the causal relations of these states (block universe view). Your argument goes like this: it is: [Consciousness of (x,t)] is always all computational states (in the UD °) corresponding to that experience. (It is an indexical view of reality). And I share it IF we can show that MAT+MEC is inconsistent. But I am not convinced yet. For me, the essence of MEC (COMP) is this: COMP: there is a level at which a person can be substituted at a digital level (we don't have to go down to infinity), and where this digital description is enough to reconsitute this person elsewhere and elsewhen, independent of substrate. NMAT additionally requires that the substrate for COMP be some mysterious substance, and not only a platonic relation. My intuition tells me this can't be - we have to drop either MEC or NMAT. But MGA 3, when dropping the boolean gates, violates NMAT, because: NMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) And the physical states relevant where the _states of the boolean graph_ (the movie projector was just the lucky cosmic ray). Do you have different definition for MAT? Do you require causal dynamics for MAT? The problem with NMAT as I define it raises the issue as in the Putnam paper - does every rock implement every finite state-automaton? Chalmers makes the move to implementation, so introduces causal dynamics. So, sophisticated MAT would probably be: SMAT: [Consciousness of (x,t)] supervenes on [physical states] at (x,t) over a timespan delta(t) _if_ sufficiently complex causal dynamics are at work during this timespan relating the physical states. Then I would say: MGA 2 (already) shows that SMAT+MEC are not compatible. No need for MGA 3. For NMAT+MEC (which is problematic for other reasons) MGA 3 is not convincing. Would you agree with this? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno, It sounds like what you are saying in this reply is that my version of COMP+MAT is consistent, but counter to your intuition (because you cannot see how consciousness could be attached to physical stuff). If this is the case, then it sounds like MGA only works for specific versions of MAT-- say, versions of MAT that claim consciousness hinges only on the matter, not on the causal relationships. In other words, what Günther called NMAT. So you need a different argument against-- let's call it CMAT, for causal MAT. The olympization argument only works if COMP+CMAT can be shown to imply the removability of inert matter... which I don't think it can, because that inert matter here has a causal role to play in the counterfactuals, and is therefore essential to the physical computation. --Abram On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Abram, On 30 Nov 2008, at 19:17, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, No, she cannot be conscious that she is partially conscious in this case, because the scenario is set up such that she does everything as if she were fully conscious-- only the counterfactuals change. But, if someone tested those counterfactuals by doing something that the recording didn't account for, then she may or may not become conscious of the fact of her partial consciousness-- in that case it would be very much like brain damage. A very serious brain damage! Anyway, yes, I am admitting that the film of the graph lacks counterfactuals and is therefore not conscious. OK. My earlier splitting of the argument into an argument about (1) and a separate argument against (2) was perhaps a bit silly, because the objection to (2) went far enough back that it was also an objection to (1). I split the argument like that just because I saw an independent flaw in the reasoning of (1)... anyway... Basically, I am claiming that there is a version of COMP+MAT that MGA is not able to derive a contradiction from. The version goes something like this: Yes, consciousness supervenes on computation, but that computation needs to actually take place (meaning, physically). Otherwise, how could consciousness supervene on it? Yes but with UDA the contrary happens. Even if a material world, the question becomes: how could consciousness remain attached on this matter. (It is simpler to understand this issue by supposing some concrete universal deployment in the real universe, and this provides the motivation for MGA. the concreteness of the UD is a red herring. You seem to forget that the MAT mind-body problem is not solved. I mean this is what all experts in the field agree on. To invoke matter to have something on which consciousness can supervene on, seems to me a gap explanation. It introduces more mystery than needed. Now, in order for a computation to be physically instantiated, the physical instantiation needs to satisfy a few properties. One of these properties is clearly some sort of isomorphism between the computation and the physical instantiation: the actual steps of the computation are represented in physical form. A less obvious requirement is that the physical computation needs to have the proper counterfactuals: if some external force were to modify some step in the computation, the computation must progress according to the new computational state (as translated by the isomorphism). You will be led to difficulties, like giving a computational role to inert material. It is ok, because it saves the counterfactual (and thus MEC), but on the price of attributing a flow of conscious experience (in real time) to inert material. I can't swallow that, especially if the motivation is going back to the unsolved problems of mind, matter and their relations. By dropping MAT, we have an explanation of consciousness or of the reason why numbers, due to their true relations with many other numbers, can develop from inside stable (from their views) believes on reality and realities including, evidences can be found, physical realities. Numbers, or combinators, etc. 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote: On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a block universe. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have thought. I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t). Stated this way seems to assume that the causal relations between the states are irrelevant, only the states matter. The idea is that consciousness can be created in real time by the physical running of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe). Well we're pretty sure that brains do this. With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation. I was thinking along the same lines. But then the question is what does capture a computation. Where in the thought experiments, starting with natural Alice and ending with a pictures of Alice's brain states, did we lose computation? Is it important that the sequence be time rather than space or some other order? Is it the loss causal relations or counterfactuality? Brent The universal interpreter is lacking. It could even correspond to another experience, if the graph was a movie of another sort of computer, for example with NAND substituted for the NOR. The film, however does need to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot). OK. Such a film could be said to be a computation. Of course you are not talking about a stationary thing, which, be it physical or immaterial, cannot handle counterfactuals. If true, then a block universe could not represent the Multiverse. Maybe so, but I think a lot of people might be surprised at this one. I am not sure I can give sense to an expression like the multiverse or the block universe can or cannot handle counterfactuals. They have no inputs, nor outputs. 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: MGA 3
