subject:"Movie Graph Argument\: A Refutation"



On 31 Dec 2011, at 14:49, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote (in two posts):


On 31.12.2011 09:17 Pierz said the following:



On Dec 31, 6:17 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:


On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote:

On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote: You think it is ludicrous
that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the state of its
battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory
available for pictures, etc?



Brent

sighLet's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but
agree to disagree on what constitutes consciousness.


sigh  The phrase was internal perception not consciousness.


Well usually the term 'perception' entails consciousness. If you
mean that you ate try indifferent as to whether the machine is
conscious, well OK. I see something deeper in the consciousness
problem.



I would agree. When AI people use the word perception to describe  
a sensor connected to a computer, in my view they loose the biggest  
part of the meaning. A human being perceives also unconsciously and  
this part of perception could be similar to what we find in Mars  
Rover but on the other hand a human being has conscious experiences.  
This part is completely missing in AI.


I agree. You need to add something like self-perception. This can be  
be done by using a theorem by Kleene in computer science, which  
handles very well the notion of self. With the current machines, this  
has not yet economical interest, though. More about that self notion  
in my comment to other posts.



On 29.12.2011 19:40 Bruno Marchal said the following:



So a self-driving car is probably much more close to have a first
person view than a rock, especially if you make it possible for the
car to memorize its short term instances of computation (sensing,
planning, etc.) into a long scenario involving herself.

Good point. Thanks Bruno. A self-driving car does have an estimate  
of its current state and then it updates it both internally and  
based on external measurements. It also makes some planning, soft of  
what to do next.


OK. What is still lacking is something like an hippocampus and a  
cerebral stem, to manage the short term and long term memories and the  
general instinctive bet in a reality (more or less consciousness).





Yet, if we consider a self-driving car and a rock from the viewpoint  
of physicalism (or could be even better atomism), then the  
difference will be much more difficult to find. After all there are  
in both cases interacting electrons and nuclei (well probably some  
electromagnetic waves as well) and nothing more.


But physicalism is not epistemologically compatible with mechanism.  
Below our substitution level, things are made of infinite works of  
infinities of Universal machine/numbers. This might, or not, lead to a  
refutation of computationalism, but up to now nature confirms rather  
remarkably this many-statistically-interfering-dreams aspect of  
reality.


Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 31 Dec 2011, at 21:20, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/31/2011 3:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

As I've said we're on the same team with regards to primitive
materialism. But I have sympathy for the materialists on this  
issue of

instantiation. After all, we need computers still, we can't rely on
the arithmetical platonia to predict the weather for us.


Again, we need brain, bodies and computer to optimize the  
probability of staying in the branch we share at our substitution  
level. And if the argument is correct, the weather and you are  
already in Platonia. The local relative body is needed to not jump  
too quickly in alternate consciousness/realities.


When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that  
you think one's consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to  
different bundles of computation so there are some bundles that  
don't have any consciousness but could have if you jumped to them.


Some people provided good answer to this, including you Brent. I might  
add some comments in other posts.


Bruno

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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 01 Jan 2012, at 00:35, Pierz wrote:



When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that  
you think one's
consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles  
of computation so there
are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have  
if you jumped to them.




Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.


OK.
More on this in my reply to David, asap.




As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to
avoid danger, would it experience fear? Until we understand the
qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume
the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such
arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and
the result is unedifying.


I disagree. We have just to make our assumptions more clear and  
precise so that we get new consequences. To get the qualia, we need in  
fine to abandon the primitive matter ontology, and more importantly,  
the epistemological idea that physicalism is true. The physical has to  
supervene on (non human) consciousness, which supervenes on all the  
relations between all (universal) numbers.


Bruno

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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 01 Jan 2012, at 01:23, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/31/2011 3:35 PM, Pierz wrote:
When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that  
you think one's
consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles  
of computation so there
are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have  
if you jumped to them.


Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up  
1-
p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only  
experience

myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one  
sense

a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.

As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to
avoid danger, would it experience fear?


If we programmed it to sacrifice other important values (like  
conserving power, or keeping all its parts) I'd speculate that it,  
in some sense, felt fear.



Until we understand the
qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume
the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such
arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and
the result is unedifying.



And that's why I think questions of consciousness will ultimately be  
overtaken-by-events.  The interesting questions will be how danger  
is recognized and avoided, how relations to others are managed,  
etc.  And we will probably talk about them as if the AI is conscious  
just by analogy to ourselves while at a lower level we know which  
module is doing what and how changing it will change behavior.  But  
nobody will ask where's the consciousness any more than they ask  
where's the vis viva of their automobile.


I disagree. The vis viva is really useless. Consciousness exists, and  
it has a fundamental role in the handling of highly complex self- 
referential relations, some of them being responsible for the  
selection of physical realities. Consciousness is somehow the mother  
of all qualia, including the sharable quanta. That comes from the  
ontological reversal. You don't need anything magic, just the ability  
of some numbers to infer the existence of anything. Consciousness can  
be approximated by the first person true belief in something. It is  
somehow the zeroth mystical state, but we are blase because without  
it, there would be no knowledge at all, nor even any physical  
reality: just third person truth about numbers/finite things.


Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 01 Jan 2012, at 02:07, David Nyman wrote:


On 31 December 2011 23:35, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote:

Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up  
1-
p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only  
experience

myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one  
sense

a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.


Yes, and the sense in which there is a single consciousness that
experiences every possible state is indeed an unusual one.  It's as
if we want to say that all such first-personal experiences occur
indifferently or even simultaneously, but on reflection there can be
no relation of simultaneity between distinguishable conscious events.
The first-person is, by definition, always in the singular and present
NOW.


Yes.
And Brent makes himself this more precise when he said later (to  
David) that:



Are you saying all the experiences are at different times so they can  
the experience of one soul that's traversing the experiences in  
sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more exactly time is  
inferred from the relation of their contents.



The difficulty consists here in placing the inference and the relation  
between contents in one (relative) computational state. Here, the  
theorem of Kleene (which handles the notion of self) cannot be used in  
a completely satisfactory way, and this is part of the impossibility  
to introspect the working of one's consciousness. We have to be unable  
to know who we really are, except for some unnameable subject. But we  
can be aware of that intrinsic ignorance. Ramana Maharshi provides a  
technic based on the meditation on the koan Who am I to help  
grasping intuitively that counter-intuitive idea.




As Schrödinger remarked:

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this
entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is
not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.


I think that Schroedinger was well inspired.

Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 January 2012 05:54, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 I don't understand that?  Are you saying all the experiences are at
 different times so they can the experience of one soul that's traversing the
 experiences in sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
 exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.

I'd agree, but keeping clear the distinction that consciousness (1-p)
is not identical with its putative supervenience base (3-p).  If we
refrain from calling the contents of the latter experiences, it
might make it easier to isolate the 3-p sense in which they all exist
timelessly from the distinct 1-p experiential sense in which time is
inferred from the content of each unique moment.

 So we mustn't be misled into imagining
 arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
 timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
 would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
 uniqueness of the experiential moment.

 How so?  The uniqueness is inherent in the experience.  It doesn't depend on
 being embedded in spacetime.  Spacetime is a model inferred from
 intersubjective agreement of individual experiences.

Again, I agree, but with the same distinction.  There is indeed the
3-p sense of inherently distinguishable subsets of some co-existent
supervenience base.  But this mustn't be elided with the distinct 1-p
experiential sense of the unique presence of each conscious moment.
If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
it more simply, nothing would ever happen.

David

 On 1/1/2012 9:35 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 1 January 2012 02:04, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.


 That seems incoherent to me.  How is it different from there are many
 experiences?  I is just a construct from a subset of experiences and
 there
 can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
 constructed.     But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just
 one I or to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to
 another.  That would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is something
 apart from the experiences it jumps to.

 This is a tricky one.  Pierz says above that from 3-p, all branches
 are conscious.  But perhaps it might be more accurate to say
 something more like from 3-p, all branches are in some measure
 accessible to consciousness.  Consciousness indeed supervenes on all
 branches, but never all at the same time.


 I don't understand that?  Are you saying all the experiences are at
 different times so they can the experience of one soul that's traversing the
 experiences in sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
 exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.


  Supervenience is not an
 identity claim.  The putative supervenience base is an inclusive
 category embracing all 3-p descriptions indifferently, whereas 1-p
 experiences are characterised precisely by their mutual exclusivity.

 I agree with you that I is just a construct from a subset of
 experiences and there
 can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
 constructed. I in this objective sense can be coherently understood
 as an ensemble of co-existing 3-p descriptions.  But any conscious
 experience, by contrast, is always a singular occasion - a unique
 moment in time, if you like.  So we mustn't be misled into imagining
 arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
 timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
 would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
 uniqueness of the experiential moment.


 How so?  The uniqueness is inherent in the experience.  It doesn't depend on
 being embedded in spacetime.  Spacetime is a model inferred from
 intersubjective agreement of individual experiences.

 Brent



 It is this very numerical  problem - the fact that there are many
 bodies but only one conscious experience - that led Schrödinger to
 make his remark about our consciousness being not merely a piece of
 this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole.  Because
 whenever we try to think of it as merely a piece, the question will
 always obtrude but why only THIS piece right NOW?.  A criterion of
 selection is implied which would be capable of transforming the
 totality of 3-p indifferent co-existence into a unique 1-p
 manifestation.  And this in turn entails, as Schrödinger observed,
 that in some sense (to be

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread meekerdb

On 1/2/2012 7:04 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 January 2012 05:54, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

I don't understand that? Are you saying all the experiences are at
different times so they can the experience of one soul that's traversing the
experiences in sequence? I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.

I'd agree, but keeping clear the distinction that consciousness (1-p)
is not identical with its putative supervenience base (3-p). If we
refrain from calling the contents of the latter experiences, it
might make it easier to isolate the 3-p sense in which they all exist
timelessly from the distinct 1-p experiential sense in which time is
inferred from the content of each unique moment.

So we mustn't be misled into imagining
arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
uniqueness of the experiential moment.

How so? The uniqueness is inherent in the experience. It doesn't depend on
being embedded in spacetime. Spacetime is a model inferred from
intersubjective agreement of individual experiences.

Again, I agree, but with the same distinction. There is indeed the
3-p sense of inherently distinguishable subsets of some co-existent
supervenience base. But this mustn't be elided with the distinct 1-p
experiential sense of the unique presence of each conscious moment.

You mean confused or confounded...not elided?

If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
But if that were the case time would never be inferred, or to put
it more simply, nothing would ever happen.

You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base, otherwise it could not be
inferred. But why can't time be inferred from any ordered sequence. That's the theory
frequently put forward here. Numbers are timeless, but they are well ordered. Frames of
a movie film exist all at once, but they have an implicit order.

Brent

David

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 02.01.2012 07:01 meekerdb said the following:

On 1/1/2012 4:59 PM, Pierz wrote:


...


David says it better than I could have, but just to add that when
I say I that is just a sort of short-hand for the 1-p
perspective. There is no separate experiencer. In UDA, it's simply
the notes in a 'diary', some verifiable record of that branch of
the computational histories. There isn't really a 'jumping' of
anything, there are just these different computational branches.
And in saying there's one consciousness that experiences every
possible state, that doesn't imply experiencing them
simultaneously. That theoretical objective vantage point, seeing
all histories, is the privilege of God perhaps, or no-one. (Don't
jump on me about the God bit, there's obviously no God in an
arithmetical ontology). Also, just to note that this is no more
incoherent than Everett. Many Worlds implies the same view of the
subject.


Everett's MWI is based on QM which does assume a background time and
the state of the multiverse evolves in Hilbert space. This evolution
entails the evolution of the state of different observers which are
simultaneous.


Is an observer (or better many observers observing simultaneously) is 
still necessary also by Everett's MWI? What equation then describes an 
observer?


Evgenii

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread meekerdb


On 1/2/2012 12:24 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 02.01.2012 07:01 meekerdb said the following:

On 1/1/2012 4:59 PM, Pierz wrote:


...


David says it better than I could have, but just to add that when
I say I that is just a sort of short-hand for the 1-p
perspective. There is no separate experiencer. In UDA, it's simply
the notes in a 'diary', some verifiable record of that branch of
the computational histories. There isn't really a 'jumping' of
anything, there are just these different computational branches.
And in saying there's one consciousness that experiences every
possible state, that doesn't imply experiencing them
simultaneously. That theoretical objective vantage point, seeing
all histories, is the privilege of God perhaps, or no-one. (Don't
jump on me about the God bit, there's obviously no God in an
arithmetical ontology). Also, just to note that this is no more
incoherent than Everett. Many Worlds implies the same view of the
subject.


Everett's MWI is based on QM which does assume a background time and
the state of the multiverse evolves in Hilbert space. This evolution
entails the evolution of the state of different observers which are
simultaneous.


Is an observer (or better many observers observing simultaneously) is still necessary 
also by Everett's MWI? What equation then describes an observer?


No.  Observer is just shorthand for an interacting system that collapses the wave 
function, i.e. couples the thing observed into the quasi-classical environment.  The 
observation is the mathematical step of tracing over the environmental degrees of 
freedom.  So, within physics, there's an equation describing observation.


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 January 2012 18:56, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 You mean confused or confounded...not elided?

Elided: past participle, past tense of elide (Verb): Join together;
merge: the two things elided in his mind.

 If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
 supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
 But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
 it more simply, nothing would ever happen.

 You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base, otherwise
 it could not be inferred.  But why can't time be inferred from any ordered
 sequence.  That's the theory frequently put forward here.  Numbers are
 timeless, but they are well ordered.  Frames of a movie film exist all at
 once, but they have an implicit order.

No, that wasn't my point.  I agree that time can be inferred from an
ordered sequence, for example a coexistent ordered sequence of 3-p
states. But the 1-p observation, on which the relevant notion of
inference depends, supervenes on - without being identical with -
only a restricted *selection* from the 3-p ensemble.  Moreover,
selection in this 1-p sense - as in what is exclusively present at
any moment to a conscious observer - must be distinguished from a
weaker sense which we use merely to isolate, in principle, specific
members of a 3-p ensemble.  Unless, that is, we mean to say that
specific conscious moments, as experienced 1-personally, are uniquely
present only in principle.

ISTM inevitable that, short of outright denial of the singularly
present and selective nature of all 1-p experiences, contextualised by
a history of successive such moments, we are led to the intuition
that there is something else at work here, though what it is cannot
perhaps be captured more precisely than Bruno's hmm...

David


 On 1/2/2012 7:04 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 2 January 2012 05:54, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 I don't understand that?  Are you saying all the experiences are at
 different times so they can the experience of one soul that's traversing
 the
 experiences in sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
 exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.

 I'd agree, but keeping clear the distinction that consciousness (1-p)
 is not identical with its putative supervenience base (3-p).  If we
 refrain from calling the contents of the latter experiences, it
 might make it easier to isolate the 3-p sense in which they all exist
 timelessly from the distinct 1-p experiential sense in which time is
 inferred from the content of each unique moment.

 So we mustn't be misled into imagining
 arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
 timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
 would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
 uniqueness of the experiential moment.

 How so?  The uniqueness is inherent in the experience.  It doesn't depend
 on
 being embedded in spacetime.  Spacetime is a model inferred from
 intersubjective agreement of individual experiences.

 Again, I agree, but with the same distinction.  There is indeed the
 3-p sense of inherently distinguishable subsets of some co-existent
 supervenience base.  But this mustn't be elided with the distinct 1-p
 experiential sense of the unique presence of each conscious moment.


 You mean confused or confounded...not elided?


 If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
 supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
 But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
 it more simply, nothing would ever happen.


 You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base, otherwise
 it could not be inferred.  But why can't time be inferred from any ordered
 sequence.  That's the theory frequently put forward here.  Numbers are
 timeless, but they are well ordered.  Frames of a movie film exist all at
 once, but they have an implicit order.

 Brent


 David


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread meekerdb


On 1/2/2012 12:57 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 January 2012 18:56, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:


You mean confused or confounded...not elided?

Elided: past participle, past tense of elide (Verb): Join together;
merge: the two things elided in his mind.


Elide only means to join together two things by leaving out stuff in between them.  Its 
basic meaning is to leave out.  That's why I questioned it.





If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
it more simply, nothing would ever happen.

You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base, otherwise
it could not be inferred.  But why can't time be inferred from any ordered
sequence.  That's the theory frequently put forward here.  Numbers are
timeless, but they are well ordered.  Frames of a movie film exist all at
once, but they have an implicit order.

No, that wasn't my point.  I agree that time can be inferred from an
ordered sequence, for example a coexistent ordered sequence of 3-p
states. But the 1-p observation, on which the relevant notion of
inference depends, supervenes on - without being identical with -
only a restricted *selection* from the 3-p ensemble.  Moreover,
selection in this 1-p sense - as in what is exclusively present at
any moment to a conscious observer - must be distinguished from a
weaker sense which we use merely to isolate, in principle, specific
members of a 3-p ensemble.


If we distinguish these two then we've lost the explanatory power because now we have to 
postulate some different kind of selection that depends on consciousness, which was 
the concept we hoped to explain.


Brent


Unless, that is, we mean to say that
specific conscious moments, as experienced 1-personally, are uniquely
present only in principle.

ISTM inevitable that, short of outright denial of the singularly
present and selective nature of all 1-p experiences, contextualised by
a history of successive such moments, we are led to the intuition
that there is something else at work here, though what it is cannot
perhaps be captured more precisely than Bruno's hmm...

David



On 1/2/2012 7:04 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 January 2012 05:54, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote:


I don't understand that?  Are you saying all the experiences are at
different times so they can the experience of one soul that's traversing
the
experiences in sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.

I'd agree, but keeping clear the distinction that consciousness (1-p)
is not identical with its putative supervenience base (3-p).  If we
refrain from calling the contents of the latter experiences, it
might make it easier to isolate the 3-p sense in which they all exist
timelessly from the distinct 1-p experiential sense in which time is
inferred from the content of each unique moment.


So we mustn't be misled into imagining
arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
uniqueness of the experiential moment.

How so?  The uniqueness is inherent in the experience.  It doesn't depend
on
being embedded in spacetime.  Spacetime is a model inferred from
intersubjective agreement of individual experiences.

Again, I agree, but with the same distinction.  There is indeed the
3-p sense of inherently distinguishable subsets of some co-existent
supervenience base.  But this mustn't be elided with the distinct 1-p
experiential sense of the unique presence of each conscious moment.


You mean confused or confounded...not elided?



If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
it more simply, nothing would ever happen.


You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base, otherwise
it could not be inferred.  But why can't time be inferred from any ordered
sequence.  That's the theory frequently put forward here.  Numbers are
timeless, but they are well ordered.  Frames of a movie film exist all at
once, but they have an implicit order.

Brent


David


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-02 Thread David Nyman

On 2 January 2012 21:29, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Elided: past participle, past tense of elide (Verb): Join together;
 merge: the two things elided in his mind.


 Elide only means to join together two things by leaving out stuff in
 between them.  Its basic meaning is to leave out.  That's why I questioned
 it.

Confound will do just as well.

 Moreover,
 selection in this 1-p sense - as in what is exclusively present at
 any moment to a conscious observer - must be distinguished from a
 weaker sense which we use merely to isolate, in principle, specific
 members of a 3-p ensemble.


 If we distinguish these two then we've lost the explanatory power because
 now we have to postulate some different kind of selection that depends on
 consciousness, which was the concept we hoped to explain.

Sure, but isn't the problem precisely that (at least for some of us)
the first sense just doesn't seem to be adequately explained by
exclusive reference to the second?   If this were not so, there would
be no controversy.  So for those of us who may still be wondering
hmm..., the loss of explanatory power might be an exclusively 3-p
paradigm running out of potency just before the final leap from
objective framework to subjective experience.

To others, this doubtless seems too much like giving up on explanation
itself.  Why should methods that have been so successful in so many
cases not ultimately lead to full and final elucidation in this matter
also, thorny though it may presently seem?  In the meantime, any
temporarily troublesome loose ends are likely as illusory as that
old phantom, vis viva.

In practice, since I am partially persuaded by both of these lines of
thought, it's fortunate that nothing compels me to premature
commitment to either.

David

 On 1/2/2012 12:57 PM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 2 January 2012 18:56, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 You mean confused or confounded...not elided?

 Elided: past participle, past tense of elide (Verb): Join together;
 merge: the two things elided in his mind.


 Elide only means to join together two things by leaving out stuff in
 between them.  Its basic meaning is to leave out.  That's why I questioned
 it.



 If consciousness were simply timelessly identical with some
 supervenience base, there would be no such distinction to be made.
 But if that were the case time  would never be inferred, or to put
 it more simply, nothing would ever happen.

 You seem to be saying that time must be inherent in the 3p base,
 otherwise
 it could not be inferred.  But why can't time be inferred from any
 ordered
 sequence.  That's the theory frequently put forward here.  Numbers are
 timeless, but they are well ordered.  Frames of a movie film exist all at
 once, but they have an implicit order.

 No, that wasn't my point.  I agree that time can be inferred from an
 ordered sequence, for example a coexistent ordered sequence of 3-p
 states. But the 1-p observation, on which the relevant notion of
 inference depends, supervenes on - without being identical with -
 only a restricted *selection* from the 3-p ensemble.  Moreover,
 selection in this 1-p sense - as in what is exclusively present at
 any moment to a conscious observer - must be distinguished from a
 weaker sense which we use merely to isolate, in principle, specific
 members of a 3-p ensemble.


 If we distinguish these two then we've lost the explanatory power because
 now we have to postulate some different kind of selection that depends on
 consciousness, which was the concept we hoped to explain.

 Brent


 Unless, that is, we mean to say that
 specific conscious moments, as experienced 1-personally, are uniquely
 present only in principle.

 ISTM inevitable that, short of outright denial of the singularly
 present and selective nature of all 1-p experiences, contextualised by
 a history of successive such moments, we are led to the intuition
 that there is something else at work here, though what it is cannot
 perhaps be captured more precisely than Bruno's hmm...

 David


 On 1/2/2012 7:04 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 2 January 2012 05:54, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net    wrote:

 I don't understand that?  Are you saying all the experiences are at
 different times so they can the experience of one soul that's
 traversing
 the
 experiences in sequence?   I'd say they all exist timelessly, or more
 exactly time is inferred from the relation of their contents.

 I'd agree, but keeping clear the distinction that consciousness (1-p)
 is not identical with its putative supervenience base (3-p).  If we
 refrain from calling the contents of the latter experiences, it
 might make it easier to isolate the 3-p sense in which they all exist
 timelessly from the distinct 1-p experiential sense in which time is
 inferred from the content of each unique moment.

 So we mustn't be misled into imagining
 arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
 timeless identity with their 3-p

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-01 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 31.12.2011 22:57 meekerdb said the following:

On 12/31/2011 1:33 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 31.12.2011 22:00 meekerdb said the following:


...


Completely!? How do you know that? The Mars Rover doesn't just
record a sensor value in its computer, it also remember the value
and at a later time it may act on that value in combination with
other values, some internal and some external, to which it
assigns different levels of importance based on overall mission
goals. Exactly what would have to be added to make the Rover
human-like conscious?


Conscious experience is what is missing. To this end, it is not
enough to write values in the database. Google saves a lot of
information in its database, so what?


Google doesn't learn, plan, or act in our world.


It is not too difficult to give Mars Rover the access to the Google 
database. Does it change something?



Let us start with human beings. Experiments shows that one can
separate conscious and unconscious experience. Roughly speaking,
unconscious experience is some feedback loops that goes through the
 brain without us experiencing them. On the contrary, we have for
example 3D visual conscious experience. Please note that part of
information from eyes is processed unconsciously.


But that was my question. What part is processed consciously. I gave
my speculation below. You just said, conscious experience was what
was needed to make the experience conscious. I need hardly point out
that is a non-answer.


Science has just recently started to research on conscious experience 
and so far this phenomenon has not been repeated in vitro yet. Moreover, 
it seems that the modern science does not have means to describe it:


Jeffrey A. Gray, Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem.
p.5. “To put this Hard Problem into a preliminary nut-shell: it arises 
because nothing in our current theoretical models of brain and behavior 
accounts for the existence of conscious experience, still less for its 
detailed properties.”


This shows that we have to wait for more research in this direction to 
give a precise definition.


On other other hand, it is relatively easy to observe conscious 
experience, if you start from yourself. The experience of 3D visual 
world, music, feeling, etc. These phenomena must be researched, I do not 
believe it is a good idea to neglect them just because the current state 
of science cannot explain them.


The results described in Gray's book show that conscious phenomena are 
rather slow, it takes about a quarter of a second to form conscious 
phenomena. In comparison, the unconscious feedback loops are by an order 
of magnitude faster. This means that common reasoning I saw something 
and then I have done it is actually wrong. We get in conscious 
experience already results made unconsciously. Gray's hypothesis is that 
the conscious experience is kind of a multi-functional display created 
by the brain to allow for late error correction. However, he stresses in 
his book that right now we have no idea how that display is created and 
functions.


In any case, in his book you will find the description of many 
experiments in this respect.




Do you agree that human beings have conscious as well as
unconscious experience? If yes, please separate the experience of
Mars Rover into these two components.


I did. See below.

Brent



In my view you find in Mars Rover just feedbacks loop as in a
self-driving car. This is the reason, I have employed the word
completely. I agree though, it would be better to use instead of
completely in my knowledge.

Evgenii


I think it would be recording a kind of general historical
narrative which it would draw on as a source of information used
in planning future actions by means of an internal simulation of
itself and the local environment. I think that would also make it
what Bruno calls a Lobian machine.



I do not see here the division between conscious and unconscious 
experience here. Do you mean that if I save something into the database, 
this belong to conscious experience?


The hard problem of consciousness is not to explain intellect, this 
presumably could be done. The hard problem is conscious experience and 
this must be researched further.


Let me finish by two more quotes from Gray. First the hard problem put 
differently:


p. 40. “Given, that there is a scientific story that goes seamlessly 
from sensory input to behavioural output without reference to 
consciousness then, when we try to add conscious experience back into 
the story, we can’t find anything for it to do. Consciousness, it seems, 
has no casual powers, it stands outside the casual chain.”


Second that a conscious life does exist:

p. 7. “So be prepared to discover that much of your consciousness life 
is illusory. But cling, nonetheless, to that fundamental rock upon which 
Descartes built his great conceptual edifice (no matter how 
unsatisfactory it turned out to be in other respects): whatever else may

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-01 Thread David Nyman

On 1 January 2012 02:04, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.


 That seems incoherent to me.  How is it different from there are many
 experiences?  I is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there
 can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
 constructed.     But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just
 one I or to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to
 another.  That would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is something
 apart from the experiences it jumps to.

This is a tricky one.  Pierz says above that from 3-p, all branches
are conscious.  But perhaps it might be more accurate to say
something more like from 3-p, all branches are in some measure
accessible to consciousness.  Consciousness indeed supervenes on all
branches, but never all at the same time.  Supervenience is not an
identity claim.  The putative supervenience base is an inclusive
category embracing all 3-p descriptions indifferently, whereas 1-p
experiences are characterised precisely by their mutual exclusivity.

I agree with you that I is just a construct from a subset of
experiences and there
can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
constructed. I in this objective sense can be coherently understood
as an ensemble of co-existing 3-p descriptions.  But any conscious
experience, by contrast, is always a singular occasion - a unique
moment in time, if you like.  So we mustn't be misled into imagining
arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
uniqueness of the experiential moment.

It is this very numerical  problem - the fact that there are many
bodies but only one conscious experience - that led Schrödinger to
make his remark about our consciousness being not merely a piece of
this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole.  Because
whenever we try to think of it as merely a piece, the question will
always obtrude but why only THIS piece right NOW?.  A criterion of
selection is implied which would be capable of transforming the
totality of 3-p indifferent co-existence into a unique 1-p
manifestation.  And this in turn entails, as Schrödinger observed,
that in some sense (to be resolved!) each individual conscious
fragment of the present must be a unique summation, by the system as
a whole, of itself.

David


 On 12/31/2011 5:07 PM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 31 December 2011 23:35, Pierzpier...@gmail.com  wrote:

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.


 That seems incoherent to me.  How is it different from there are many
 experiences?  I is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there
 can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
 constructed.     But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just
 one I or to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to
 another.  That would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is something
 apart from the experiences it jumps to.

 Brent

 Yes, and the sense in which there is a single consciousness that
 experiences every possible state is indeed an unusual one.  It's as
 if we want to say that all such first-personal experiences occur
 indifferently or even simultaneously, but on reflection there can be
 no relation of simultaneity between distinguishable conscious events.
 The first-person is, by definition, always in the singular and present
 NOW.

 As Schrödinger remarked:

 This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this
 entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is
 not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.

 David


 When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you
 think one's
 consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of
 computation so there
 are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you
 jumped to them.

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-01 Thread Pierz

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-  
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience  
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the  
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense  
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.  That seems 
 incoherent to me.  How is it different from there are many  experiences?  
 I is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there  can be 
 many different subsets from which many different Is can be  constructed. 
     But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just  one I or 
 to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to  another.  That 
 would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is something  apart from the 
 experiences it jumps to.

David says it better than I could have, but just to add that when I
say I that is just a sort of short-hand for the 1-p perspective.
There is no separate experiencer. In UDA, it's simply the notes in a
'diary', some verifiable record of that branch of the computational
histories. There isn't really a 'jumping' of anything, there are just
these different computational branches. And in saying there's one
consciousness that experiences every possible state, that doesn't
imply experiencing them simultaneously. That theoretical objective
vantage point, seeing all histories, is the privilege of God perhaps,
or no-one. (Don't jump on me about the God bit, there's obviously no
God in an arithmetical ontology). Also, just to note that this is no
more incoherent than Everett. Many Worlds implies the same view of the
subject.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-01 Thread meekerdb

On 1/1/2012 9:35 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 1 January 2012 02:04, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

That seems incoherent to me. How is it different from there are many
experiences? I is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there
can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
constructed. But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just
one I or to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to
another. That would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is something
apart from the experiences it jumps to.

This is a tricky one. Pierz says above that from 3-p, all branches
are conscious. But perhaps it might be more accurate to say
something more like from 3-p, all branches are in some measure
accessible to consciousness. Consciousness indeed supervenes on all
branches, but never all at the same time.

I don't understand that? Are you saying all the experiences are at different times so
they can the experience of one soul that's traversing the experiences in sequence? I'd
say they all exist timelessly, or more exactly time is inferred from the relation of their
contents.

Supervenience is not an
identity claim. The putative supervenience base is an inclusive
category embracing all 3-p descriptions indifferently, whereas 1-p
experiences are characterised precisely by their mutual exclusivity.

I agree with you that I is just a construct from a subset of
experiences and there
can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be
constructed. I in this objective sense can be coherently understood
as an ensemble of co-existing 3-p descriptions. But any conscious
experience, by contrast, is always a singular occasion - a unique
moment in time, if you like. So we mustn't be misled into imagining
arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there all together in
timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so
would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the
uniqueness of the experiential moment.

How so? The uniqueness is inherent in the experience. It doesn't depend on being
embedded in spacetime. Spacetime is a model inferred from intersubjective agreement of
individual experiences.

Brent

It is this very numerical problem - the fact that there are many
bodies but only one conscious experience - that led Schrödinger to
make his remark about our consciousness being not merely a piece of
this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole. Because
whenever we try to think of it as merely a piece, the question will
always obtrude but why only THIS piece right NOW?. A criterion of
selection is implied which would be capable of transforming the
totality of 3-p indifferent co-existence into a unique 1-p
manifestation. And this in turn entails, as Schrödinger observed,
that in some sense (to be resolved!) each individual conscious
fragment of the present must be a unique summation, by the system as
a whole, of itself.

David

On 12/31/2011 5:07 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 31 December 2011 23:35, Pierzpier...@gmail.comwrote:

Brent

Yes, and the sense in which there is a single consciousness that
experiences every possible state is indeed an unusual one. It's as
if we want to say that all such first-personal experiences occur
indifferently or even simultaneously, but on reflection there can be
no relation of simultaneity between distinguishable conscious events.
The first-person is, by definition, always in the singular and present
NOW.

As Schrödinger remarked:

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this
entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is
not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.

David

When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2012-01-01 Thread meekerdb

On 1/1/2012 4:59 PM, Pierz wrote:

Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1- p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience myself on one
branch at a time, probabilistically according to the measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense a single consciousness that
experiences every possible state. That seems incoherent to me. How is it different from there are many experiences? I is just a construct from a subset of
experiences and there can be many different subsets from which many different Is can be constructed. But I don't know what it would mean to say there is
just one I or to say that I can jump from one thread of experience to another. That would presuppose that consciousness, the I, is
something apart from the experiences it jumps to.

David says it better than I could have, but just to add that when I
say I that is just a sort of short-hand for the 1-p perspective.
There is no separate experiencer. In UDA, it's simply the notes in a
'diary', some verifiable record of that branch of the computational
histories. There isn't really a 'jumping' of anything, there are just
these different computational branches. And in saying there's one
consciousness that experiences every possible state, that doesn't
imply experiencing them simultaneously. That theoretical objective
vantage point, seeing all histories, is the privilege of God perhaps,
or no-one. (Don't jump on me about the God bit, there's obviously no
God in an arithmetical ontology). Also, just to note that this is no
more incoherent than Everett. Many Worlds implies the same view of the
subject.

Everett's MWI is based on QM which does assume a background time and the state of the
multiverse evolves in Hilbert space. This evolution entails the evolution of the state
of different observers which are simultaneous.

Brent

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread Pierz



On Dec 31, 6:17 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:

  On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:
  On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote:
  You think it is ludicrous that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the 
  state of its
  battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory available for 
  pictures, etc?

  Brent
  sigh  Let's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but agree to
  disagree on what constitutes consciousness.

 sigh The phrase was internal perception not consciousness.

Well usually the term 'perception' entails consciousness. If you mean
that you ate try indifferent as to whether the machine is conscious,
well OK. I see something deeper in the consciousness problem.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 31 Dec 2011, at 01:44, Joseph Knight wrote:




On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 9:47 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


Which computation?  I don't see any computation in the projection of  
the computation-movie. The Boolean graph nodes are broken. The light  
patterns is exactly the same, with the boolean graph turned, or not,  
upside down. You argument seems to rely on non relevant (with  
respect to the possible computation) idiosyncracies of this thought  
experience implementation. I will think about a version of MGA  
making this more obvious.


OK, I think I see where my error lies. I thought the absurdity arose  
later in the argument than it actually does. I see that by my  
reasoning we would have conscious supervening on the particular  
physical system and not the computation itself, which would  
contradict comp. If we extract the computation from the glass/node  
system in the form of the film, then by comp consciousness should  
supervene on the film, when clearly it cannot. Is that roughly what  
you are saying?


I think so.








It does matter for the computation what the light lands on.


But what is the computation in this case?



This doesn't violate 323, or comp. It means that the whole system  
(crystal/glass+film) must be taken into account in your analysis.


The whole system is considered, and then changed in a way which does  
not change the physical activity, except for operating nodes which  
are retreived, and this to show that the physical activity does not  
implement the computation, but is only a mimicking of non relevant  
appearances associated accidentally with the original computation.