On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 10:11:30AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Nov 2008, at 10:46, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:09:01AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: MGA 3 ... But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. I don't think this step follows at all. Consciousness may supervene on the stationary unprojected film, This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical supervenience thesis is already wrong. The physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC). I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. BTW - I don't think the film is conscious by virtue of the counterfactuals issue, but that's a whole different story. And Olympization doesn't work, unless we rule out the multiverse. Why does the physical supervenience require that all instantiations of a consciousness be dynamic? Surely, it suffices that some are? What do you mean by an instantiation of a dynamical process which is not dynamic. Even a block universe describe a dynamical process, or a variety of dynamical processes. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). The film, however does need to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot). c) Eliminate the hypothesis there is a concrete deployment in the seventh step of the UDA. Use UDA(1...7) to define properly the computationalist supervenience thesis. Hint: reread the remarks above. I have no problems with this conclusion. However, we cannot eliminate supervenience on phenomenal physics, n'est-ce pas? We cannot eliminate supervenience of consciousness on what we take as other persons indeed. Of course phenomenal physics is a first person subjective creation, and it helps to entangle our (abstract) computational histories. That is the role of a brain. It does not create consciousness, it does only make higher the probability for that consciousness to be able to manifest itself relatively to other consciousness. But consciousness can rely, with MEC, only to the abstract computation. The problem is that eliminating the brain from phenomenal experience makes that experience even more highly probable than without. This is the Occam catastrophe I mention in my book. Obviously this contradicts experience. Therefore I conclude that supervenience on a phenomenal physical brain is necessary for consciousness. I speculate a bit that this may be due to self-awareness, but don't have a good argument for it. It is the elephant in the room with respect to pure MEC theories. Sorry for being a bit short, I have to go, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On 30 Nov 2008, at 04:23, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 Nov 2008, at 15:56, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit when the entire movie is replaced... The limit is not relevant. I agrre that if you remove Alice, you remove any possibility for Alice to manifest herself in your most probable histories. The problem is that in the range activity of the projected movie, removing a part of the graph change nothing. It changes only the probability of recoevering Alice from her history in, again, your most probable history. Isn't this reliance on probable histories assuming some physical theory that is no in evidence? Not at all. I have defined history by a computation as see from a first person (plural or not). Of course, well I guess I should insist on that perhaps, by computation I always mean the mathematical object; It makes sense only with respect to to some universal machine, and I have chosen elementary arithmetic as the primitive one. Although strictly speaking the notion of computable is an epistemic notion, it happens that Church thesis makes it equivalent with purely mathematical notion, and this is used for making the notion of probable history a purely mathematical notion, (once we got a mathematical notion of first person, but this is simple in the thought experience (memory, diary ..., and a bit more subtle in the interview (AUDA)). A difficulty, in those post correspondences, is that I am reasoning currently with MEC and MAT, just to get the contradiction, but in many (most) posts I reason only with MEC (having abandon MAT). After UDA, you can already understand that physical has to be equivalent with probable history for those who followed the whole UDA+MGA. physical has to refer the most probable (and hopefully) sharable relative computational history. This is already the case with just UDA, if you assume both the existence of a physical universe and of a concrete UD running in that concrete universe. MGA is designed to eliminate the assumption of a physical universe and of the concrete UD. IThere are no physical causal link between the experience attributed to the physical computation and the causal history of projecting a movie. But there is a causal history for the creation of the movie - it's a recording of Alice's brain functions which were causally related to her physical world. Assuming MEC+MAT you are right indeed. But the causal history of the creation of the movie, is not the same computation or causal chain than the execution of Alice's mind and Alice's brain during her original dream. If you make abstraction of that difference, it means you already don't accept the physical supervenience thesis, or, again, you are introducing magical knowledge in the elementary part running the computation. You can only forget the difference of those two computations by abstracting from the physical part of the story. This means you are using exclusively the computational supervenience. MGA should make clear (but OK, I warned MGA is subtle) that the consciousness has to be related to the genuine causality or history. But it is that very genuineness that physics can accidentally reproduced in a non genuine way, like the brain movie projection, making the physical supervenience absurd. It seems to me quasi obvious that it is ridiculous to attribute consciousness to the physical events of projecting the movie of a brain. That movie gives a pretty detailed description of the computations, but there is just no computation, nor even genuine causal relation between the states. Even one frame is not a genuine physical computational states. Only a relative description of it. In a cartoon, if you see someone throwing a ball on a window, the description of the broken glass are not caused by the description of someone throwing a ball. And nothing changes, for the moment of the projection of the movie, if the cartoon has been made from a real similar filmed situation. To attribute consciousness to the stationary (non projected) contradict immediately the supervenience thesis of course. All this is a bit complex because we have to take well into account the distinction between
Re: MGA 3
Abram, My answer would have to be, no, she lacks the necessary counterfactual behaviors during that time. ? The film of the graph lacks also the counterfactuals. And, moreover, if only part of the brain were being run by a recording ... which lacks the counterfactual, ... then she would lack only some counterfactuals, I don't understand. The recording lacks all the counterfactuals. You can recover them from inert material, true, but this is true for the empty graph too (both in dream and awake situations). and so she would count as partially conscious. Hmmm Can she be conscious that she is partially conscious? I mean is it like after we drink alcohol or something? 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: MGA 3