It is no better than taking half of the brain and ignoring the  
other half. It isn't a matter of substitution level.


OK. But you have to explain me the role of the broken node, in the  
computation, or even in the light patterns. You might try, as an  
exercise to refute your own argument by changing the original device.


I will think about it.


OK. I will think about it too.

Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 31 Dec 2011, at 03:37, Pierz wrote:




On Dec 31, 4:36 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 30 Dec 2011, at 03:10, Pierz wrote:


This thread has been extremely helpful to me in terms of getting to
the heart of this problem and the whole issue of supervenience -  
thank

you Joseph for your clarification of the meaning of the term and for
your succinct and clear summary of the MGA, and to David for the  
nice
clarification of the 'qua materia'/'qua computation' distinction.  
But

I have yet to see why the MGA proves that consciousness can't
supervene on abstract computation +  concrete implementation.


I would say it does. If you agree with my answer to Russell on
supervenience, that should be clear.
Indeed you can see MGA as proving that IF my consciousness supervenes
on abstract computation + concrete implementation then my
consciousness supervenes on abstract computation only. Concrete
implementations become explainable in term of relative abstract
implementations (kind of things you can easily translated in term of
the phi_i and the W_i, and from that, in pure arithmetic).



I can
see that Joseph's refutation misses the mark because the issue is  
that

the replaying of a recording, whether on a screen or within the
original mechanism, performs no computations. But why cannot the
materialist/computationalist merely counter that Alice *is* a zombie
during the playback of the movie, because the required instantiation
of  a computation is absent?


I tend to agree. but most people will not because they define the
zombie explicitly by an entity behaving like a human *in all*
situations, so that whatever they are, they handle the
counterfactuals. But accepting your sense of zombie, that I am
guessing, I am OK for saying that Alice, or any appearance of a  
person

in a movie can be seen as a sort of zombie.


OK, yes my terms are sometimes less than rigorous, sorry about that. I
suppose I just mean not conscious in this instance. I do wonder
though (as an aside), whether you couldn't regard a recording as
'crystallising' in a sense the consciousness it records. If a
consciousness is abstract, then the recording continues to represent
that abstraction in the same way a body/brain represents the
abstraction.


Yes. The film does encode comp state, and as such can be used to  
reimplement the person in a boolean graph, making possible the  
recovery, not of the consciousness (which is in Platonia) but on its  
relative ability to manifest itself relatively to you.






I heard recently about a condition called Transient
Global Amnesia in which people temporarily lose the ability to record
new memories beyond say the last minute, and forget years of their
history. In such an event, these people behave repetitively, much like
a recording (a 'broken record'), as if the same conscious state is
recycled over and over. Are they zombies? No, and you can easily
enough say they are just a computer stuck in a computational loop,
but  if consciousness is abstract, then a repeated calculation
represents the same conscious state, and the physical thing performing
the calculation is just a type of window onto that abstraction, just
as the recording is a window onto the abstraction. In that sense a
recording might be conscious, in the same way the person in the mirror
is as conscious as the person looking into it.


Yes. In that same way, and that why we will have to abandon the idea  
that consciousness supervene on the physical, and accept the idea that  
the physical supervene on consciousness, even if locally it has to  
look like the contrary, for reason which can be explained and tested.






Sure, he is committed to consciousness of
the machine if the physical activity is identical, but in the  
playback

of the film, the activity is not identical, since the connections
between logic gates are broken and/or overridden by the *projected*
activity (be it 'lucky rays' or the film).


OK.


Although the sequence of
firings in the network is the same, the causal connection between
firings is removed - indeed this is the point: no calculation is  
being

carried out.


Indeed.



But a sequence of firings in a logic network is not the
entirety of that network's physical activity. Or rather, the  
physical
activity of the sequence is not sufficient to define its activity  
as a
computation. That requires the casual connection between firings  
to be

retained.



Imagine a domino computer. I can't remember where I heard this first
(maybe on this list somewhere), but we can imagine a network of
spring-
loaded dominos that are set up to spring back upright after a  
certain

time. By setting up rows of such dominos in a clever fashion, we can
use it to perform calculations. Let's say we perform a calculation
with a boolean output - either a domino at the end falls or it
doesn't. If we set up such a domino computer and push the first
domino, we initiate a causal chain reaction that performs the
calculation

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 31.12.2011 09:17 Pierz said the following:



On Dec 31, 6:17 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:


On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote:

On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote: You think it is ludicrous
that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the state of its
battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory
available for pictures, etc?



Brent

sighLet's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but
agree to disagree on what constitutes consciousness.


sigh  The phrase was internal perception not consciousness.


Well usually the term 'perception' entails consciousness. If you
mean that you ate try indifferent as to whether the machine is
conscious, well OK. I see something deeper in the consciousness
problem.



I would agree. When AI people use the word perception to describe a 
sensor connected to a computer, in my view they loose the biggest part 
of the meaning. A human being perceives also unconsciously and this part 
of perception could be similar to what we find in Mars Rover but on the 
other hand a human being has conscious experiences. This part is 
completely missing in AI.


Evgenii
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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/31/2011 3:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

As I've said we're on the same team with regards to primitive
materialism. But I have sympathy for the materialists on this issue of
instantiation. After all, we need computers still, we can't rely on
the arithmetical platonia to predict the weather for us.


Again, we need brain, bodies and computer to optimize the probability of staying in the 
branch we share at our substitution level. And if the argument is correct, the weather 
and you are already in Platonia. The local relative body is needed to not jump too 
quickly in alternate consciousness/realities. 


When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you think one's 
consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of computation so there 
are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you jumped to them.


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 12/31/2011 5:49 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 31.12.2011 09:17 Pierz said the following:

On Dec 31, 6:17 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:

On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.netwrote:

On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote: You think it is ludicrous
that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the state of its
battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory
available for pictures, etc?

Brent

sighLet's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but
agree to disagree on what constitutes consciousness.

sigh The phrase was internal perception not consciousness.

Well usually the term 'perception' entails consciousness. If you
mean that you ate try indifferent as to whether the machine is
conscious, well OK. I see something deeper in the consciousness
problem.

I would agree. When AI people use the word perception to describe a sensor connected
to a computer, in my view they loose the biggest part of the meaning. A human being
perceives also unconsciously and this part of perception could be similar to what we
find in Mars Rover but on the other hand a human being has conscious experiences. This
part is completely missing in AI.

Completely!? How do you know that? The Mars Rover doesn't just record a sensor value in
its computer, it also remember the value and at a later time it may act on that value in
combination with other values, some internal and some external, to which it assigns
different levels of importance based on overall mission goals. Exactly what would have to
be added to make the Rover human-like conscious?

I think it would be recording a kind of general historical narrative which it would draw
on as a source of information used in planning future actions by means of an internal
simulation of itself and the local environment. I think that would also make it what
Bruno calls a Lobian machine.

Brent

Evgenii

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/31/2011 1:33 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 31.12.2011 22:00 meekerdb said the following:

On 12/31/2011 5:49 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 31.12.2011 09:17 Pierz said the following:



On Dec 31, 6:17 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:


On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote: You think it is
ludicrous that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the
state of its battery, the temperature of its motors, the
amount of memory available for pictures, etc?



Brent

sigh Let's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but
agree to disagree on what constitutes consciousness.


sigh The phrase was internal perception not
consciousness.


Well usually the term 'perception' entails consciousness. If you
mean that you ate try indifferent as to whether the machine is
conscious, well OK. I see something deeper in the consciousness
problem.



I would agree. When AI people use the word perception to describe
a sensor connected to a computer, in my view they loose the biggest
part of the meaning. A human being perceives also unconsciously and
this part of perception could be similar to what we find in Mars
Rover but on the other hand a human being has conscious
experiences. This part is completely missing in AI.


Completely!? How do you know that? The Mars Rover doesn't just record
a sensor value in its computer, it also remember the value and at a
later time it may act on that value in combination with other values,
some internal and some external, to which it assigns different levels
of importance based on overall mission goals. Exactly what would have
to be added to make the Rover human-like conscious?


Conscious experience is what is missing. To this end, it is not enough to write values 
in the database. Google saves a lot of information in its database, so what?


Google doesn't learn, plan, or act in our world.



Let us start with human beings. Experiments shows that one can separate conscious and 
unconscious experience. Roughly speaking, unconscious experience is some feedback loops 
that goes through the brain without us experiencing them. On the contrary, we have for 
example 3D visual conscious experience. Please note that part of information from eyes 
is processed unconsciously.


But that was my question.  What part is processed consciously.  I gave my speculation 
below.  You just said, conscious experience was what was needed to make the experience 
conscious.  I need hardly point out that is a non-answer.




Do you agree that human beings have conscious as well as unconscious experience? If yes, 
please separate the experience of Mars Rover into these two components.


I did.  See below.

Brent



In my view you find in Mars Rover just feedbacks loop as in a self-driving car. This is 
the reason, I have employed the word completely. I agree though, it would be better to 
use instead of completely in my knowledge.


Evgenii


I think it would be recording a kind of general historical narrative
 which it would draw on as a source of information used in planning
future actions by means of an internal simulation of itself and the
local environment. I think that would also make it what Bruno calls a
 Lobian machine.

Brent




Evgenii






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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread Pierz


 When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you think 
 one's
 consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of 
 computation so there
 are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you 
 jumped to them.


Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.

As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to
avoid danger, would it experience fear? Until we understand the
qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume
the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such
arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and
the result is unedifying.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 12/31/2011 3:35 PM, Pierz wrote:

When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you think
one's
consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of
computation so there
are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you jumped to
them.

As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to
avoid danger, would it experience fear?

If we programmed it to sacrifice other important values (like conserving power, or keeping
all its parts) I'd speculate that it, in some sense, felt fear.

Until we understand the
qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume
the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such
arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and
the result is unedifying.

And that's why I think questions of consciousness will ultimately be overtaken-by-events.
The interesting questions will be how danger is recognized and avoided, how relations to
others are managed, etc. And we will probably talk about them as if the AI is conscious
just by analogy to ourselves while at a lower level we know which module is doing what and
how changing it will change behavior. But nobody will ask where's the consciousness any
more than they ask where's the vis viva of their automobile.

Brent

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-31 Thread David Nyman

On 31 December 2011 23:35, Pierz pier...@gmail.com wrote:

 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.

Yes, and the sense in which there is a single consciousness that
experiences every possible state is indeed an unusual one.  It's as
if we want to say that all such first-personal experiences occur
indifferently or even simultaneously, but on reflection there can be
no relation of simultaneity between distinguishable conscious events.
The first-person is, by definition, always in the singular and present
NOW.

As Schrödinger remarked:

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this
entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is
not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.

David



 When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you think 
 one's
 consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of 
 computation so there
 are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you 
 jumped to them.


 Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1-
 p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience
 myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the
 measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense
 a single consciousness that experiences every possible state.

 As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to
 avoid danger, would it experience fear? Until we understand the
 qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume
 the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such
 arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and
 the result is unedifying.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-30 Thread Pierz

On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote:

 You think it is ludicrous that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the 
 state of its
 battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory available for 
 pictures, etc?

 Brent

sigh Let's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but agree to
disagree on what constitutes consciousness. I disagree with David
Deutsch that we could run a conscious entity on our laptop computer if
we only understood consciousness better, but I agree with him that we
do *not* understand it, and the Turing test is a bad one. But, as I
stated in a remark to Bruno above, those who see no mind-body duality
problem in the first place will never be persuaded of its existence,
just as I will never be persuaded that wiring a sensor in the Mars
Rover makes the machine conscious of its environment.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 29 Dec 2011, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/29/2011 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two  
consciousness.

In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
change them, we have to change something physical in the  
classroom),

in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is  
what

is used in the argument.

Bruno



We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha)



It might be the same consciousness, with different content.


???  That would be two different conscious states.  What is a  
consciousness apart from its content?



That's a good question. May be it is cosmic consciousness, or pure  
consciousness of pure consciousness, or perhaps the innate  
consciousness of the pre-löbian universal machine. Of course we lack  
identification criterium for consciousness, and my point was more  
logical than assertative, in the frame of MGA's alleged refutations.  
I hope this will be clarified in my answer to Russell on  
supervenience. I will be occupied those next days, so I might answer  
this next year.


Happy new year, Brent.

Bruno

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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 30 Dec 2011, at 01:00, Russell Standish wrote:


On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 05:47:07PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:



They both cannot supervene on the same physical state.


In my weak sense, they both supervene on the same physical state of
the room, or universe, or even arithmetic.


We're not talking about your weak sense, but the standard definition
of supervenience.


In the stanford encyclopedia, the standard definition is the weak one.  
I think you confuse A sup B, with A sup only on B.










That is
by the definition of supervenience.


The intuitive definition of supervenience is that A supervenes on B
if we cannot have an A-difference without a B-difference.


Yes.


OK. Good. We do agree on the main vague definition, of supervenience.





If A supervenes on B, it supervene trivially on a disjoint union of
B and C, because we still cannot have an A-difference without a (B
union C difference).



No - the Tommy vs Samantha example is a counter example:

Let T sup B and S sup C.

But T and C are different conscious states, so cannot both supervene
on B u C.


This is not coherent with the definition above. A sup B means that  
there is no A-difference without a B difference. But it does not mean  
that a B-difference entails a A-difference. If A sup B, then A sup (B  
disjoint-union C), because the fact that a A-difference needs a B- 
difference will entails that a A-difference needs a (B disjoint-union  
C) difference.
both supervene on B u C is ambiguous. Both individually supervenes  
on B u C. And both in union does supervene on B u C.
If you negate such statement, by definition it would mean that a  
difference in T and C can be attained without difference on B u C. I  
thought your swapping consciousness was introduced for that very  
purpose (and *that* would have been a logical problem for MGA).










Therefore they both cannot
supervene on the same classroom.


In that case I would have said that Tommy's consciousness supervenes
*only* on Tommy's brain (but I avoid this because we don't know and
cannot know what is our real generalized brain).



Whatever the generalised brains are, the foregoing discussion
implies that the intersection of two generalised brains must be  
empty.


Which would logically makes the notion spurious. That vindicates what  
I said, ISTM.










Perhaps the word swapping is misleading to you - I didn't mean
anything particularly profound by it.


I have still no idea of what you mean by that. Suppose that you tell
me that Bruno and Russell's consciousness swap every minutes, since
six months. What would that mean? I don't see how we could be aware
of such things, nor how we could verify this in any third (and
first) person way.


Nor do I. Not even a putative God could be aware, I would think.


OK.



I
wasn't suggesting such a thing, anyway. I was thinking more in terms  
of first

consider Tommy's consiousness then afterwards think of
Samantha's. Thus you are swapping the focus of your attention.


That's why we have to be very careful with the notion of supervenience.





And this makes your argument (physicalist, for
the sake of the reasoning) against the consciousness instantiated by
the (concrete) UD dubious. I think. I mean that this critics on MGA
fails, at least by lack of clarity (for me).



The critique was against your step of unfolding the multiverse into a
single universe by dovetailing. You then asserted that the
consciousness supervened on the dovetailer, which as we've been
through above, cannot be the case.


I think the discussion above is irrelevant. I can just assert that the  
running of the UD instanciate the many consciousness. And I have to  
say that, if I believe in comp + sup-phys. Without sup-phys I can  
still nuance the talk, in the sense that persistent consciousness is  
*only* recovered from the first person point of view on the entire  
(mathematical) execution of the UD.






Of course, you may refine your argument by dovetailing just the
generalised brain, and not its environment which contains other
brains. But in this case, I would point out that eliminating the
environment may well render the brain unconsious. There is certainly
evidence from sensory depreivation experiments that this might happen.


The generalized brain, by definition contains the environment. It does  
not exclude the presence of other brain. We cannot logically exclude,  
in the comp frame, that we need many brains to get the consciousness  
of all individual brain content. Even if we find this not really  
plausible.







Or maybe you have a different way of emulating a multiverse without
dovetailing?


If a unique processor dovetails on two programs, it executes those two  
programs in the comp sense. Dovetailing just add delays of  
reconstitution. If that was not the case, I would have to say no to  
a doctor for question of implementation, which does not make sense  
once we

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 30 Dec 2011, at 01:57, Pierz wrote:


Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we can
sense some incoherence, but empirically, this is the hard part to
convey, and without MGA/Maudlin, I have not been able to convince of
the frank incoherence.


And you've been successful with the MGA?


With the academic. Less so with the media, club, press, etc. I got a  
price for the thesis, but I have nver seen it. Instead of promotion,  
there has been, as many people have witnessed defamation, and I still  
don't know if it is just politics or if there isn something  
ideological. Anyway, that's boring things of life kind of thing. But  
most people get easily UDA1-7, and less easily the MGA. The math part  
seems grasped only by logicians (which unfortunately are not so much  
interested in the mind-body problem).





I am philosophically entirely
on your side with regards to this intuition of incoherence, and know
well the difficulty/impossibility of getting a materialist to
apprehend it. But has the logic of MGA actually ever converted a
materialist?


Yes. At least for some period of time. Some people get the point, and  
then fall back in the Aristotelian habits.




Seems to me people are entrenched in their positions on
such matters and weapons of mere logic - especially complex logic -
will never move them.


It is normal in a field which use mainly authoritative (and thus  
irrational) arguments since a long time (explicitly 1500 years in  
occident). It is normal that it takes time.





Even weapons of empirical demonstration take a
long time to persuade people - paradigms do not die easily.


In the human/fundamental science we are still using the boss is  
right, and paradigms have still to wait for the boss is dead.





This is
not to say I am yet completely persuaded by the MGA either - I'll post
my doubts/questions as a separate reply here.


OK. Thanks. I like to share my passion for that subject. I will answer  
asap.