On 30 Nov 2008, at 11:57, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 10:11:30AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Nov 2008, at 10:46, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:09:01AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: MGA 3 ... But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. I don't think this step follows at all. Consciousness may supervene on the stationary unprojected film, This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical supervenience thesis is already wrong. The physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC). I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; BTW - I don't think the film is conscious by virtue of the counterfactuals issue, but that's a whole different story. And Olympization doesn't work, unless we rule out the multiverse. Why does the physical supervenience require that all instantiations of a consciousness be dynamic? Surely, it suffices that some are? What do you mean by an instantiation of a dynamical process which is not dynamic. Even a block universe describe a dynamical process, or a variety of dynamical processes. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. The film, however does need to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot). OK. Such a film could be said to be a computation. Of course you are not talking about a stationary thing, which, be it physical or immaterial, cannot handle counterfactuals. The problem is that eliminating the brain from phenomenal experience makes that experience even more highly probable than without. This is the Occam catastrophe I mention in my book. Obviously this contradicts experience. Therefore I conclude that supervenience on a phenomenal physical brain is necessary for consciousness. It is vague enough so that I can interpret it favorably through MEC. Bruno I speculate a bit that this may be due to self-awareness, but don't have a good argument for it. It is the elephant in the room with respect to pure MEC theories. Sorry for being a bit short, I have to go, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au 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: MGA 3
Hello Bruno, I must admit you have completely lost me with MGA 3. With MGA 1 and 2, I would say that, with MEC+MAT, also the the projection of the movie (and Lucky Alice in 1) are conscious - because it supervenes on the physical activity. MEC says: it's the computation that counts, not the substrate. MAT says: we need some substrate to perform a computation. In MGA 1 and 2 we have substrates (neurons or optical boolean graph that performs the computation). Now in MGA 3 you say: Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. Agreed. Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. We can remove those optical boolean nodes which are not relevant for the caterpillar dream Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. but no! Then we wouldn't have a substrate anymore. You are dropping MAT at this step, not leading MEC+MAT to a contradiction. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. We can talk about this part after I understand why you can drop our optical boolean network *grin* Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno, No, she cannot be conscious that she is partially conscious in this case, because the scenario is set up such that she does everything as if she were fully conscious-- only the counterfactuals change. But, if someone tested those counterfactuals by doing something that the recording didn't account for, then she may or may not become conscious of the fact of her partial consciousness-- in that case it would be very much like brain damage. Anyway, yes, I am admitting that the film of the graph lacks counterfactuals and is therefore not conscious. My earlier splitting of the argument into an argument about (1) and a separate argument against (2) was perhaps a bit silly, because the objection to (2) went far enough back that it was also an objection to (1). I split the argument like that just because I saw an independent flaw in the reasoning of (1)... anyway... Basically, I am claiming that there is a version of COMP+MAT that MGA is not able to derive a contradiction from. The version goes something like this: Yes, consciousness supervenes on computation, but that computation needs to actually take place (meaning, physically). Otherwise, how could consciousness supervene on it? Now, in order for a computation to be physically instantiated, the physical instantiation needs to satisfy a few properties. One of these properties is clearly some sort of isomorphism between the computation and the physical instantiation: the actual steps of the computation are represented in physical form. A less obvious requirement is that the physical computation needs to have the proper counterfactuals: if some external force were to modify some step in the computation, the computation must progress according to the new computational state (as translated by the isomorphism). --Abram On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Abram, My answer would have to be, no, she lacks the necessary counterfactual behaviors during that time. ? The film of the graph lacks also the counterfactuals. And, moreover, if only part of the brain were being run by a recording ... which lacks the counterfactual, ... then she would lack only some counterfactuals, I don't understand. The recording lacks all the counterfactuals. You can recover them from inert material, true, but this is true for the empty graph too (both in dream and awake situations). and so she would count as partially conscious. Hmmm Can she be conscious that she is partially conscious? I mean is it like after we drink alcohol or something? 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: MGA 3
Bruno, I have reread MGA 2 and would like to add the following: We have the optical boolean graph: OBG - this computes alice's dream. we make a movie of this computation. Now we run again, but in OBG some nodes do not make the computation correctly, BUT the movie _triggers_ the nodes, so in the end, the computation is performed. So, with MEC+MAT and ALL NODES broken, I say this: a) If the OBG nodes MALFUNCTION, but their function is subsituted with the movie (on/off), it is conscious. b) If the OBG is broken that in a way that all nodes are not active anymore (no on/off, no signal passing), then no consciousness. I think we can split the intuitions along these lines: if you assume that consciousness depends on activity along the vertices, then Alice is conscious neither in a nor in b, and then indeed I see why already MGA 2 leads to a problem with MEC+MAT. But if I think that consciousness supervenes only on the correct lighting up of the nodes (not the vertices!! - I don't need causality then, only the correct order), than a) would be conscious, b) not, and MGA 3 does not work I you take away my OBG (with the node intuition)! Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Nov 30, 2008, at 10:14 AM, Günther Greindl wrote: I must admit you have completely lost me with MGA 3. I still find the whole thing easier to grasp when presented in terms of cellular automata. Let's say we have a computer program that starts with a large but finite 2D grid of bits, and then iterates the rules to some CA (Conway's Life, Critters, whatever) on that grid a large but finite number of times, and stores all of the resulting computations in memory, so that we have a 3D block universe in memory. And lets say that the resulting block universe contains patterns that MECH-MAT would say are conscious. If we believe that consciousness supervenes on the physical act of playing back the data in our block universe like a movie, then we have a problem. Because before we play back the movie, we can fill any portions of the block universe we want with zeros. So then our played back movie can contain conscious creatures who are walking around with (say) zeros where their visual cortexes should be, or their high- level brain functions should be, etc. In other words, we have a fading qualia problem (which we have also called a partial zombie problem in these threads). I find the argument compelling as far as it goes. But I'm not convinced that all or most actual, real-world mechanist-materialists believe that consciousness supervenes on the physical act of playing back the stored computations. Bruno indicates that it must, by the logical definitions of MECH and MAT. This just makes me feel like I don't really understand the logical definitions of MECH and MAT. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the stationary film. ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the definition of the physical superveneience thesis; It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a block universe. A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is stationary when viewed from the inside). OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have thought. The film, however does need to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot). OK. Such a film could be said to be a computation. Of course you are not talking about a stationary thing, which, be it physical or immaterial, cannot handle counterfactuals. If true, then a block universe could not represent the Multiverse. Maybe so, but I think a lot of people might be surprised at this one. The problem is that eliminating the brain from phenomenal experience makes that experience even more highly probable than without. This is the Occam catastrophe I mention in my book. Obviously this contradicts experience. Therefore I conclude that supervenience on a phenomenal physical brain is necessary for consciousness. It is vague enough so that I can interpret it favorably through MEC. That is my point - physical supervenience (aka materialism) is not only not contradicted by MEC (aka COMP), but in fact is necessary for to even work. Only what I call naive physicalism, (aka the need for a concrete instantiation of a computer running the UD) is contradicted by MEC. What _is_ interesting is that not all philosophers distinguish between physicalism and materialism. David Chalmers does not, but Michael Lockwood does, for instance. Much of this revolves around the ontological status of emergence. -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Abram, On 29 Nov 2008, at 04:49, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, I have done some thinking, and decided that I don't think this last step of the argument works for me. You provided two arguments, and so I provide two refutations. 1. (argument by removal of unnecessary parts): Suppose Alice lives in a cave all her life, with bread and water tossed down keeping her alive, but nobody ever checking to see that she eats it; to the outside world, she is functionally unnecessary. But from Alice's point of view, she is not functionally removable, nor are the other things in the cave that the outside world knows nothing about. The point is, we need to be careful about labeling things functionally removable; we need to ask from whose perspective?. A believer in MAT who accepted the consciousness of the movie could claim that such an error is being made. The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. 2. (argument by spreading movie in space instead of time): Here I need to go back further in the argument... I still think the objection about hypotheticals (ie counterfactuals) works just fine. :) Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which for some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness when that never used neuron is removed? If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put in doubt. 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: MGA 3
On 28 Nov 2008, at 23:20, Abram Demski wrote: Hi Bruno, So, basically, you are saying that I'm offering an alternative argument against materialism, correct? It seems to me you were going in that direction, yes. Well, *I* was suggesting that we run up against the problem of time in *either* direction (physical reality / mathematical reality); so the real problem would be a naive view of time, rather than COMP + MAT. But, you are probably right: the problem really only applies to MAT. On the other hand, I might try to take up the argument again after reading UDA. :) With the MEC hypothesis, a believer in comp go to hell. (Where a believerin , is someone who takes p for granted). Comp, is like self-consistency, a self-observing machine can guess it, hope it, (or fear it), but can never take it for granted. It *is* theological. No machine can prove its theology, but Löbian machine can study the complete theology of more simple Löbian machines, find the invariant for the consistent extensions, and lift it to themselves, keeping consistency by consciously being aware that this is has to be taken as an interrogation, it is not for granted, so that saying yes to the doctor needs an act of faith, and never can be imposed. (Of course we can argue biology has already bet on it). Yes, this is fundamentally interesting :). Maudlin shows that for a special computation, which supports in time some consciousness (by using the (physical) supervenience thesis), you can build a device doing the same computation with much less physical activity, actually with almost no physical activity at all. The natural reply is that such a machine has no more the right counterfactual behavior. Then Maudlin shows that you can render the counterfactual correctness to such machine by adding, what will be for the special computation, just inert material. But this give to inert material something which plays no role, or would give prescience to elementary material in computations; from which you can conclude that MEC and MAT does not works well together. I am not sure this convinces me. If the inert material is useful to the computation in the counterfactual situations, then it is useful, cannot be removed. Yes but with MAT, the inert material has no use in the particular instantiation we have chosen. If it play a role, it cannot be in virtue of the MEC hypothesis *together* with the MAT hypothesis. If not, it means you already make consciousness supervening on the abstract computation the pieces of materials instantiate accidentally here and now, not really on the physical process implementing that computation. Feel free to criticize Abram, are you aware that Godel's incompleteness follows easily (= in few lines) from Church thesis? Not the second theorem, but the first, even a stronger form of the first. No, I do not know that one. I will have the occasion to explain if I decide to make the UDA beginning by step seven. 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: MGA 3
On 28 Nov 2008, at 10:46, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:09:01AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: MGA 3 ... But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. I don't think this step follows at all. Consciousness may supervene on the stationary unprojected film, This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical supervenience thesis is already wrong. The physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC). but if you start making holes in it, you will eventually get a film on a nonconscious entity. At some point, the consciousness is no longer supervening on the film (but may well be supervening on other films that haven't been so adulterated, or on running machines or whatever... Does Alice's dream supervene (in real time and space) on the projection of the empty movie? No. 2) I give now what is perhaps a simpler argument A projection of a movie is a relative phenomenon. On the planet 247a, nearby in the galaxy, they don't have screen. The film pellicle is as big as a screen, and they make the film passing behind a stroboscope at the right frequency in front of the public. But on planet 247b, movies are only for travellers! They dress their film, as big as those on planet 247a, in their countries all along their train rails with a lamp besides each frames, which is nice because from the train, through its speed, you get the usual 24 frames per second. But we already accepted that such movie does not need to be observed, the train can be empty of people. Well the train does not play any role, and what remains