Best wishes and happy new year,

Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-30 Thread David Nyman

On 30 December 2011 12:07, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 What is a consciousness apart from its content?

 That's a good question. May be it is cosmic consciousness, or pure
 consciousness of pure consciousness, or perhaps the innate consciousness of
 the pre-löbian universal machine. Of course we lack identification criterium
 for consciousness, and my point was more logical than assertative, in the
 frame of MGA's alleged refutations. I hope this will be clarified in my
 answer to Russell on supervenience. I will be occupied those next days, so I
 might answer this next year.

This interesting comment resonates with today's early morning
ruminations (a pernicious habit I apparently share with Descartes!).
I've been wondering again about the distinction between your view of
computationalism and something like Zuse's or Schmidhuber's.  If I
have understood these latter ideas, they postulate a particular
digital machine as somehow ontologically privileged, this UM then
providing a unique basis for all subsequent computational development.
 In the process the primitive UM must emulate infinities of other UMs,
but as all this computation ultimately supervenes on the activity of
the primitive UM, ontologically speaking it is solus ipse, and all
points of view must therefore be referenced to it.

This idea seems to possess some nice features (for example with
respect to an ultimate reference point for who am I? questions), but
one might object that it originates too late in the computational
food chain.  After all, computation is itself reducible to more
fundamental combinatorial relations, so by what principle is some
particular UM - itself a complex combinatorial entity - supposed to
bootstrap itself into primitive existence?  Perhaps such an idea puts
the computational cart before the arithmetical horse.  And is the
primitive UM itself supposed to supervene on (i.e. be uniquely
anchored to) a primitively-physical machine?  If so, would this
supervenience claim be vulnerable to an MGA-type of refutation?

But in any case your comment above about the innate consciousness of
the pre-löbian universal machine is intriguing.  ISTM that in the end
epistemology and ontology must come to one thing: whatever we know is
ultimately a self-reflection of whatever we are.  Whatever we are is
both unique and multitudinous, a One that through
self-differentiation and self-combination explodes into combinatorial
universality.  And from that explosion the many are born and suffer.

Je vous souhaite une très heureuse nouvelle année.

David


 On 29 Dec 2011, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:

 On 12/29/2011 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:

 On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two consciousness.
 In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
 supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
 change them, we have to change something physical in the classroom),
 in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
 supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is what
 is used in the argument.

 Bruno


 We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha)



 It might be the same consciousness, with different content.


 ???  That would be two different conscious states.  What is a
 consciousness apart from its content?



 That's a good question. May be it is cosmic consciousness, or pure
 consciousness of pure consciousness, or perhaps the innate consciousness of
 the pre-löbian universal machine. Of course we lack identification criterium
 for consciousness, and my point was more logical than assertative, in the
 frame of MGA's alleged refutations. I hope this will be clarified in my
 answer to Russell on supervenience. I will be occupied those next days, so I
 might answer this next year.

 Happy new year, Brent.

 Bruno

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




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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 30 Dec 2011, at 03:10, Pierz wrote:


This thread has been extremely helpful to me in terms of getting to
the heart of this problem and the whole issue of supervenience - thank
you Joseph for your clarification of the meaning of the term and for
your succinct and clear summary of the MGA, and to David for the nice
clarification of the 'qua materia'/'qua computation' distinction. But
I have yet to see why the MGA proves that consciousness can't
supervene on abstract computation +  concrete implementation.



I would say it does. If you agree with my answer to Russell on  
supervenience, that should be clear.
Indeed you can see MGA as proving that IF my consciousness supervenes  
on abstract computation + concrete implementation then my  
consciousness supervenes on abstract computation only. Concrete  
implementations become explainable in term of relative abstract  
implementations (kind of things you can easily translated in term of  
the phi_i and the W_i, and from that, in pure arithmetic).





I can
see that Joseph's refutation misses the mark because the issue is that
the replaying of a recording, whether on a screen or within the
original mechanism, performs no computations. But why cannot the
materialist/computationalist merely counter that Alice *is* a zombie
during the playback of the movie, because the required instantiation
of  a computation is absent?


I tend to agree. but most people will not because they define the  
zombie explicitly by an entity behaving like a human *in all*  
situations, so that whatever they are, they handle the  
counterfactuals. But accepting your sense of zombie, that I am  
guessing, I am OK for saying that Alice, or any appearance of a person  
in a movie can be seen as a sort of zombie.





Sure, he is committed to consciousness of
the machine if the physical activity is identical, but in the playback
of the film, the activity is not identical, since the connections
between logic gates are broken and/or overridden by the *projected*
activity (be it 'lucky rays' or the film).


OK.




Although the sequence of
firings in the network is the same, the causal connection between
firings is removed - indeed this is the point: no calculation is being
carried out.


Indeed.




But a sequence of firings in a logic network is not the
entirety of that network's physical activity. Or rather, the physical
activity of the sequence is not sufficient to define its activity as a
computation. That requires the casual connection between firings to be
retained.

Imagine a domino computer. I can't remember where I heard this first
(maybe on this list somewhere), but we can imagine a network of  
spring-

loaded dominos that are set up to spring back upright after a certain
time. By setting up rows of such dominos in a clever fashion, we can
use it to perform calculations. Let's say we perform a calculation
with a boolean output - either a domino at the end falls or it
doesn't. If we set up such a domino computer and push the first
domino, we initiate a causal chain reaction that performs the
calculation we have programmed it for. Now imagine we disable the
causality by gluing the dominos upright. Now imagine we have a set of
instructions telling us to lower and raise dominos in such and such a
sequence. Our instructions happen to tells us to raise and lower them
in exactly the sequence they would have if they had simply been pushed
without the glue. This could be a random set of instructions that just
happens to be the same (as per luck rays), or a description
(recording) of a previous actual run of the computer (as per movie
graph). This is a restatement of the MGA scenario. In that case, the
casual interaction between dominos has been removed, but the sequence
of 'firings' in the network is retained.


OK. This should help to get the conclusion that consciousness is not  
supervening on the physical behavior of the dominoes, but on the  
abstract relationship which makes them doing a computation. Given that  
most people agree that consciousness is not a material substance, we  
have no problem to attach consciousness to that abstract setting,  
which includes the counterfactuals by the mathematical definition (of  
computation).






Now the materialist-computationalist already believes in the odd
scenario of a consciousness instantiated by a computation in which the
steps of the computation are performed in different places in time and
space - eg one step in a calculation is performed in Sydney on one
machine in 2011 and the next is performed on another in Melbourne in
2012  (local examples rather than Brussels-Amsterdam!). It is still a
potentially conscious calculation if a causal connection between
computational steps is retained.


Yes.




Remove the causality from the
scenario and it becomes meaningless and absurd - otherwise
consciousnesses would arise between all kinds of  unrelated things.


OK.



A
bit of half written code on my computer in Melbourne could be

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 30 Dec 2011, at 16:18, David Nyman wrote:


On 30 December 2011 12:07, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


What is a consciousness apart from its content?


That's a good question. May be it is cosmic consciousness, or pure
consciousness of pure consciousness, or perhaps the innate  
consciousness of
the pre-löbian universal machine. Of course we lack identification  
criterium
for consciousness, and my point was more logical than assertative,  
in the
frame of MGA's alleged refutations. I hope this will be clarified  
in my
answer to Russell on supervenience. I will be occupied those next  
days, so I

might answer this next year.


This interesting comment resonates with today's early morning
ruminations (a pernicious habit I apparently share with Descartes!).
I've been wondering again about the distinction between your view of
computationalism and something like Zuse's or Schmidhuber's.  If I
have understood these latter ideas, they postulate a particular
digital machine as somehow ontologically privileged, this UM then
providing a unique basis for all subsequent computational development.
In the process the primitive UM must emulate infinities of other UMs,
but as all this computation ultimately supervenes on the activity of
the primitive UM, ontologically speaking it is solus ipse, and all
points of view must therefore be referenced to it.



Yes. It is still physicalism, but digital and computationalist. They  
single out a particular universal (or not) history. It is open, I  
think, if those universal story are robust, that is, contained a  
universal dovetailer. By MGA that does not matter, if there is program  
for the physical reality, to get both the qualia and the quanta in the  
self-referentially correct way, you still have to justify its  
existence from the mind-body arithmetical problem (and thus the modal  
logics of self-reference, the machine interview, ...).


Digital physicalists are still cheating by copying Nature. So they  
miss the whole psychological and theological side of the (comp) truth.






This idea seems to possess some nice features (for example with
respect to an ultimate reference point for who am I? questions), but
one might object that it originates too late in the computational
food chain.  After all, computation is itself reducible to more
fundamental combinatorial relations, so by what principle is some
particular UM - itself a complex combinatorial entity - supposed to
bootstrap itself into primitive existence?  Perhaps such an idea puts
the computational cart before the arithmetical horse.


Quantum computation might have violated Church thesis, after all. So  
people can still speculate on hidden variable, and selection  
principle to avoid the very big many dreams matrix. It seems to me  
that QM shows on the contrary how deep we are already embedded in, as  
comp suggested too.





And is the
primitive UM itself supposed to supervene on (i.e. be uniquely
anchored to) a primitively-physical machine?  If so, would this
supervenience claim be vulnerable to an MGA-type of refutation?


Once you fix a UM, you get them all. And the laws of physics should be  
independent of the initial choice. You are right, digital physics get  
a sort of conceptual problem if taken too naively. I think it is just  
inconsistent. Digital physics implies comp, but comp entails that  
physics cannot a priori be digital. In particular the appearance of  
primitive matter is not really Turing emulable, because it is the  
result of first person statistics on infinities of computation. The  
distribution might be computable though.






But in any case your comment above about the innate consciousness of
the pre-löbian universal machine is intriguing.  ISTM that in the end
epistemology and ontology must come to one thing: whatever we know is
ultimately a self-reflection of whatever we are.  Whatever we are is
both unique and multitudinous, a One that through
self-differentiation and self-combination explodes into combinatorial
universality.  And from that explosion the many are born and suffer.


That's why progress can only be harm reduction. I think.



Je vous souhaite une très heureuse nouvelle année.


Cheers,

Bruno




On 29 Dec 2011, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/29/2011 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:



But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two  
consciousness.
In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and  
Samantha]

supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
change them, we have to change something physical in the  
classroom),

in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is  
what

is used in the argument.

Bruno



We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha)




It might be the same consciousness, with

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-30 Thread Joseph Knight

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 9:47 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 Which computation?  I don't see any computation in the projection of the
 computation-movie. The Boolean graph nodes are broken. The light patterns
 is exactly the same, with the boolean graph turned, or not, upside down.
 You argument seems to rely on non relevant (with respect to the possible
 computation) idiosyncracies of this thought experience implementation. I
 will think about a version of MGA making this more obvious.


OK, I think I see where my error lies. I thought the absurdity arose later
in the argument than it actually does. I see that by my reasoning we would
have conscious supervening on the particular physical system and not the
computation itself, which would contradict comp. If we extract the
computation from the glass/node system in the form of the film, then by
comp consciousness should supervene on the film, when clearly it cannot. Is
that roughly what you are saying?



 It *does *matter for the computation what the light lands on.


 But what is the computation in this case?



 This doesn't violate 323, or comp. It means that the whole system
 (crystal/glass+film) must be taken into account in your analysis.


 The whole system is considered, and then changed in a way which does not
 change the physical activity, except for operating nodes which are
 retreived, and this to show that the physical activity does not implement
 the computation, but is only a mimicking of non relevant appearances
 associated accidentally with the original computation.



 It is no better than taking half of the brain and ignoring the other half.
 It isn't a matter of substitution level.


 OK. But you have to explain me the role of the broken node, in the
 computation, or even in the light patterns. You might try, as an exercise
 to refute your own argument by changing the original device.


I will think about it.















 Let me restate my concern: Consciousness supervenes on the optical
 graph+the recording, *even when the nodes are completely disconnected. *It
 is true that most of the work is being done by the recording, but not all
 of the work. The optical graph still matters, and the physical activity
 of the system is not solely provided by the recording, as it still depends
 on how the projected light interacts (physically) with the glass/crystal
 surface.


 But this is no more relevant in term of the computation, which is
 supposed to be a copy of the brain processing at the right level or below.



 There is a point in the argument at which you ignore the glass/crystal
 system and focus solely on the movie/recording, claiming that Alice's
 consciousness supervenes on the movie/recording. But this is false. *At
 no point *does Alice's consciousness supervene on the recording, *not
 even *when the nodes are completely disconnected.


 Yes. That's why it is a reductio ad absurdum.


 Its a reductio ad absurdum only if you artificially ignore the
 interaction between the projected light and the crystal medium and lasers.
 Because consciousness supervenes on crystal/glass/nodes+film, it is not
 meaningful to make this move.


 What is removed does not change the light pattern. The nodes are broken
 and play no role in that computation, in case we could find one (as opposed
 to find just a description of a computation, for which the nodes are also
 irrelevant).




 Consciousness changes do not imply film changes (even though the converse
 may well be true). You have isolated a subsystem from the machine, mistaken
 this subsystem for being sufficient for consciousness to supervene on --
 little wonder an absurd conclusion follows!


 I could because all this is supposed to be done below the substitution
 level.


 I understand that, but I don't understand how it addresses my point.


 If the boolean graph is no more working, to insist we don't remove the
 nodes gives them a special role not accounted in original computation,
 which can be said to exist (relatively to us) by the fact the nodes did
 operate the relevant elementary computable steps defining the (relative)
 implementation of the computation. The role you give to the node, for
 making the projection conscious seems magical and unrelated to the original
 computation.








 I am trying to think of an analogy to another system which would make my
 argument clearer (and in the process learning how tricky the concept of
 supervenience can be).



 Actually, I do the same. I search a system where I can make it clearer
 why the idiosyncrasies of the movie-graph are simpler to evacuate.
 But in the present case, it seems rather obvious to me that the absurdity
 is already there, before replacing the glass+smoke by a usual screen. There
 is already no more computations, we can already use the stroboscopic
 argument to make that absurd.


 I am not familiar with the stroboscopic argument.


 It is an argument used to show (if that was necessary) that a movie

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-30 Thread Pierz



On Dec 31, 4:36 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 30 Dec 2011, at 03:10, Pierz wrote:

  This thread has been extremely helpful to me in terms of getting to
  the heart of this problem and the whole issue of supervenience - thank
  you Joseph for your clarification of the meaning of the term and for
  your succinct and clear summary of the MGA, and to David for the nice
  clarification of the 'qua materia'/'qua computation' distinction. But
  I have yet to see why the MGA proves that consciousness can't
  supervene on abstract computation +  concrete implementation.

 I would say it does. If you agree with my answer to Russell on
 supervenience, that should be clear.
 Indeed you can see MGA as proving that IF my consciousness supervenes
 on abstract computation + concrete implementation then my
 consciousness supervenes on abstract computation only. Concrete
 implementations become explainable in term of relative abstract
 implementations (kind of things you can easily translated in term of
 the phi_i and the W_i, and from that, in pure arithmetic).

  I can
  see that Joseph's refutation misses the mark because the issue is that
  the replaying of a recording, whether on a screen or within the
  original mechanism, performs no computations. But why cannot the
  materialist/computationalist merely counter that Alice *is* a zombie
  during the playback of the movie, because the required instantiation
  of  a computation is absent?

 I tend to agree. but most people will not because they define the
 zombie explicitly by an entity behaving like a human *in all*
 situations, so that whatever they are, they handle the
 counterfactuals. But accepting your sense of zombie, that I am
 guessing, I am OK for saying that Alice, or any appearance of a person
 in a movie can be seen as a sort of zombie.

OK, yes my terms are sometimes less than rigorous, sorry about that. I
suppose I just mean not conscious in this instance. I do wonder
though (as an aside), whether you couldn't regard a recording as
'crystallising' in a sense the consciousness it records. If a
consciousness is abstract, then the recording continues to represent
that abstraction in the same way a body/brain represents the
abstraction. I heard recently about a condition called Transient
Global Amnesia in which people temporarily lose the ability to record
new memories beyond say the last minute, and forget years of their
history. In such an event, these people behave repetitively, much like
a recording (a 'broken record'), as if the same conscious state is
recycled over and over. Are they zombies? No, and you can easily
enough say they are just a computer stuck in a computational loop,
but  if consciousness is abstract, then a repeated calculation
represents the same conscious state, and the physical thing performing
the calculation is just a type of window onto that abstraction, just
as the recording is a window onto the abstraction. In that sense a
recording might be conscious, in the same way the person in the mirror
is as conscious as the person looking into it.

  Sure, he is committed to consciousness of
  the machine if the physical activity is identical, but in the playback
  of the film, the activity is not identical, since the connections
  between logic gates are broken and/or overridden by the *projected*
  activity (be it 'lucky rays' or the film).

 OK.

  Although the sequence of
  firings in the network is the same, the causal connection between
  firings is removed - indeed this is the point: no calculation is being
  carried out.

 Indeed.


  But a sequence of firings in a logic network is not the
  entirety of that network's physical activity. Or rather, the physical
  activity of the sequence is not sufficient to define its activity as a
  computation. That requires the casual connection between firings to be
  retained.

  Imagine a domino computer. I can't remember where I heard this first
  (maybe on this list somewhere), but we can imagine a network of
  spring-
  loaded dominos that are set up to spring back upright after a certain
  time. By setting up rows of such dominos in a clever fashion, we can
  use it to perform calculations. Let's say we perform a calculation
  with a boolean output - either a domino at the end falls or it
  doesn't. If we set up such a domino computer and push the first
  domino, we initiate a causal chain reaction that performs the
  calculation we have programmed it for. Now imagine we disable the
  causality by gluing the dominos upright. Now imagine we have a set of
  instructions telling us to lower and raise dominos in such and such a
  sequence. Our instructions happen to tells us to raise and lower them
  in exactly the sequence they would have if they had simply been pushed
  without the glue. This could be a random set of instructions that just
  happens to be the same (as per luck rays), or a description
  (recording) of a previous actual run of the computer (as per movie

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-30 Thread meekerdb


On 12/30/2011 12:51 AM, Pierz wrote:

On Dec 30, 6:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote:
You think it is ludicrous that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the state 
of its
battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory available for 
pictures, etc?

Brent

sigh  Let's not go down that boringly overtrodden path, but agree to
disagree on what constitutes consciousness.


sigh The phrase was internal perception not consciousness.

Brent


I disagree with David
Deutsch that we could run a conscious entity on our laptop computer if
we only understood consciousness better, but I agree with him that we
do *not* understand it, and the Turing test is a bad one. But, as I
stated in a remark to Bruno above, those who see no mind-body duality
problem in the first place will never be persuaded of its existence,
just as I will never be persuaded that wiring a sensor in the Mars
Rover makes the machine conscious of its environment.



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two consciousness.
In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
change them, we have to change something physical in the classroom),
in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is what
is used in the argument.

Bruno



We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha)



It might be the same consciousness, with different content.





that clearly
differ.


The personal experience are disconnected.





They both cannot supervene on the same physical state.


In my weak sense, they both supervene on the same physical state of  
the room, or universe, or even arithmetic.





That is
by the definition of supervenience.


The intuitive definition of supervenience is that A supervenes on B if  
we cannot have an A-difference without a B-difference.
If A supervenes on B, it supervene trivially on a disjoint union of B  
and C, because we still cannot have an A-difference without a (B union  
C difference).





Therefore they both cannot
supervene on the same classroom.


In that case I would have said that Tommy's consciousness supervenes  
*only* on Tommy's brain (but I avoid this because we don't know and  
cannot know what is our real generalized brain).





Perhaps the word swapping is misleading to you - I didn't mean
anything particularly profound by it.


I have still no idea of what you mean by that. Suppose that you tell  
me that Bruno and Russell's consciousness swap every minutes, since  
six months. What would that mean? I don't see how we could be aware of  
such things, nor how we could verify this in any third (and first)  
person way. And this makes your argument (physicalist, for the sake of  
the reasoning) against the consciousness instantiated by the  
(concrete) UD dubious. I think. I mean that this critics on MGA fails,  
at least by lack of clarity (for me).


Bruno

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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Dec 2011, at 21:43, David Nyman wrote:


On 28 December 2011 19:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

What UDA1-7 and MGA do at once, is to show that the notion of  
primitive
matter is spurious in the comp frame, but also (mainly perhaps)  
that physics
is branch of number theory/computer science (more precisely: of  
machine's
theology). The physical reality is not a mathematical reality among  
others,

it is more like the border of some mathematical reality.

Both a physicalist and an arithmeticalist have primitive objects  
(number,
particle) but also elementary dynamic (laws of addition/ 
multiplication,
forces). And from this derives higher order constructs, some being  
able to

develop self-reference and first person views.

But computationalism is not arithmeticalism. It does not reduce  
physics as a
mathematical theory, but as a precise machine's theological  
phenomenon.


Yes, I have always had the strong feeling that the self-reference of
experience to a localised point-of-view must somehow be fundamental,
or at least very deep, not circumstantial or trivial.  Since
childhood, I've always been puzzled by questions like why am I me and
not you?, which just made most other people smile or frown.  Usually
they would point at two objects (my body and theirs) and say with
finality well, that's you and this is me.


I was, unwillingly, more cruel. I exigate from my parents a proof,  
before going to bed, that I will wake up being me, and not someone  
else. That 'consciousness swapping' possibility terrified me, until I  
discover it makes no sense or it makes to much sense: I do wake up as  
you, every day, as you know, but don't remember.


With comp the question is non sensical, like we can introspect ourself  
on the WM duplication, and understand that both the one in M and the  
one in W will feel like if a miracle occurs: they get one bit of  
information from the sky! Why am I the one in Moscow and not the one  
in Washington?





However even then I felt - and more so now - that the real subject
of personal identity was not to be so easily characterised.  ISTM that
a straightforward physicalist approach - even a mathematical one - can
provide no real insight into this question of who or what am I? and
in effect must either assume, trivialise, ignore or deny it.  In
contrast to this, assuming CTM, the UDA gives a step-wise
demonstration of the way the indispensable role played by observation
leads inexorably to indeterminism in the localisation of the
first-person, independent (until the MGA) of issues of ultimate
ontological primitivity.  This is already a powerful indication that
there is something computationally real in play over and above the
structures of matter that characterise an observer's point-of-view.


OK.




So I believe you are right that computational reality must be
characterised primarily in such a way as to account for the
localisation of observers and the emergence of appearances, as opposed
to merely substituting an imaginary god's-eye description of
materiality.  Unfortunately (?) this also implies that reality must
then be Vastly larger and perhaps even more daunting than we could
have imagined.


Well said!

In fact it is like with the Mandelbrot set, which looks like a little  
spot, but zooming in shows the devils in the pattern details. Like  
with comp, from outside you don't need a lot (numbers, +, *), but from  
inside it escapes all the bounds. The whole of observable (and even  
non observable) physical reality is just a part or a border of that  
inside. We can expect surprises.






PS I will comment other posts asap. Probably tomorrow.


D'accord.  J'attend avec un grand plaisir vos observations.


Merci,

Bruno





On 28 Dec 2011, at 14:39, David Nyman wrote:


On 28 December 2011 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.




I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a  
model we
created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology  
preceded
ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to  
explain

them.  The model defines our ontology.



My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a  
theory
can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on  
it)

in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in  
terms

of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/29/2011 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:


On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two consciousness.
In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
change them, we have to change something physical in the classroom),
in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is what
is used in the argument.

Bruno



We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha)



It might be the same consciousness, with different content. 


???  That would be two different conscious states.  What is a consciousness apart from its 
content?


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Dec 2011, at 06:28, Joseph Knight wrote:




On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:44 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 26 Dec 2011, at 05:47, Joseph Knight wrote:




On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 23 Dec 2011, at 20:16, Joseph Knight wrote:




The same problem arises in Part 2. Bruno claims that we are  
forced to accept that Alice’s consciousness supervenes on the film.




No. On the projection of the pellicle on the Boolean graph, and  
then on the Boolean graph missing part. The idea is that we built  
again the right physical activity, with the projection of the film  
playing the role of the cosmic rays.


What is a pellicle? (Sorry) I understand this part, however. My  
objections arise later.


A film. (But in french film is for cinema (movie?)).

OK, there was no confusion.


OK.










but (film + optical graph) is certainly changed, and Alice’s  
dream turns out differently (if it occurs at all).




With comp + sup-phys, it can't.

Why? If we assume sup+phys, then some changes in the physical  
system on which the dream supervenes certainly will lead to  
changes in the dream.


I don't think so. Remember that we suppose comp (and sup-phys). So  
we already agree that we can change the physical implementation if  
it runs the computation at the correct level. So, we can change the  
physical implementation as we wish, below the substitution level  
without changing the first person private consciousness.


I think I wasn't clear here. I didn't mean changes in the  
particular physical system consciousness is supervening on -- of  
course by comp that doesn't matter. I meant that, assuming sup-phys  
on physical system X, there must exist some changes in X which lead  
to changes in consciousness.


OK.















Bruno isolates the film and thus reaches his apparent  
contradictions. But this is not a permissible move.




I think that the term film could have different meaning in  
french and english. But the film here means the projection of the  
pellicle on the glass/crystal medium. This one is never broken. It  
is a process which takes time, and occur in some place.




Not only is the definition of supervenience violated, but his  
principle of irrelevant subparts is violated as well – for the  
optical graph is not irrelevant for the execution of Alice’s  
consciousness.




Of course, but once we put away the nodes, the physical activity  
corresponding to the computation are not changed. The optical  
graph becomes irrelevant for the physical activity on which  
Alice's consciousness is supposed to supervene, by comp+sup-phys.


This is where my problem lies. Of course the physical activity of  
the system is changed when you (invalidly) remove the optical  
graph from the system. It is far from irrelevant. For example,  
what mechanism causes the light to triggers the lasers? There must  
be some internal mechanisms at work as well. The nodes aren't  
connected to one another, but it matters whether or not the  
recording is being projected on an optical graph, vs. a concrete  
wall, vs. movie screen


Why? The relevant physical activity is the same.
Obviously I agree with you (the projection of the film does not  
instantiate consciousness). The point is that if comp and sup-phys  
are maintained, and if 323 is correct, then there is nothing  
different from projecting the film on the glass crystal with the  
boolean laser graph removed and a wall.


I have no problem with 323. My argument is that consciousness never  
supervenes on the film/movie/recording.


I agree with that. If only because there are no more any computation  
done in time and space (the original abstract computation does not  
disappear, of course, so with comp, we will have to attach  
consciousness to it, and not to its particular concrete  
implementation.





So there is something different between projecting the film on the  
glass crystal, and the wall. The relevant physical activity, in the  
two cases (glass/crystal vs wall), is not the same. In the first  
case (and not the second) the light interacts with the crystal  
medium and triggers the lasers. How can you argue that this  
interaction is irrelevant and can be removed?


Because that special activity has nothing to do with the original  
computation. If it were, I could not have said yes to the doctor at  
the start. Once the boolean graph is remove, we just get a special  
weird screen. And the absurdity is still there: there are no  
computation done when we project on that weird sort of screen.


You can still say yes to the doctor. But that activity does have  
something to do with the computation. Suppose the film were  
projected upside down, or equivalently that the boolean graph were  
turned upside down (no change in the physical state of the film).  
Unless we assume some incredible symmetry in the layout of the graph  
(contradicting comp), there would most

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/29/2011 11:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I was, unwillingly, more cruel. I exigate from my parents a proof, before going to bed, 
that I will wake up being me, and not someone else. That 'consciousness swapping' 
possibility terrified me, until I discover it makes no sense or it makes to much sense: 
I do wake up as you, every day, as you know, but don't remember.


Greg Egan has written a nice little short story about a person who wakes up in a different 
body everyday.  It's in his book Axiomatics.


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Russell Standish

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 05:47:07PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 On 28 Dec 2011, at 22:21, Russell Standish wrote:
 
 
 They both cannot supervene on the same physical state.
 
 In my weak sense, they both supervene on the same physical state of
 the room, or universe, or even arithmetic.

We're not talking about your weak sense, but the standard definition
of supervenience.

 
 
 
 That is
 by the definition of supervenience.
 
 The intuitive definition of supervenience is that A supervenes on B
 if we cannot have an A-difference without a B-difference.

Yes.

 If A supervenes on B, it supervene trivially on a disjoint union of
 B and C, because we still cannot have an A-difference without a (B
 union C difference).
 

No - the Tommy vs Samantha example is a counter example:

Let T sup B and S sup C.

But T and C are different conscious states, so cannot both supervene
on B u C.

 
 
 Therefore they both cannot
 supervene on the same classroom.
 
 In that case I would have said that Tommy's consciousness supervenes
 *only* on Tommy's brain (but I avoid this because we don't know and
 cannot know what is our real generalized brain).
 

Whatever the generalised brains are, the foregoing discussion
implies that the intersection of two generalised brains must be empty.

 
 
 Perhaps the word swapping is misleading to you - I didn't mean
 anything particularly profound by it.
 
 I have still no idea of what you mean by that. Suppose that you tell
 me that Bruno and Russell's consciousness swap every minutes, since
 six months. What would that mean? I don't see how we could be aware
 of such things, nor how we could verify this in any third (and
 first) person way. 

Nor do I. Not even a putative God could be aware, I would think. I
wasn't suggesting such a thing, anyway. I was thinking more in terms of first
consider Tommy's consiousness then afterwards think of
Samantha's. Thus you are swapping the focus of your attention.

 And this makes your argument (physicalist, for
 the sake of the reasoning) against the consciousness instantiated by
 the (concrete) UD dubious. I think. I mean that this critics on MGA
 fails, at least by lack of clarity (for me).
 

The critique was against your step of unfolding the multiverse into a
single universe by dovetailing. You then asserted that the
consciousness supervened on the dovetailer, which as we've been
through above, cannot be the case.

Of course, you may refine your argument by dovetailing just the
generalised brain, and not its environment which contains other
brains. But in this case, I would point out that eliminating the
environment may well render the brain unconsious. There is certainly
evidence from sensory depreivation experiments that this might happen.

Or maybe you have a different way of emulating a multiverse without
dovetailing?

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Pierz

Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we can
sense some incoherence, but empirically, this is the hard part to
convey, and without MGA/Maudlin, I have not been able to convince of
the frank incoherence.

And you've been successful with the MGA? I am philosophically entirely
on your side with regards to this intuition of incoherence, and know
well the difficulty/impossibility of getting a materialist to
apprehend it. But has the logic of MGA actually ever converted a
materialist? Seems to me people are entrenched in their positions on
such matters and weapons of mere logic - especially complex logic -
will never move them. Even weapons of empirical demonstration take a
long time to persuade people - paradigms do not die easily. This is
not to say I am yet completely persuaded by the MGA either - I'll post
my doubts/questions as a separate reply here.

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-29 Thread Pierz

This thread has been extremely helpful to me in terms of getting to
the heart of this problem and the whole issue of supervenience - thank
you Joseph for your clarification of the meaning of the term and for
your succinct and clear summary of the MGA, and to David for the nice
clarification of the 'qua materia'/'qua computation' distinction. But
I have yet to see why the MGA proves that consciousness can't
supervene on abstract computation +  concrete implementation. I can
see that Joseph's refutation misses the mark because the issue is that
the replaying of a recording, whether on a screen or within the
original mechanism, performs no computations. But why cannot the
materialist/computationalist merely counter that Alice *is* a zombie
during the playback of the movie, because the required instantiation
of  a computation is absent? Sure, he is committed to consciousness of
the machine if the physical activity is identical, but in the playback
of the film, the activity is not identical, since the connections
between logic gates are broken and/or overridden by the *projected*
activity (be it 'lucky rays' or the film). Although the sequence of
firings in the network is the same, the causal connection between
firings is removed - indeed this is the point: no calculation is being
carried out. But a sequence of firings in a logic network is not the
entirety of that network's physical activity. Or rather, the physical
activity of the sequence is not sufficient to define its activity as a
computation. That requires the casual connection between firings to be
retained.

Imagine a domino computer. I can't remember where I heard this first
(maybe on this list somewhere), but we can imagine a network of spring-
loaded dominos that are set up to spring back upright after a certain
time. By setting up rows of such dominos in a clever fashion, we can
use it to perform calculations. Let's say we perform a calculation
with a boolean output - either a domino at the end falls or it
doesn't. If we set up such a domino computer and push the first
domino, we initiate a causal chain reaction that performs the
calculation we have programmed it for. Now imagine we disable the
causality by gluing the dominos upright. Now imagine we have a set of
instructions telling us to lower and raise dominos in such and such a
sequence. Our instructions happen to tells us to raise and lower them
in exactly the sequence they would have if they had simply been pushed
without the glue. This could be a random set of instructions that just
happens to be the same (as per luck rays), or a description
(recording) of a previous actual run of the computer (as per movie
graph). This is a restatement of the MGA scenario. In that case, the
casual interaction between dominos has been removed, but the sequence
of 'firings' in the network is retained.

Now the materialist-computationalist already believes in the odd
scenario of a consciousness instantiated by a computation in which the
steps of the computation are performed in different places in time and
space - eg one step in a calculation is performed in Sydney on one
machine in 2011 and the next is performed on another in Melbourne in
2012  (local examples rather than Brussels-Amsterdam!). It is still a
potentially conscious calculation if a causal connection between
computational steps is retained. Remove the causality from the
scenario and it becomes meaningless and absurd - otherwise
consciousnesses would arise between all kinds of  unrelated things. A
bit of half written code on my computer in Melbourne could be
completed by some half written code on your computer in Sydney, even
though the computers and the programmers never interacted. And of
course, everything physical is Turing emulable, so everything physical
performs (at least trivially) calculations. Consciousness would arise
between all the random motions of particles that could be regarded as
performing a calculation *if* they were causally connected. Madness.

So, given that causality is physical (even if such causality is highly
indirect), then comp-phys can argue that Alice is a zombie in the
projected film scenario because of the severance of causality between
the activity of logic nodes. The computer no longer instantiates a
physical computation and comp-phys requires both a computation and a
physical instantiation.

Personally, I think the scenario of a physically atomised computation
does comp-phys in anyway. The notion of physical activity seems
stretched beyond breaking point when we extend it to the sequence of
causes that connects the steps of such a computation. No further
reductio ad absurdum is required. But the problem with any reductio ad
absurdum is that different people find different things absurd, and
seeing as comp-phys accepts the possibility of a temporally and
spatially atomised, conscious computer, so it can use the same
principle to refute the MGA. Sure comp+phys forces us into absurdity,
but the absurdity has

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/29/2011 4:00 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

The critique was against your step of unfolding the multiverse into a
single universe by dovetailing. You then asserted that the
consciousness supervened on the dovetailer, which as we've been
through above, cannot be the case.

Of course, you may refine your argument by dovetailing just the
generalised brain, and not its environment which contains other
brains. But in this case, I would point out that eliminating the
environment may well render the brain unconsious. There is certainly
evidence from sensory depreivation experiments that this might happen.


Or at least the conscious states form a loop and the consciousness resembles 
that of a rock.

Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/29/2011 4:11 PM, Pierz wrote:

As I have remarked before, I don't think the problem of consciousness will be 
solved, it
will just come to be seen as an uninteresting question.  Instead we will talk 
about how to
design the ethics module in a robot or what internal perceptions to provide.