is the static film with a lamp behind each frame. Are the lamps really necessaries? Of course not, all right? So now we are obliged to accept that the consciousness of Alice during the projection of the movie supervenes of something completely inert in time and space. This contradicts the *physical* supervenience thesis. But the physics that Alice experiences will be fully dynamic. She will experience time, and non-inert processes that she is supervening on. Why does the physical supervenience require that all instantiations of a consciousness be dynamic? Surely, it suffices that some are? What do you mean by an instantiation of a dynamical process which is not dynamic. Even a block universe describe a dynamical process, or a variety of dynamical processes. c) Eliminate the hypothesis there is a concrete deployment in the seventh step of the UDA. Use UDA(1...7) to define properly the computationalist supervenience thesis. Hint: reread the remarks above. I have no problems with this conclusion. However, we cannot eliminate supervenience on phenomenal physics, n'est-ce pas? We cannot eliminate supervenience of consciousness on what we take as other persons indeed. Of course phenomenal physics is a first person subjective creation, and it helps to entangle our (abstract) computational histories. That is the role of a brain. It does not create consciousness, it does only make higher the probability for that consciousness to be able to manifest itself relatively to other consciousness. But consciousness can rely, with MEC, only to the abstract computation. Sorry for being a bit short, I have to go, 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: MGA 3
Bruno, The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit when the entire movie is replaced... Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which for some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness when that never used neuron is removed? If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put in doubt. I am thinking of it as being the same as someone having knowledge which they never actually use. Suppose that the situation is so extreme that if we removed the neurons involved in that knowledge, we will not alter the person's behavior; yet, we will have removed the knowledge. Similarly, if the behavior of Alice in practice comes from a recording, yet a dormant conscious portion is continually ready to intervene if needed, then removing that dormant portion removes her consciousness. --Abram --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Nov 2008, at 10:46, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:09:01AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: MGA 3 ... But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. I don't think this step follows at all. Consciousness may supervene on the stationary unprojected film, This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical supervenience thesis is already wrong. The physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC). Then assuming MEC requires some definition of activity and consciousness may cease when there is no activity of the required kind. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
On 29 Nov 2008, at 15:56, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit when the entire movie is replaced... The limit is not relevant. I agrre that if you remove Alice, you remove any possibility for Alice to manifest herself in your most probable histories. The problem is that in the range activity of the projected movie, removing a part of the graph change nothing. It changes only the probability of recoevering Alice from her history in, again, your most probable history. IThere are no physical causal link between the experience attributed to the physical computation and the causal history of projecting a movie. The incremental removing of the graph hilighted the lack of causality in the movie. Perhaps not in the best clearer way, apparently. Perhaps I should have done the case of a non dream. I will come back on this. Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which for some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness when that never used neuron is removed? If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put in doubt. I am thinking of it as being the same as someone having knowledge which they never actually use. Suppose that the situation is so extreme that if we removed the neurons involved in that knowledge, we will not alter the person's behavior; yet, we will have removed the knowledge. Similarly, if the behavior of Alice in practice comes from a recording, yet a dormant conscious portion is continually ready to intervene if needed, then removing that dormant portion removes her consciousness. You should definitely do the removing of the graph in the non-dream situation. Let us do it. Let us take a situation without complex inputs. Let us imagine Alice is giving a conference in a big room, so, as input she is just blinded by some projector, + some noise, and she makes a talk on Astronomy (to fix the things). Now from 8h30 to 8H45 pm, she has just no brain, she get the motor info from a projected recording of a previous *perfect dream* of that conference, dream done the night before, or send from Platonia (possible in principle). Then, by magic, to simplify, at 8h45 she get back the original brain, which by optical means inherits the stage at the end of the conference in that perfect dream. I ask you, would you say Alice was a zombie, during the conference? 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: MGA 3
On 29 Nov 2008, at 18:49, Brent Meeker wrote: This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical supervenience thesis is already wrong. The physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC). Then assuming MEC requires some definition of activity and consciousness may cease when there is no activity of the required kind. We require a notion of physical activity related to a computation for having MEC *and* the supervenience thesis. With MEC alone, we abandon MAT, the computational supervenience thesis will have to make any notion of physical causality a statistically emerging pattern from (hopefully sharable) first person (plural) points of view. 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: MGA 3
Bruno, My answer would have to be, no, she lacks the necessary counterfactual behaviors during that time. And, moreover, if only part of the brain were being run by a recording then she would lack only some counterfactuals, and so she would count as partially conscious. --Abram On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 29 Nov 2008, at 15:56, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit when the entire movie is replaced... The limit is not relevant. I agrre that if you remove Alice, you remove any possibility for Alice to manifest herself in your most probable histories. The problem is that in the range activity of the projected movie, removing a part of the graph change nothing. It changes only the probability of recoevering Alice from her history in, again, your most probable history. IThere are no physical causal link between the experience attributed to the physical computation and the causal history of projecting a movie. The incremental removing of the graph hilighted the lack of causality in the movie. Perhaps not in the best clearer way, apparently. Perhaps I should have done the case of a non dream. I will come back on this. Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which for some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness when that never used neuron is removed? If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put in doubt. I am thinking of it as being the same as someone having knowledge which they never actually use. Suppose that the situation is so extreme that if we removed the neurons involved in that knowledge, we will not alter the person's behavior; yet, we will have removed the knowledge. Similarly, if the behavior of Alice in practice comes from a recording, yet a dormant conscious portion is continually ready to intervene if needed, then removing that dormant portion removes her consciousness. You should definitely do the removing of the graph in the non-dream situation. Let us do it. Let us take a situation without complex inputs. Let us imagine Alice is giving a conference in a big room, so, as input she is just blinded by some projector, + some noise, and she makes a talk on Astronomy (to fix the things). Now from 8h30 to 8H45 pm, she has just no brain, she get the motor info from a projected recording of a previous *perfect dream* of that conference, dream done the night before, or send from Platonia (possible in principle). Then, by magic, to simplify, at 8h45 she get back the original brain, which by optical means inherits the stage at the end of the conference in that perfect dream. I ask you, would you say Alice was a zombie, during the conference? 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: MGA 3