Well, I utterly disagree with that. The problem of consciousness is
already an 'uninteresting problem' to many people (seemingly you are
one such person), but so long as it remains unsolved it will be
interesting to some conscious beings! And the notion of programming
the internal perceptions of a robot (as opposed to mere input-output
relations) is ludicrous without a solution to the problem.


You think it is ludicrous that a Mars Rover is programmed to monitor the state of its 
battery, the temperature of its motors, the amount of memory available for pictures, etc?


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 28 December 2011 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
 computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
 experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
 epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
 anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.


 I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model we
 created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology preceded
 ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to explain
 them.  The model defines our ontology.

My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a theory
can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on it)
in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in terms
of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are
themselves nothing other than computationally-constructed
abstractions.  Consequently this seems (at least to me) to be in
practice pretty much indistinguishable from Bruno's characterisation
of the reversal of matter-computation, since, given that CTM
mandates at the outset that all possibility of engagement with matter
is fundamentally epistemological, there seems to be no remaining
motivation to appeal to inconsequential primitively-material
properties, except as a sort of religious commitment.

Since this seems quite consistent with what you say above, I'm not
really surprised it doesn't seem odd to you.

David


 On 12/27/2011 4:59 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 The frank incoherence comment was directed towards the case where,
 rejecting any form of dualism, one grasps the single primitive horn
 of the dilemma in the form of a primitively-physical monism, rather
 than the  arithmetical alternative.  But for those willing to
 contemplate some sort of property dualism (which is not always made
 explicit), there is, as you say, no immediately obvious contradiction.

 My own reasoning on this latter option has focused on the unquestioned
 acceptance of  composite material structure which seems to underpin
 the notion of a primitively physical machine.  As you once put it
 ontological reduction entails ontological elimination.  IOW, the
 reduction of materiality to a causally-complete micro-physical
 mechanism automatically entails that macro-physical composites must
 be considered fundamentally to be epistemological, not ontological,
 realities. Micro-physics qua materia entails no such additional
 ontological levels of organisation.

 Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
 computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
 experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
 epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
 anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.


 I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model we
 created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology preceded
 ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to explain
 them.  The model defines our ontology.

 Brent


 It might
 even seem to be indistinguishable, in the final analysis, from
 computational supervenience.

 David


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-28 Thread meekerdb


On 12/28/2011 5:39 AM, David Nyman wrote:

Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
  computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
  experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
  epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
  anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.



  I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model we
  created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology preceded
  ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to explain
  them.  The model defines our ontology.

My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a theory
can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on it)
in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in terms
of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are
themselves nothing other than computationally-constructed
abstractions.  Consequently this seems (at least to me) to be in
practice pretty much indistinguishable from Bruno's characterisation
of the reversal of matter-computation, since, given that CTM
mandates at the outset that all possibility of engagement with matter
is fundamentally epistemological, there seems to be no remaining
motivation to appeal to inconsequential primitively-material
properties, except as a sort of religious commitment.


But as Peter D. Jones points out primitive matter isn't inconsequential.  It's consequent 
is realization.  Being material is the property of existing in contrast to those things 
that don't exist.  Of course this is not a popular view on an Everything list, but it's 
consistent with our epistemological experience that some things happen and some don't, 
some things exist and others don't.


Brent



Since this seems quite consistent with what you say above, I'm not
really surprised it doesn't seem odd to you.

David




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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 28 December 2011 17:01, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 But as Peter D. Jones points out primitive matter isn't inconsequential.
  It's consequent is realization.  Being material is the property of existing
 in contrast to those things that don't exist.  Of course this is not a
 popular view on an Everything list, but it's consistent with our
 epistemological experience that some things happen and some don't, some
 things exist and others don't.

I'm not sure that he was arguing purely in terms of CTM - I think he
is agnostic on that particular theory of mind (as indeed am I).
However, if one does restrict one's reasoning carefully to what is
consistent with CTM, it's surely questionable whether this move is
still open.  Once one fixes seriously on computation as the
supervenience basis for epistemological properties (ignoring
crypto-eliminativist sophistries about mere seeming) is one any
longer in a position to appeal to the content of experience as the
natural limit to the extent of computational existence?  Does it
seem quite as reasonable to argue that only certain computations are
permitted to exist per se because we conjecture that they are the
only ones being computed by the particular macroscopic physical
machines which happen to uniquely and primitively exist?  Particularly
since these particular machines require to be epistemologically
assembled for the purpose by from a kit of
inaccessible-but-even-more-primitively existing micro-physical parts?

As I say, I'm personally agnostic about CTM, although in the past, I
have been a vigorous opponent of the idea.  I was much impressed by
Searle and his Chinese Room argument, which made it perfectly obvious
that computation doesn't (indeed doesn't need to) exist in a
primitively material universe, and hence couldn't be a candidate for
hosting anything as real as consciousness.  However, especially in
the absence of credible alternatives, if we do treat the consequences
of CTM with proper seriousness it now seems to me that something like
Bruno's proposal would have to be the case - because computationalism
taken seriously opens up mathematical reality in a way that seems hard
to confine within somethingist limits.

David


 On 12/28/2011 5:39 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
   computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
   experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
   epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
   anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.

 
 
   I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model
  we
   created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology
  preceded
   ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to
  explain
   them.  The model defines our ontology.

 My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
 sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
 primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
 least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a theory
 can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on it)
 in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
 object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in terms
 of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are
 themselves nothing other than computationally-constructed
 abstractions.  Consequently this seems (at least to me) to be in
 practice pretty much indistinguishable from Bruno's characterisation
 of the reversal of matter-computation, since, given that CTM
 mandates at the outset that all possibility of engagement with matter
 is fundamentally epistemological, there seems to be no remaining
 motivation to appeal to inconsequential primitively-material
 properties, except as a sort of religious commitment.


 But as Peter D. Jones points out primitive matter isn't inconsequential.
  It's consequent is realization.  Being material is the property of existing
 in contrast to those things that don't exist.  Of course this is not a
 popular view on an Everything list, but it's consistent with our
 epistemological experience that some things happen and some don't, some
 things exist and others don't.

 Brent



 Since this seems quite consistent with what you say above, I'm not
 really surprised it doesn't seem odd to you.

 David



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-28 Thread meekerdb

On 12/28/2011 10:03 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 28 December 2011 17:01, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

But as Peter D. Jones points out primitive matter isn't inconsequential.
It's consequent is realization. Being material is the property of existing
in contrast to those things that don't exist. Of course this is not a
popular view on an Everything list, but it's consistent with our
epistemological experience that some things happen and some don't, some
things exist and others don't.

I'm not sure that he was arguing purely in terms of CTM - I think he
is agnostic on that particular theory of mind (as indeed am I).
However, if one does restrict one's reasoning carefully to what is
consistent with CTM, it's surely questionable whether this move is
still open. Once one fixes seriously on computation as the
supervenience basis for epistemological properties (ignoring
crypto-eliminativist sophistries about mere seeming) is one any
longer in a position to appeal to the content of experience as the
natural limit to the extent of computational existence? Does it
seem quite as reasonable to argue that only certain computations are
permitted to exist per se because we conjecture that they are the
only ones being computed by the particular macroscopic physical
machines which happen to uniquely and primitively exist?

That seems to implicitly assume computation is fundamental and asks why fundamental matter
only implements some of them.

Particularly
since these particular machines require to be epistemologically
assembled for the purpose by from a kit of
inaccessible-but-even-more-primitively existing micro-physical parts?

I think you're taking it backwards. If primitive matter exists simply as a marker of what
exists and what doesn't, then it is our model of it that is epistemologically assembled
and the existence is independent of our descriptive model. That's the common sense view
of the world.

As I say, I'm personally agnostic about CTM, although in the past, I
have been a vigorous opponent of the idea. I was much impressed by
Searle and his Chinese Room argument, which made it perfectly obvious
that computation doesn't (indeed doesn't need to) exist in a
primitively material universe, and hence couldn't be a candidate for
hosting anything as real as consciousness. However, especially in
the absence of credible alternatives, if we do treat the consequences
of CTM with proper seriousness it now seems to me that something like
Bruno's proposal would have to be the case - because computationalism
taken seriously opens up mathematical reality in a way that seems hard
to confine within somethingist limits.

But to take it seriously you have to assume that mathematics exists. That it is not just
a set of logically conditional tautologies.

Brent

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 28 December 2011 18:17, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Once one fixes seriously on computation as the
 supervenience basis for epistemological properties (ignoring
 crypto-eliminativist sophistries about mere seeming) is one any
 longer in a position to appeal to the content of experience as the
 natural limit to the extent of computational existence?  Does it
 seem quite as reasonable to argue that only certain computations are
 permitted to exist per se because we conjecture that they are the
 only ones being computed by the particular macroscopic physical
 machines which happen to uniquely and primitively exist?


 That seems to implicitly assume computation is fundamental and asks why
 fundamental matter only implements some of them.

Surely a dual property approach to CTM must entail the assumption
that both computation and matter are somehow both fundamental, in the
sense of their both being distinctively real, though non-identical?
If so, it seems reasonable to pose such a question.


 Particularly since these particular machines require to be epistemologically
 assembled for the purpose by from a kit of
 inaccessible-but-even-more-primitively existing micro-physical parts?


 I think you're taking it backwards.  If primitive matter exists simply as a
 marker of what exists and what doesn't, then it is our model of it that is
 epistemologically assembled and the existence is independent of our
 descriptive model.  That's the common sense view of the world.

Sure, but that independent existence does not spontaneously take the
form of conveniently classically isolated macroscopic digital machines
like brains (i.e. according to CTM).  That identification itself seems
to be a highly-complex epistemological derivative. So we find
ourselves proposing that a device, which requires our prior
epistemological participation to differentiate it from the physical
environment in general, is same device responsible for the performance
of that very process.


 However, especially in
 the absence of credible alternatives, if we do treat the consequences
 of CTM with proper seriousness it now seems to me that something like
 Bruno's proposal would have to be the case - because computationalism
 taken seriously opens up mathematical reality in a way that seems hard
 to confine within somethingist limits.


 But to take it seriously you have to assume that mathematics exists.  That
 it is not just a set of logically conditional tautologies.

Yes, but there it is: if consciousness is real, and computation is
taken seriously as its supervenience base, is there a coherent
alternative?  One could try to believe that matter is unconscious
unless in some relevant sense it is in the process of computing,
but, rearrange matter how you will, nothing apparently material will
have changed, nor need to.  Do we nevertheless feel justified in
saying that consciousness is a some sort of reality that comes and
goes just because of these rearrangements?

I agree that it is hard for us (Aristotelean bigots, as Bruno might
think) to take seriously the idea that mathematics exists.  Clearly,
our ideas about mathematics aren't what exist - at least, not as a
primitive basis of reality.  But does something primitive exist which
is consistent with our idea - our description - of mathematics: well,
why not?  After all, we are all too familiar with the unreasonable
effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences, and it seems to
become even more unreasonably effective the more science extends its
reach.  And it's not just in deep down in microphysical structure that
we seem to observe such uncanny effectiveness, but up there in the big
cosmological picture.  Everyone seems to be headed in the everything
direction with observer selection as the ultimate filter.

Still, all this may just be the thunder of the herd heading for some
theoretical abyss. I guess my judgement is still suspended.

David


 On 12/28/2011 10:03 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 28 December 2011 17:01, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 But as Peter D. Jones points out primitive matter isn't inconsequential.
  It's consequent is realization.  Being material is the property of
 existing
 in contrast to those things that don't exist.  Of course this is not a
 popular view on an Everything list, but it's consistent with our
 epistemological experience that some things happen and some don't, some
 things exist and others don't.

 I'm not sure that he was arguing purely in terms of CTM - I think he
 is agnostic on that particular theory of mind (as indeed am I).
 However, if one does restrict one's reasoning carefully to what is
 consistent with CTM, it's surely questionable whether this move is
 still open.  Once one fixes seriously on computation as the
 supervenience basis for epistemological properties (ignoring
 crypto-eliminativist sophistries about mere seeming) is one any
 longer in a position to appeal to the content of experience as the
 natural limit

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-28 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 28 Dec 2011, at 14:39, David Nyman wrote:


On 28 December 2011 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.



I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a  
model we
created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology  
preceded
ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to  
explain

them.  The model defines our ontology.


My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a theory
can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on it)
in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in terms
of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are
themselves nothing other than computationally-constructed
abstractions.  Consequently this seems (at least to me) to be in
practice pretty much indistinguishable from Bruno's characterisation
of the reversal of matter-computation, since, given that CTM
mandates at the outset that all possibility of engagement with matter
is fundamentally epistemological, there seems to be no remaining
motivation to appeal to inconsequential primitively-material
properties, except as a sort of religious commitment.

Since this seems quite consistent with what you say above, I'm not
really surprised it doesn't seem odd to you.



This is correct as an argument against primitive matter. At least it  
makes sense.


But I am not sure it will address the case of the immaterialist  
physicalist, on a type close to Tegmark.


What UDA1-7 and MGA do at once, is to show that the notion of  
primitive matter is spurious in the comp frame, but also (mainly  
perhaps) that physics is branch of number theory/computer science  
(more precisely: of machine's theology). The physical reality is not a  
mathematical reality among others, it is more like the border of some  
mathematical reality.


Both a physicalist and an arithmeticalist have primitive objects  
(number, particle) but also elementary dynamic (laws of addition/ 
multiplication, forces). And from this derives higher order  
constructs, some being able to develop self-reference and first person  
views.


But computationalism is not arithmeticalism. It does not reduce  
physics as a mathematical theory, but as a precise machine's  
theological phenomenon.


It explains, perhaps wrongly, the origin of observables and its  
invariants. The physical supervenes on the border of numbers'  
consciousness. So the reversal is both ontological (switch particles  
--- numbers/programs) and epistemological (physics = science of the  
universal numbers multiplying and fusing dreams).


*

I don't think the model defines the ontology, like Brent says. Our  
models define our belief about what we are searching.


Bruno

PS I will comment other posts asap. Probably tomorrow.







David



On 12/27/2011 4:59 AM, David Nyman wrote:


The frank incoherence comment was directed towards the case where,
rejecting any form of dualism, one grasps the single primitive  
horn

of the dilemma in the form of a primitively-physical monism, rather
than the  arithmetical alternative.  But for those willing to
contemplate some sort of property dualism (which is not always made
explicit), there is, as you say, no immediately obvious  
contradiction.


My own reasoning on this latter option has focused on the  
unquestioned

acceptance of  composite material structure which seems to underpin
the notion of a primitively physical machine.  As you once put it
ontological reduction entails ontological elimination.  IOW, the
reduction of materiality to a causally-complete micro-physical
mechanism automatically entails that macro-physical composites  
must

be considered fundamentally to be epistemological, not ontological,
realities. Micro-physics qua materia entails no such additional
ontological levels of organisation.

Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.



I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a  
model we
created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology  
preceded
ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to  
explain

them.  The model defines our ontology.

Brent

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-28 Thread meekerdb

On 12/28/2011 11:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 28 December 2011 18:17, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

Once one fixes seriously on computation as the
supervenience basis for epistemological properties (ignoring
crypto-eliminativist sophistries about mere seeming) is one any
longer in a position to appeal to the content of experience as the
natural limit to the extent of computational existence? Does it
seem quite as reasonable to argue that only certain computations are
permitted to exist per se because we conjecture that they are the
only ones being computed by the particular macroscopic physical
machines which happen to uniquely and primitively exist?

That seems to implicitly assume computation is fundamental and asks why
fundamental matter only implements some of them.

Surely a dual property approach to CTM must entail the assumption
that both computation and matter are somehow both fundamental, in the
sense of their both being distinctively real, though non-identical?
If so, it seems reasonable to pose such a question.

Particularly since these particular machines require to be epistemologically
assembled for the purpose by from a kit of
inaccessible-but-even-more-primitively existing micro-physical parts?

I think you're taking it backwards. If primitive matter exists simply as a
marker of what exists and what doesn't, then it is our model of it that is
epistemologically assembled and the existence is independent of our
descriptive model. That's the common sense view of the world.

Sure, but that independent existence does not spontaneously take the
form of conveniently classically isolated macroscopic digital machines
like brains (i.e. according to CTM). That identification itself seems
to be a highly-complex epistemological derivative. So we find
ourselves proposing that a device, which requires our prior
epistemological participation to differentiate it from the physical
environment in general, is same device responsible for the performance
of that very process.

However, especially in
the absence of credible alternatives, if we do treat the consequences
of CTM with proper seriousness it now seems to me that something like
Bruno's proposal would have to be the case - because computationalism
taken seriously opens up mathematical reality in a way that seems hard
to confine within somethingist limits.

But to take it seriously you have to assume that mathematics exists. That
it is not just a set of logically conditional tautologies.

Yes, but there it is: if consciousness is real, and computation is
taken seriously as its supervenience base, is there a coherent
alternative? One could try to believe that matter is unconscious
unless in some relevant sense it is in the process of computing,
but, rearrange matter how you will, nothing apparently material will
have changed, nor need to. Do we nevertheless feel justified in
saying that consciousness is a some sort of reality that comes and
goes just because of these rearrangements?

I don't see anything incoherent in the conventional view that it is certain computing
that distinguishes conscious instantiating physical processes from unconscious ones; yet
still holding that only some such processes exist (the ones we call material or physical).

I agree that it is hard for us (Aristotelean bigots, as Bruno might
think) to take seriously the idea that mathematics exists.

I don't think even Bruno takes seriously the idea that all mathematics exist, as sometimes
suggested by Tegmark.

Clearly,
our ideas about mathematics aren't what exist - at least, not as a
primitive basis of reality. But does something primitive exist which
is consistent with our idea - our description - of mathematics: well,
why not? After all, we are all too familiar with the unreasonable
effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences, and it seems to
become even more unreasonably effective the more science extends its
reach. And it's not just in deep down in microphysical structure that
we seem to observe such uncanny effectiveness, but up there in the big
cosmological picture.