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 Nov 2008, at 15:56, Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, The argument was more of the type : removal of unnecessay and unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary parts, here, I think. The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit when the entire movie is replaced... The limit is not relevant. I agrre that if you remove Alice, you remove any possibility for Alice to manifest herself in your most probable histories. The problem is that in the range activity of the projected movie, removing a part of the graph change nothing. It changes only the probability of recoevering Alice from her history in, again, your most probable history. Isn't this reliance on probable histories assuming some physical theory that is no in evidence? IThere are no physical causal link between the experience attributed to the physical computation and the causal history of projecting a movie. But there is a causal history for the creation of the movie - it's a recording of Alice's brain functions which were causally related to her physical world. The incremental removing of the graph hilighted the lack of causality in the movie. It seems to me there is still a causal chain - it is indirected via creating the movie. Brent Perhaps not in the best clearer way, apparently. Perhaps I should have done the case of a non dream. I will come back on this. Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which for some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness when that never used neuron is removed? If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put in doubt. I am thinking of it as being the same as someone having knowledge which they never actually use. Suppose that the situation is so extreme that if we removed the neurons involved in that knowledge, we will not alter the person's behavior; yet, we will have removed the knowledge. Similarly, if the behavior of Alice in practice comes from a recording, yet a dormant conscious portion is continually ready to intervene if needed, then removing that dormant portion removes her consciousness. You should definitely do the removing of the graph in the non-dream situation. Let us do it. Let us take a situation without complex inputs. Let us imagine Alice is giving a conference in a big room, so, as input she is just blinded by some projector, + some noise, and she makes a talk on Astronomy (to fix the things). Now from 8h30 to 8H45 pm, she has just no brain, she get the motor info from a projected recording of a previous *perfect dream* of that conference, dream done the night before, or send from Platonia (possible in principle). Then, by magic, to simplify, at 8h45 she get back the original brain, which by optical means inherits the stage at the end of the conference in that perfect dream. I ask you, would you say Alice was a zombie, during the conference? 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: MGA 3
Hi Bruno, So, basically, you are saying that I'm offering an alternative argument against materialism, correct? It seems to me you were going in that direction, yes. Well, *I* was suggesting that we run up against the problem of time in *either* direction (physical reality / mathematical reality); so the real problem would be a naive view of time, rather than COMP + MAT. But, you are probably right: the problem really only applies to MAT. On the other hand, I might try to take up the argument again after reading UDA. :) With the MEC hypothesis, a believer in comp go to hell. (Where a believerin , is someone who takes p for granted). Comp, is like self-consistency, a self-observing machine can guess it, hope it, (or fear it), but can never take it for granted. It *is* theological. No machine can prove its theology, but Löbian machine can study the complete theology of more simple Löbian machines, find the invariant for the consistent extensions, and lift it to themselves, keeping consistency by consciously being aware that this is has to be taken as an interrogation, it is not for granted, so that saying yes to the doctor needs an act of faith, and never can be imposed. (Of course we can argue biology has already bet on it). Yes, this is fundamentally interesting :). Maudlin shows that for a special computation, which supports in time some consciousness (by using the (physical) supervenience thesis), you can build a device doing the same computation with much less physical activity, actually with almost no physical activity at all. The natural reply is that such a machine has no more the right counterfactual behavior. Then Maudlin shows that you can render the counterfactual correctness to such machine by adding, what will be for the special computation, just inert material. But this give to inert material something which plays no role, or would give prescience to elementary material in computations; from which you can conclude that MEC and MAT does not works well together. I am not sure this convinces me. If the inert material is useful to the computation in the counterfactual situations, then it is useful, cannot be removed. Abram, are you aware that Godel's incompleteness follows easily (= in few lines) from Church thesis? Not the second theorem, but the first, even a stronger form of the first. No, I do not know that one. --Abram --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: MGA 3
Bruno, I have done some thinking, and decided that I don't think this last step of the argument works for me. You provided two arguments, and so I provide two refutations. 1. (argument by removal of unnecessary parts): Suppose Alice lives in a cave all her life, with bread and water tossed down keeping her alive, but nobody ever checking to see that she eats it; to the outside world, she is functionally unnecessary. But from Alice's point of view, she is not functionally removable, nor are the other things in the cave that the outside world knows nothing about. The point is, we need to be careful about labeling things functionally removable; we need to ask from whose perspective?. A believer in MAT who accepted the consciousness of the movie could claim that such an error is being made. 2. (argument by spreading movie in space instead of time): Here I need to go back further in the argument... I still think the objection about hypotheticals (ie counterfactuals) works just fine. :) --Abram On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go on, for some range of activity, then you can remove it, for that range of activity. OK? Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. No more than it is needed that someone is look at your reconstitution in Moscow for you to be conscious in Moscow after a teleportation. All right? (with MEC assumed of course). Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph
Re: MGA 3
Bruno, It seems to me that this runs head-on into the problem of the definition of time... Here is my argument; I am sure there will be disagreement with it. Supposing that Alice's consciousness is spread out over the movie billboards next to the train track, there is no longer a normal temporal relationship between mental moments. There must merely be a time-like relationship, which Alice experiences as time. But, then, we are saying that wherever a logical relationship exists that is time-like, there is subjective time for those inside the time-like relationship. Now, what might constitute a time-like relationship? I see several alternatives, but none seem satisfactory. At any given moment, all we can be directly aware of is that one moment. If we remember the past, that is because at the present moment our brain has those memories; we don't know if they really came from the past. What would it mean to put moments in a series? It changes nothing essential about the moment itself; we can remove the past, because it adds nothing. The connection between moments doesn't seem like a physical connection; the notion is non-explanatory, since if there were such a physical connection we could remove it without altering the individual moments, therefore not altering our memories, and our subjective experience of time. Similarly, can it be a logical relationship? Is it the structure of a single moment that connects it to the next? How would this be? Perhaps we require that there is some function (a physics) from one moment to the next? But, this does not exactly allow for things like relativity in which there is no single universal clock. Of course, relativity could be simulated, creating a universe that was run be a universal clock but whose internal facts did not depend on which universal clock, exactly, the simulation was run from. My problem is, I suppose, that any particular definition of timelike relationship seems too arbitrary. As another example, should any probabilistic elements be allowed into physics? In this case, we don't have a function any more, but a relation-- perhaps a relation of weighted transitions. But how would this relation make any difference from inside the universe? --Abram On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go
Re: MGA 3
Abram Demski wrote: Bruno, It seems to me that this runs head-on into the problem of the definition of time... Here is my argument; I am sure there will be disagreement with it. Supposing that Alice's consciousness is spread out over the movie billboards next to the train track, there is no longer a normal temporal relationship between mental moments. There must merely be a time-like relationship, which Alice experiences as time. But, then, we are saying that wherever a logical relationship exists that is time-like, there is subjective time for those inside the time-like relationship. Now, what might constitute a time-like relationship? I see several alternatives, but none seem satisfactory. At any given moment, all we can be directly aware of is that one moment. If we remember the past, that is because at the present moment our brain has those memories; we don't know if they really came from the past. What would it mean to put moments in a series? It changes nothing essential about the moment itself; we can remove the past, because it adds nothing. You raise some good points. I think the crux of the problem comes from chopping a process up into moments and assuming that these infinitesimal, frozen slices preserve all that is necessary for time. It is essentially the same as assuming there is a subsitution level below which we can ignore causality and just talk about states. It seems like a obvious idea, but it is contrary to quantum mechanics and unitary evolution under the Schrodinger equation which was the basis for the whole idea of a multiverse and everything happens. The connection between moments doesn't seem like a physical connection; the notion is non-explanatory, since if there were such a physical connection we could remove it without altering the individual moments, therefore not altering our memories, and our subjective experience of time. How do we know that? Memories and brain processes are distributed and parallel, which means there are spacelike separated parts of the process - and neural signals are orders of magnitude slower than light. Brent Similarly, can it be a logical relationship? Is it the structure of a single moment that connects it to the next? How would this be? Perhaps we require that there is some function (a physics) from one moment to the next? But, this does not exactly allow for things like relativity in which there is no single universal clock. Of course, relativity could be simulated, creating a universe that was run be a universal clock but whose internal facts did not depend on which universal clock, exactly, the simulation was run from. My problem is, I suppose, that any particular definition of timelike relationship seems too arbitrary. As another example, should any probabilistic elements be allowed into physics? In this case, we don't have a function any more, but a relation-- perhaps a relation of weighted transitions. But how would this relation make any difference from inside the universe? --Abram On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80
Re: MGA 3
transitions. But how would this relation make any difference from inside the universe? We are supported by infinity(*) of computations. We can only bet on our most probable histories, above our level of constitution. Those historie which can multiplie themselves from below, and thus in front of pure probabilistic event (noise) can win the measure game (on the computations or the OMs). The question is: can we explain from MEC, as we have too, why, as we can see empirically, the probabilities can also be subtracted. To we get here too classical mechanics in the limit? Open problem of course. Now the crazy thing is that we can already (thanks to Gödel, Löb, Solovay ...) interview a (Lobian) universal machine on that subject, and she gives a shadow of reason (and guess!) why indeed subtraction occurs. And thanks to the Solovay split between G (the provable part of self-reference, and G*, the true but unprovable part of self- reference, some intensional variant of G and G* split temselves into the sharable physics (indeteminate quanta) and unsharable physics (the qualia? the perceptible field, what you can only be the one to confim: a bit like being the one in Moscow after a self-duplication experiment). Bruno (*) Even infinitIES, from the third person point of view on the first person points of view. Hmmm do you know the first person comp indeterminacy? (step 3 of UDA). (**) The second BIG discovery being the quantum computer ! (don't hesitate to use grain salts if it helps to swallows what I say). of course nature made those discoveries before us. Well, with MEC we have to consider that elementary arithmetic did those discoveries even out of time and space. On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go on, for some range of activity, then you can remove it, for that range of activity. OK? Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. No more than it is needed that someone is look at your reconstitution in Moscow for you to be conscious in Moscow after a teleportation. All right? (with MEC assumed
Re: MGA 3