I don't see that at all. Of course mathematics is effective for the physical (and other)
sciences, because (a) it is invented for the purpose and (b) any explicit, coherent model
is going to be mathematical because that's all mathematics is, being logically explicit
and consistent in drawing inferences. Secondly, it's effectiveness is somewhat
overstated. For example, general relativity, a paradigm of mathematical physics, is
famous for predicting singularities which are almost certainly unphysical.

Everyone seems to be headed in the everything
direction with observer selection as the ultimate filter.

Still, all this may just be the thunder of the herd heading for some
theoretical abyss. I guess my judgement is still suspended.

Me too.

Brent

David

On 12/28/2011 10:03 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 28 December 2011 17:01,

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 28 December 2011 19:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 What UDA1-7 and MGA do at once, is to show that the notion of primitive
 matter is spurious in the comp frame, but also (mainly perhaps) that physics
 is branch of number theory/computer science (more precisely: of machine's
 theology). The physical reality is not a mathematical reality among others,
 it is more like the border of some mathematical reality.

 Both a physicalist and an arithmeticalist have primitive objects (number,
 particle) but also elementary dynamic (laws of addition/multiplication,
 forces). And from this derives higher order constructs, some being able to
 develop self-reference and first person views.

 But computationalism is not arithmeticalism. It does not reduce physics as a
 mathematical theory, but as a precise machine's theological phenomenon.

Yes, I have always had the strong feeling that the self-reference of
experience to a localised point-of-view must somehow be fundamental,
or at least very deep, not circumstantial or trivial.  Since
childhood, I've always been puzzled by questions like why am I me and
not you?, which just made most other people smile or frown.  Usually
they would point at two objects (my body and theirs) and say with
finality well, that's you and this is me.

However even then I felt - and more so now - that the real subject
of personal identity was not to be so easily characterised.  ISTM that
a straightforward physicalist approach - even a mathematical one - can
provide no real insight into this question of who or what am I? and
in effect must either assume, trivialise, ignore or deny it.  In
contrast to this, assuming CTM, the UDA gives a step-wise
demonstration of the way the indispensable role played by observation
leads inexorably to indeterminism in the localisation of the
first-person, independent (until the MGA) of issues of ultimate
ontological primitivity.  This is already a powerful indication that
there is something computationally real in play over and above the
structures of matter that characterise an observer's point-of-view.

So I believe you are right that computational reality must be
characterised primarily in such a way as to account for the
localisation of observers and the emergence of appearances, as opposed
to merely substituting an imaginary god's-eye description of
materiality.  Unfortunately (?) this also implies that reality must
then be Vastly larger and perhaps even more daunting than we could
have imagined.

 PS I will comment other posts asap. Probably tomorrow.

D'accord.  J'attend avec un grand plaisir vos observations.

David


 On 28 Dec 2011, at 14:39, David Nyman wrote:

 On 28 December 2011 06:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
 computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
 experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
 epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
 anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.



 I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model we
 created to explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology preceded
 ontology.  First we learn some facts and then we build a model to explain
 them.  The model defines our ontology.


 My suggestion was that any oddness appears only if one tries to make
 sense of CTM in terms of some sort of dual-property view rooted in
 primitive materiality.  As Bruno says, this often seems to be at
 least an implicit assumption.  But even in it own terms, such a theory
 can only isolate computation (and hence anything consequential on it)
 in terms of its epistemological properties, because the very
 object-relations (e.g. those present in computers or brains), in terms
 of which any coherent appeal to computation can be made, are
 themselves nothing other than computationally-constructed
 abstractions.  Consequently this seems (at least to me) to be in
 practice pretty much indistinguishable from Bruno's characterisation
 of the reversal of matter-computation, since, given that CTM
 mandates at the outset that all possibility of engagement with matter
 is fundamentally epistemological, there seems to be no remaining
 motivation to appeal to inconsequential primitively-material
 properties, except as a sort of religious commitment.

 Since this seems quite consistent with what you say above, I'm not
 really surprised it doesn't seem odd to you.



 This is correct as an argument against primitive matter. At least it makes
 sense.

 But I am not sure it will address the case of the immaterialist physicalist,
 on a type close to Tegmark.

 What UDA1-7 and MGA do at once, is to show that the notion of primitive
 matter is spurious in the comp frame, but also (mainly perhaps) that physics
 is branch of number theory/computer science (more precisely: of machine's
 theology). The physical reality is not a mathematical reality among others,

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-28 Thread Russell Standish

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 12:10:29PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two consciousness.
 In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
 supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
 change them, we have to change something physical in the classroom),
 in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
 supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is what
 is used in the argument.
 
 Bruno
 

We have two conscious states (Tommy and Samantha) that clearly
differ. They both cannot supervene on the same physical state. That is
by the definition of supervenience. Therefore they both cannot
supervene on the same classroom.

Perhaps the word swapping is misleading to you - I didn't mean
anything particularly profound by it.

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:35, David Nyman wrote:


On 26 December 2011 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


On reflection,
this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).



Some people, like Peter Jones (and many others) believe that  
consciousness
might need both a computation together with at least one concrete  
primitive
physical implementation. MGA is supposed to help those people to  
see that

such an option cannot work.


But then they are dualists, even if they can't or won't admit it.  The
fact that they go on thinking and talking in a dualist way but won't
confess to it is why I say the ambiguity is studied.  Dennett, for
example, winks at it when he describes himself as a third-person
absolutist, revealing in the process perhaps a stronger commitment to
doctrine than truth; and consequently, despite his analytical rigour,
he is often led to use bullying and sophistry to defend absolutism
where truthfulness does not serve his purpose.

But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing that
either there are two primitives in play here or only one.  If the
former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
distance from the other (as Kant shows us).  Should one consequently
lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
terms of the other.

If we attempt to collapse computation into the primitive physics
that implements it, then we are left just with physics; everything
must in the end be accounted for qua materia.  But in the presence of
consciousness, this is frankly incoherent, or more simply, impossible.
In the light of this, as Sherlock Holmes sagaciously observed, the
alternative, however improbable, must be true: if computation is to be
the chosen supervention base for consciousness, there can be no sense
in further appeal to any more primitive ontology.  Quod erat
demonstrandum.



I agree with some use of Occam, but this might not follow from a pure  
logical point of view (if you let me play the role of the devil  
advocate).


The reason is that, without MGA or Maudlin, we might single out a  
universal machine which would be a primitive material system, and  
decide that consciousness is related to the computations appearing in  
that primitive physical frame, and defined by the organization of  
matter in that frame). This entails a property form of dualism, which  
is not obviously contradictory. The physical universe becomes a sort  
of primitive programming language, as it can be indeed, and  
consciousness would supervene on the physical computation only. The  
fact that, without MGA, we can conceive this explains the success of  
the mechanist idea among materialist: there is matter obeying some  
laws, and from those laws we can explain layers of different  
organizations.
Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we can  
sense some incoherence, but empirically, this is the hard part to  
convey, and without MGA/Maudlin, I have not been able to convince of  
the frank incoherence. The materialist move might seems ad hoc, but  
to prove that it is incoherent is not easy. At first it seems to  
provide an ability of distinguishing real from fictive, by universal  
machine, but the problem is that, like Peter Jones defended, the  
materialist will just consider the non material computation has having  
no consciousness at all: so that the universal machine can still not  
make the difference between real from fictive, but not because its  
consciousness does not change, but because it disappears in the  
fictive frame. They accept the idea that arithmetic is full of zombie,  
because they believe that mathematics is essentially fictive, which  
makes sense with their singling out a particular universal and  
material (for them) machine. The only problem I can see is that they  
have to attribute some physical activity to inactive (here and now)  
piece of matter and to violate the 323 principle.


Bruno











On 26 Dec 2011, at 14:50, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standish  
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:


I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE- 
PHYS.




This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
primitiveness.



The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it  
is
simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 23:49, Russell Standish wrote:


On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:34:52AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:




It is not used in Maudlin's argument, but in your extension to  
handle

multiversal supervenience.


You might make this precise, because I don't see the point. But the
best answer to your concrete multiverse argument, is that such
multiverse has to be robust to handle the universal
counterfactuals, but then it contains a UD*, and we are back at the
step 7, and *in that case* the step seven is enough for the reversal
physics/mathematical computer science (arithmetic).

Bruno



It is true I was thinking in terms of a multiverse big enough to
contain a UD*, and I agree that steps 1-7 are sufficient for the
reversal here.

My problem, perhaps, is a lack of intuition of how to push through the
MGA when the multiverse is not big enough to support a universal
dovetailer.


OK. That might be a remaining things to clarify.




Does that last sentence even make sense?


I am not sure. You should conceive a very weird sort of non universal  
multiverse





If not, then the
MGA only applies to a single universe, in which case my critique
simply doesn't apply.


That's ambiguous. The point is that the MGA applies to anything Turing  
emulable on which consciousness can weakly supervene. Once it is  
Turing emulable, it is, in theory (but that's enough) amenable to a  
single physical computation, in a single universe, and given a role to  
primitive matter force to associate again a physical activity to  
something physically inactive.


Bruno

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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-27 Thread David Nyman

On 27 December 2011 10:42, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we can sense
 some incoherence, but empirically, this is the hard part to convey, and
 without MGA/Maudlin, I have not been able to convince of the frank
 incoherence.

The frank incoherence comment was directed towards the case where,
rejecting any form of dualism, one grasps the single primitive horn
of the dilemma in the form of a primitively-physical monism, rather
than the  arithmetical alternative.  But for those willing to
contemplate some sort of property dualism (which is not always made
explicit), there is, as you say, no immediately obvious contradiction.

My own reasoning on this latter option has focused on the unquestioned
acceptance of  composite material structure which seems to underpin
the notion of a primitively physical machine.  As you once put it
ontological reduction entails ontological elimination.  IOW, the
reduction of materiality to a causally-complete micro-physical
mechanism automatically entails that macro-physical composites must
be considered fundamentally to be epistemological, not ontological,
realities. Micro-physics qua materia entails no such additional
ontological levels of organisation.

Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.  It might
even seem to be indistinguishable, in the final analysis, from
computational supervenience.

David


 On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:35, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 December 2011 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On reflection,
 this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
 distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
 are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
 consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).



 Some people, like Peter Jones (and many others) believe that
 consciousness
 might need both a computation together with at least one concrete
 primitive
 physical implementation. MGA is supposed to help those people to see that
 such an option cannot work.


 But then they are dualists, even if they can't or won't admit it.  The
 fact that they go on thinking and talking in a dualist way but won't
 confess to it is why I say the ambiguity is studied.  Dennett, for
 example, winks at it when he describes himself as a third-person
 absolutist, revealing in the process perhaps a stronger commitment to
 doctrine than truth; and consequently, despite his analytical rigour,
 he is often led to use bullying and sophistry to defend absolutism
 where truthfulness does not serve his purpose.

 But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
 materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing that
 either there are two primitives in play here or only one.  If the
 former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
 duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
 distance from the other (as Kant shows us).  Should one consequently
 lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
 of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
 terms of the other.

 If we attempt to collapse computation into the primitive physics
 that implements it, then we are left just with physics; everything
 must in the end be accounted for qua materia.  But in the presence of
 consciousness, this is frankly incoherent, or more simply, impossible.
 In the light of this, as Sherlock Holmes sagaciously observed, the
 alternative, however improbable, must be true: if computation is to be
 the chosen supervention base for consciousness, there can be no sense
 in further appeal to any more primitive ontology.  Quod erat
 demonstrandum.


 I agree with some use of Occam, but this might not follow from a pure
 logical point of view (if you let me play the role of the devil advocate).

 The reason is that, without MGA or Maudlin, we might single out a universal
 machine which would be a primitive material system, and decide that
 consciousness is related to the computations appearing in that primitive
 physical frame, and defined by the organization of matter in that frame).
 This entails a property form of dualism, which is not obviously
 contradictory. The physical universe becomes a sort of primitive programming
 language, as it can be indeed, and consciousness would supervene on the
 physical computation only. The fact that, without MGA, we can conceive this
 explains the success of the mechanist idea among materialist: there is
 matter obeying some laws, and from those laws we can explain layers of
 different organizations.
 Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we can

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 26 Dec 2011, at 22:45, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 19:50, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
wrote:

Not if the sense of dualism *is* the primitive.

My comments, like the OP, were directed towards the assumptions of the
computational theory of mind, and the various ways in which this is
generally interpreted. Do bear in mind that consciousness is assumed
(i.e. in the relevant theory) to *supervene on* computation, not to be
identical with it. Any theory in this domain aspires to give detailed
and falsifiable predictions of how complex systems, defined in terms
of the supervention basis of the theory, emerge, behave, have beliefs,
possess dispositions, make specific claims, about themselves and their
environments, in the precisely the terms they do, and so forth. This
is of course a monumental endeavour, hardly yet begun, but it is in
the end an empirical one; it can be falsified by intractable
inconsistency with observation, or with the dictates of logic.

It seems to me on the other hand that we simply have no idea how to
give an explanatory account of the direct first-hand phenomena of
consciousness per se. We don't even know what it would be like to
have such an idea. I don't believe that it's an attainable goal of
any theory we possess.

I agree. But what we can explain is that there are some self-
referential truth which are available by machine, and that machine can
realize that they are non justifiable in any theory. In that sense we
can have a sort of meta-theory of consciousness, mostly axiomatized by
this true but incommunicable. Then it can be shown that such truth
have a role. If machine postulates them in some strong way, they
become inconsistent. If they postulate them in some weaker way, they
speed-up themselves relatively to their environment, and that gives to
such truth some local role, and that would explain why at some point
nature select animals exploiting that possibility.

Bruno

David

On Dec 26, 12:35 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:

But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing
that

either there are two primitives in play here or only one. If the
former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
distance from the other (as Kant shows us). Should one consequently
lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
terms of the other.

Not if the sense of dualism *is* the primitive. A single continuum
which is ontologically perpendicular to itself in one sense,
unambiguously unified in another, and explicated as a spectrum of
combinatorial sense channels at every point in between. It's the
possibility of topological symmetry and algebraic-sequential
progression that gives rise to realism. Each primitive can be
redefined in terms of the other figuratively but not literally.
Computation is not realism. It is an analytical extraction through
which our intellectual sense can model many common exterior behaviors
and experiences, but I think it is not a primitive and has no causal
efficacy independent of a physical mechanism. Computationalism is
seductive as a primitive because it's purpose is to transparently
model universality and in so doing becomes conflated with
universality

in our minds, but this equivalence is figurative, not literal.

Craig

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 26 Dec 2011, at 23:37, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 01:08:25PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Dec 2011, at 12:06, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:09:27AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Dec 2011, at 02:00, Russell Standish wrote:

Good analogy. Let's explore it further. Tommy is in the
classroom. So
is Samantha. Let's swap Tommy's consciousness for Samantha's.
But the
classroom does not change!

Are you swapping the brain? That would be a change in the
classroom.
If you swap just the consciousness, I don't see the meaning, nor
the

relevance.

No, swapping the consciousness, not the brains.

What would that mean?

First consider whether
Tommy's consciousness supervenes on the classroom. If yes, then
consider whether Samantha's consciousness supervenes on the
classroom. By symmetry with Tommy, one should also say yes. In that
case you have two conscious entities supervening on the same
hardware, which contradicts the definition of supervenience.

I don't see this at all. If I run the UD, an infinity of different
consciousness will supervene on the physical phenomenon consisting
in that execution. I do already believe that different consciousness
occur in my own brain: they supervene on the activity of the whole
brain though. Supervenience of Y on X, means only that a change of Y
needs a change on X, not the reverse.

If Y supervene on X, Y supervene on X united to anything.

Therefore we must conclude that nobody supervenes on the classroom.

I have no understanding of what you mean by swapping consciousness
of two people.

Bruno

This is purely a technical result deriving from the definition of
supervenience. It says that if two conscious states differ, then so
must the sates of the hardware being supervened on.

In this case we have two conscious states (Tommy's and
Samantha's). They clearly differ. Therefore, the supervened hardware
must be in a different state for each consciousness.

So therefore, it is incorrect to say that both Tommy and Samantha
supervene on the same classroom. Although, presumably they do
supervene on

their own bodies which are within the classroom.

This is a direct counter example to your statement:

If Y supervene on X, Y supervene on X united to anything.

I suspect you might have a different notion of supervenience than
usually deployed. But in that case, perhaps a different term might be
called for (if it is important).

I use a weak notion of supervenience (there are tons of notion of
supervenience in the literature, most are distinguished by Kripke-like
modal (worlds) semantics.

We might think about changing the vocabulary a little bit.

But I still fail to see what you mean by swapping two consciousness.
In this case we have that the consciousness of [Tommy and Samantha]
supervenes (weakly) on the physical activity in the classroom (to
change them, we have to change something physical in the classroom),
in the same manner than the consciousness of Bruno and Russell
supervenes on the (phsyical, here) execution of the UD. That is what
is used in the argument.

Bruno

Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 26 Dec 2011, at 20:49, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/26/2011 11:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 17:59, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote:

Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing
the same
data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or
particles.

Yes, perhaps, but then what precisely is the word neutral supposed
to signify here? Can one distinguish it meaningfully from
immaterial (i.e. not material)?

You can distinguish computation from both material and consciousness.

At any rate, organizing data is
an implicit appeal to computation, so in so far as consciousness is
deemed to supervene on something, we still seem to be appealing to
some sort of computational organisation. That said, another question
obtrudes: if we are to think in terms of two different ways of
organizing the same data - perhaps physical ways and mental ways
- can either be considered as taking logical precedence over the
other?