particular definition of timelike relationship seems too arbitrary. There is a big difference between first person non sharable time, and sharable local (clock measurable) time. The first you experience, the second you guess, and you guess it only from an implicit bet on your own consistency. It makes a big modal difference. As another example, should any probabilistic elements be allowed into physics? In this case, we don't have a function any more, but a relation-- perhaps a relation of weighted transitions. But how would this relation make any difference from inside the universe? We are supported by infinity(*) of computations. We can only bet on our most probable histories, above our level of constitution. Those historie which can multiplie themselves from below, and thus in front of pure probabilistic event (noise) can win the measure game (on the computations or the OMs). The question is: can we explain from MEC, as we have too, why, as we can see empirically, the probabilities can also be subtracted. To we get here too classical mechanics in the limit? Open problem of course. Now the crazy thing is that we can already (thanks to Gödel, Löb, Solovay ...) interview a (Lobian) universal machine on that subject, and she gives a shadow of reason (and guess!) why indeed subtraction occurs. And thanks to the Solovay split between G (the provable part of self-reference, and G*, the true but unprovable part of self-reference, some intensional variant of G and G* split temselves into the sharable physics (indeteminate quanta) and unsharable physics (the qualia? the perceptible field, what you can only be the one to confim: a bit like being the one in Moscow after a self-duplication experiment). Bruno (*) Even infinitIES, from the third person point of view on the first person points of view. Hmmm do you know the first person comp indeterminacy? (step 3 of UDA). (**) The second BIG discovery being the quantum computer ! (don't hesitate to use grain salts if it helps to swallows what I say). of course nature made those discoveries before us. Well, with MEC we have to consider that elementary arithmetic did those discoveries even out of time and space. On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active
MGA 3
MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go on, for some range of activity, then you can remove it, for that range of activity. OK? Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. No more than it is needed that someone is look at your reconstitution in Moscow for you to be conscious in Moscow after a teleportation. All right? (with MEC assumed of course). Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. Does Alice's dream supervene (in real time and space) on the projection of the empty movie? Remark. 1° Of course, this argument can be sum up by saying that the movie lacks causality between its parts so that it cannot really be said that it computes any thing, at least physically. The movie is just an ordered record of computational states. This is neither a physical computation, nor an (immaterial) computation where the steps follows relatively to some universal machine. It is just a description of a computation, already existing in the Universal Deployment. 2° Note this: If we take into consideration the relative destiny of Alice, and supposing one day her brain broke down completely, she has more chance to survive through holes in the screen than to the holes in the film. The film contains the relevant information to reconstitute Alice from her brain description, contained
Re: MGA 3
There's a quote you might like, by Korzybski: That which makes no difference _is_ no difference. -- - Did you ever hear of The Seattle Seven? - Mmm. - That was me... and six other guys. 2008/11/26 Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] MGA 3 It is the last MGA ! I realize MGA is complete, as I thought it was, but I was doubting this recently. We don't need to refer to Maudlin, and MGA 4 is not necessary. Maudlin 1989 is an independent argument of the 1988 Toulouse argument (which I present here). Note that Maudlin's very interesting Olympization technic can be used to defeat a wrong form of MGA 3, that is, a wrong argument for the assertion that the movie cannot be conscious. (the argument that the movie lacks the counterfactual). Below are hopefully correct (if not very simple) argument. ( I use Maudlin sometimes when people gives this non correct form of MGA 3, and this is probably what makes me think Maudlin has to be used, at some point). MGA 1 shows that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that the luckiness feature of the MGA 1 experiment was a red herring. We can construct, from MEC+COMP, an home made lucky rays generator, and use it at will. If we accept both digital mechanism, in particular Dennet's principle that neurons have no intelligence, still less prescience, and this *together with* the supervenience principle; we have to accept that Alice conscious dream experience supervenes on the projection of her brain activity movie. Let us show now that Alice consciousness *cannot* supervene on that *physical* movie projection. I propose two (deductive) arguments. 1) Mechanism implies the following tautological functionalist principle: if, for some range of activity, a system does what it is supposed to do, and this before and after a change is made in its constitution, then the change does not change what the system is supposed to do, for that range of activity. Example: - A car is supposed to broken but only if the driver is faster than 90 miles/h. Pepe Pepito NEVER drives faster than 80 miles/h. Then the car is supposed to do what she is supposed to do, with respect of its range of activity defined by Pepe Pepito. - Claude bought a 1000 thousand processors computer. One day he realized that he used only 990 processors, for his type of activity, so he decided to get rid of those 10 useless processors. And indeed the machine will satisfy Claude ever. - Alice has (again) a math exam. Theoreticians have correctly predict that in this special circumstance, she will never use neurons X, Y and Z. Now Alice go (again, again) to this exam in the same condition, but with the neurons X, Y, Z removed. Again, not only will she behaved like if she succeed her exam, but her consciousness, with both MEC *and* MAT still continue. The idea is that if something is not useful, for an active process to go on, for some range of activity, then you can remove it, for that range of activity. OK? Now, consider the projection of the movie of the activity of Alice's brain, the movie graph. Is it necessary that someone look at that movie? Certainly not. No more than it is needed that someone is look at your reconstitution in Moscow for you to be conscious in Moscow after a teleportation. All right? (with MEC assumed of course). Is it necessary to have a screen? Well, the range of activity here is just one dynamical description of one computation. Suppose we make a hole in the screen. What goes in and out of that hole is exactly the same, with the hole and without the hole. For that unique activity, the hole in the screen is functionally equivalent to the subgraph which the hole removed. Clearly we can make a hole as large as the screen, so no need for a screen. But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film itself, you get a hole in the movie, but everything which enters and go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of activity. The hole has trivially the same functionality than the subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire film itself. Does Alice's dream supervene (in real time and space) on the projection of the empty movie? Remark. 1° Of course, this argument can be sum up by saying that the movie lacks causality between its parts so that it cannot really be said that it computes any thing, at least physically. The movie is just an ordered record of computational states. This is neither a physical computation, nor an (immaterial) computation where the steps follows relatively to some universal machine. It is just a description of a computation, already existing in the Universal Deployment. 2° Note this: If we take into consideration the relative destiny of Alice, and supposing one day her brain broke