ISTM that in Bruno's schema, the physical computations are to be
seen as emerging from (or being filtered by) the mental ones.

He's often taken that way. But I think I now understand Bruno's
idea that consciousness still supervenes on (some kind of) physics.
It's just that neither is fundamental. They are both generated by
computation.

Including self-reference, yes.

Or
more precisely, the physical computations to which we have access
(and
which define us) as observers seem so to emerge; but both of these
are

embedded within the much more extensive totality of computable
functions which are neither physical nor mental. Perhaps this is
indeed a neutral background, in something like the sense you intend.

Right.

OK. Mechanism leads to a neutral monism of numbers and computations
(or just numbers+addition+multiplication), and physics + consciousness
arise from the internal points of view of some (relative) universal
numbers.

Bruno

Brent

David

On 12/26/2011 5:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell
Standishli...@hpcoders.com.auwrote:

I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-
PRIMITIVE-PHYS.

This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument.
Maudlin's

argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
primitiveness.

The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind:
it is
simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is
supposed to

supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
computation it implements - qua computatio. Maudlin's argument
is

supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
arbitrarily trivial level.

But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia
option is

surely empty of content from the outset. If primitive physical
activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the
final

analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
hypotheses. The behaviour of any physical system can always be
shown

to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
effect). The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes
an

appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
required to make any sense of the supervention claim. On
reflection,

this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or
they

are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick). That's it, in a
nutshell.

Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing
the same
data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or
particles.

Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:48, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/26/2011 2:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness  
supervenes on

it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.


Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys.  
It is a notion invented by the materialist/naturalist.
We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys  
supervenience.

I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.


So are saying that consciousness must always supervene on physics,  
but that the physics (and the consciousness) is not fundamental;  
Both arise from computation?


Yes. That's why I say that the coupling consciousness/realities arise  
from arithmetic/computations. Human consciousness might really  
supervene on the local physics, but Löbian consciousness is  
responsible for the earlier filtering of material realties which can  
give rise to that local physics. This is handled mathematically by the  
material hypostases (Bp  Dt ( p)).
From the points of view of a machine, it always seems her  
consciousness is related to *some* physics. Our type of physics allows  
dream sharing, which comes from its first person plural nature (the  
multiplication of population of machines).


Bruno


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 26 Dec 2011, at 23:00, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/26/2011 1:45 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 19:50, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
wrote:

Not if the sense of dualism *is* the primitive.
My comments, like the OP, were directed towards the assumptions of
the

computational theory of mind, and the various ways in which this is
generally interpreted. Do bear in mind that consciousness is assumed
(i.e. in the relevant theory) to *supervene on* computation, not to
be
identical with it. Any theory in this domain aspires to give
detailed

and falsifiable predictions of how complex systems, defined in terms
of the supervention basis of the theory, emerge, behave, have
beliefs,
possess dispositions, make specific claims, about themselves and
their

environments, in the precisely the terms they do, and so forth. This
is of course a monumental endeavour, hardly yet begun, but it is in
the end an empirical one; it can be falsified by intractable
inconsistency with observation, or with the dictates of logic.

David

As I have remarked before, I don't think the problem of
consciousness will be solved, it will just come to be seen as an
uninteresting question.

I disagree. It can be meta-solved, and consciousness is what makes
our value valuable, so it is a sort of most fundamental value making
all the others possible. It makes a person being a person.

Instead we will talk about how to design the ethics module in a
robot or what internal perceptions to provide.

This is the usual slavery problem. I am not sure we can program
intelligence, but we can try to control it when it develops, but
machine developing it will develop their own intentions. At that
point, it is no more programming but respect, education and culture.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 27 Dec 2011, at 13:59, David Nyman wrote:


On 27 December 2011 10:42, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

Of course, when consciousness is taken seriously into account, we  
can sense
some incoherence, but empirically, this is the hard part to convey,  
and

without MGA/Maudlin, I have not been able to convince of the frank
incoherence.


The frank incoherence comment was directed towards the case where,
rejecting any form of dualism, one grasps the single primitive horn
of the dilemma in the form of a primitively-physical monism, rather
than the  arithmetical alternative.  But for those willing to
contemplate some sort of property dualism (which is not always made
explicit), there is, as you say, no immediately obvious contradiction.

My own reasoning on this latter option has focused on the unquestioned
acceptance of  composite material structure which seems to underpin
the notion of a primitively physical machine.  As you once put it
ontological reduction entails ontological elimination.  IOW, the
reduction of materiality to a causally-complete micro-physical
mechanism automatically entails that macro-physical composites must
be considered fundamentally to be epistemological, not ontological,
realities. Micro-physics qua materia entails no such additional
ontological levels of organisation.

Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.  It might
even seem to be indistinguishable, in the final analysis, from
computational supervenience.


Computational supervenience of the mind on computation (by one  
universal machine) entails the supervenience of matter (first person  
observable) on infinities of computations (by infinities of universal  
machines).


The key point is perhaps that epistemological reduction: physics  
becomes a situation independent study of what universal number can  
observe, and the main invariant of that observation. Weak Materialist,  
believers in primitive matter, are really like vitalist, they reifer  
what they do not understand. I think we do that all the time in  
everyday life, but it has to be avoided as much as possible in the  
scientific communication.


Computationalism leads toward a property dualism, or better a multi- 
modal realism (octalism), which correspond to *our* willingness to  
attribute points of view to sufficiently rich self-referential  
structures. Those happen to already inhabit elementary arithmetic, or  
some combinator algebra.


Bruno




On 26 Dec 2011, at 18:35, David Nyman wrote:


On 26 December 2011 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


On reflection,
this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or  
they

are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).




Some people, like Peter Jones (and many others) believe that
consciousness
might need both a computation together with at least one concrete
primitive
physical implementation. MGA is supposed to help those people to  
see that

such an option cannot work.



But then they are dualists, even if they can't or won't admit it.   
The

fact that they go on thinking and talking in a dualist way but won't
confess to it is why I say the ambiguity is studied.  Dennett, for
example, winks at it when he describes himself as a third-person
absolutist, revealing in the process perhaps a stronger  
commitment to
doctrine than truth; and consequently, despite his analytical  
rigour,

he is often led to use bullying and sophistry to defend absolutism
where truthfulness does not serve his purpose.

But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing  
that

either there are two primitives in play here or only one.  If the
former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
distance from the other (as Kant shows us).  Should one consequently
lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
terms of the other.

If we attempt to collapse computation into the primitive physics
that implements it, then we are left just with physics; everything
must in the end be accounted for qua materia.  But in the presence  
of
consciousness, this is frankly incoherent, or more simply,  
impossible.

In the light of this, as Sherlock Holmes sagaciously observed, the
alternative, however improbable, must be true: if computation is  
to be
the chosen supervention base for consciousness, there can be no  
sense

in further appeal to any more primitive

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-27 Thread Joseph Knight

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:44 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 26 Dec 2011, at 05:47, Joseph Knight wrote:



 On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 23 Dec 2011, at 20:16, Joseph Knight wrote:



 The same problem arises in *Part 2*. Bruno claims that we are forced to
 accept that Alice’s consciousness supervenes on the film.

 No. On the projection of the pellicle on the Boolean graph, and then on
 the Boolean graph missing part. The idea is that we built again the right
 physical activity, with the projection of the film playing the role of the
 cosmic rays.


 What is a pellicle? (Sorry) I understand this part, however. My
 objections arise later.


 A film. (But in french film is for cinema (movie?)).


 OK, there was no confusion.


 OK.










 but (film + optical graph) is certainly changed, and Alice’s dream turns
 out differently (if it occurs at all).

 With comp + sup-phys, it can't.


 Why? If we assume sup+phys, then some changes in the physical system on
 which the dream supervenes certainly will lead to changes in the dream.


 I don't think so. Remember that we suppose comp (and sup-phys). So we
 already agree that we can change the physical implementation if it runs the
 computation at the correct level. So, we can change the physical
 implementation as we wish, below the substitution level without changing
 the first person private consciousness.


 I think I wasn't clear here. I didn't mean changes in the particular
 physical system consciousness is supervening on -- of course by comp that
 doesn't matter. I meant that, assuming sup-phys on physical system X, there
 must exist some changes in X which lead to changes in consciousness.


 OK.














 Bruno isolates the film and thus reaches his apparent contradictions.
 But this is not a permissible move.

 I think that the term film could have different meaning in french and
 english. But the film here means the projection of the pellicle on the
 glass/crystal medium. This one is never broken. It is a process which takes
 time, and occur in some place.



 Not only is the definition of supervenience violated, but his principle
 of irrelevant subparts is violated as well – for the optical graph is *
 not *irrelevant for the execution of Alice’s consciousness.


 Of course, but once we put away the nodes, the physical activity
 corresponding to the computation are not changed. The optical graph becomes
 irrelevant for the physical activity on which Alice's consciousness is
 supposed to supervene, by comp+sup-phys.


 This is where my problem lies. Of course the physical activity of the
 system is changed when you (invalidly) remove the optical graph from the
 system. It is far from irrelevant. For example, what mechanism causes the
 light to triggers the lasers? There must be some internal mechanisms at
 work as well. The nodes aren't connected to one another, but it matters
 whether or not the recording is being projected on an optical graph, vs. a
 concrete wall, vs. movie screen


 Why? The relevant physical activity is the same.

  Obviously I agree with you (the projection of the film does not
 instantiate consciousness). The point is that if comp and sup-phys are
 maintained, and if 323 is correct, then there is nothing different from
 projecting the film on the glass crystal with the boolean laser graph
 removed and a wall.


 I have no problem with 323. My argument is that consciousness never
 supervenes on the film/movie/recording.


 I agree with that. If only because there are no more any computation done
 in time and space (the original abstract computation does not disappear,
 of course, so with comp, we will have to attach consciousness to it, and
 not to its particular concrete implementation.




 So there *is *something different between projecting the film on the
 glass crystal, and the wall. The relevant physical activity, in the two
 cases (glass/crystal vs wall), is not the same. In the first case (and not
 the second) the light interacts with the crystal medium and triggers the
 lasers. How can you argue that this interaction is irrelevant and can be
 removed?


 Because that special activity has nothing to do with the original
 computation. If it were, I could not have said yes to the doctor at the
 start. Once the boolean graph is remove, we just get a special weird
 screen. And the absurdity is still there: there are no computation done
 when we project on that weird sort of screen.


You can still say yes to the doctor. But that activity does have something
to do with the computation. Suppose the film were projected upside down, or
equivalently that the boolean graph were turned upside down (no change in
the physical state of the film). Unless we assume some incredible symmetry
in the layout of the graph (contradicting comp), there would most certainly
be a change in computation! It *does *matter for the computation what the
light lands on. This

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-27 Thread meekerdb


On 12/27/2011 4:59 AM, David Nyman wrote:

The frank incoherence comment was directed towards the case where,
rejecting any form of dualism, one grasps the single primitive horn
of the dilemma in the form of a primitively-physical monism, rather
than the  arithmetical alternative.  But for those willing to
contemplate some sort of property dualism (which is not always made
explicit), there is, as you say, no immediately obvious contradiction.

My own reasoning on this latter option has focused on the unquestioned
acceptance of  composite material structure which seems to underpin
the notion of a primitively physical machine.  As you once put it
ontological reduction entails ontological elimination.  IOW, the
reduction of materiality to a causally-complete micro-physical
mechanism automatically entails that macro-physical composites must
be considered fundamentally to be epistemological, not ontological,
realities. Micro-physics qua materia entails no such additional
ontological levels of organisation.

Consequently, it would have to be the case that any physical
computer (e.g. our brains), proposed as a supervenience base for
experience, would itself first require to be constructed out of
epistemological properties before it could begin to compute
anything further.  This should seem, to say the least, odd.


I'm not sure on why this should be odd.  The physical world is a model we created to 
explain things and so it's not odd that epistemology preceded ontology.  First we learn 
some facts and then we build a model to explain them.  The model defines our ontology.


Brent


It might
even seem to be indistinguishable, in the final analysis, from
computational supervenience.

David


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 05:47, Joseph Knight wrote:




On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 23 Dec 2011, at 20:16, Joseph Knight wrote:




The same problem arises in Part 2. Bruno claims that we are forced  
to accept that Alice’s consciousness supervenes on the film.




No. On the projection of the pellicle on the Boolean graph, and  
then on the Boolean graph missing part. The idea is that we built  
again the right physical activity, with the projection of the film  
playing the role of the cosmic rays.


What is a pellicle? (Sorry) I understand this part, however. My  
objections arise later.


A film. (But in french film is for cinema (movie?)).

OK, there was no confusion.


OK.










but (film + optical graph) is certainly changed, and Alice’s dream  
turns out differently (if it occurs at all).




With comp + sup-phys, it can't.

Why? If we assume sup+phys, then some changes in the physical  
system on which the dream supervenes certainly will lead to changes  
in the dream.


I don't think so. Remember that we suppose comp (and sup-phys). So  
we already agree that we can change the physical implementation if  
it runs the computation at the correct level. So, we can change the  
physical implementation as we wish, below the substitution level  
without changing the first person private consciousness.


I think I wasn't clear here. I didn't mean changes in the particular  
physical system consciousness is supervening on -- of course by comp  
that doesn't matter. I meant that, assuming sup-phys on physical  
system X, there must exist some changes in X which lead to changes  
in consciousness.


OK.















Bruno isolates the film and thus reaches his apparent  
contradictions. But this is not a permissible move.




I think that the term film could have different meaning in french  
and english. But the film here means the projection of the pellicle  
on the glass/crystal medium. This one is never broken. It is a  
process which takes time, and occur in some place.




Not only is the definition of supervenience violated, but his  
principle of irrelevant subparts is violated as well – for the  
optical graph is not irrelevant for the execution of Alice’s  
consciousness.




Of course, but once we put away the nodes, the physical activity  
corresponding to the computation are not changed. The optical graph  
becomes irrelevant for the physical activity on which Alice's  
consciousness is supposed to supervene, by comp+sup-phys.


This is where my problem lies. Of course the physical activity of  
the system is changed when you (invalidly) remove the optical graph  
from the system. It is far from irrelevant. For example, what  
mechanism causes the light to triggers the lasers? There must be  
some internal mechanisms at work as well. The nodes aren't  
connected to one another, but it matters whether or not the  
recording is being projected on an optical graph, vs. a concrete  
wall, vs. movie screen


Why? The relevant physical activity is the same.
Obviously I agree with you (the projection of the film does not  
instantiate consciousness). The point is that if comp and sup-phys  
are maintained, and if 323 is correct, then there is nothing  
different from projecting the film on the glass crystal with the  
boolean laser graph removed and a wall.


I have no problem with 323. My argument is that consciousness never  
supervenes on the film/movie/recording.


I agree with that. If only because there are no more any computation  
done in time and space (the original abstract computation does not  
disappear, of course, so with comp, we will have to attach  
consciousness to it, and not to its particular concrete  
implementation.





So there is something different between projecting the film on the  
glass crystal, and the wall. The relevant physical activity, in the  
two cases (glass/crystal vs wall), is not the same. In the first  
case (and not the second) the light interacts with the crystal  
medium and triggers the lasers. How can you argue that this  
interaction is irrelevant and can be removed?


Because that special activity has nothing to do with the original  
computation. If it were, I could not have said yes to the doctor at  
the start. Once the boolean graph is remove, we just get a special  
weird screen. And the absurdity is still there: there are no  
computation done when we project on that weird sort of screen.











Let me restate my concern: Consciousness supervenes on the optical  
graph+the recording, even when the nodes are completely  
disconnected. It is true that most of the work is being done by  
the recording, but not all of the work. The optical graph still  
matters, and the physical activity of the system is not solely  
provided by the recording, as it still depends on how the projected  
light interacts (physically) with the glass/crystal surface.


But this is no more relevant in term of

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 02:00, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


The concept of supervenience has no purchase on the concreteness or
otherwise of the supervened on.


Maudlin uses supervenience for physical supervenience, like Kim
and most expert on supervenience.
I use physical supervenience, because in the dilemma mechanism/
materialsim I choose mechanism. I keep comp, and withdraw the
physical supervenience, so what remains is comp-supervenience, which
do no more refer to anything physical. the physical belongs at this
stage to the appearance of physical, and we have to retrieve the
physical laws from machine's psychology/theology. Which motivates
for AUDA.


Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness  
supervenes on

it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.


Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys. It  
is a notion invented by the materialist/naturalist.
We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys  
supervenience.

I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.




That is why I say supervenience has no purchase on concreteness.


OK.








So the consciousness are not
supervening on the UD, by definition of supervenience.


The consciousness of mister x does supervene on the running of the
relevant computation done by the UD. His consciousness supervene on
(infinitely many) subcomputations of the UD computation. That's why
in UDA step seven we have already the reversal physics/computer
science in the case we suppose our physical universe to be robust (=
executing concretely a universal dovetailer).
The consciousness of one student in a classroom, full of many
students, does supervene on the physical activity occurring in the
classroom as a whole, despite the classroom does not change itself
per se. (It does it in some sense, but then the UD does it to, after
all he changes itself into an infinity of different programs,
including many which changes themselves).


Good analogy. Let's explore it further. Tommy is in the classroom. So
is Samantha. Let's swap Tommy's consciousness for Samantha's. But the
classroom does not change!


Are you swapping the brain? That would be a change in the classroom.  
If you swap just the consciousness, I don't see the meaning, nor the  
relevance.





So neither Tommy's nor Samantha's
consciousness supervenes on the classroom as a whole, only (possibly)
on subsystems of the classroom.


They supervene on the whole activity of the classroom, in particular.  
A change in their consciousness (like seeing a bird) entails some  
change in the classroom.


Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 25 Dec 2011, at 23:21, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 04:25:58PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Sorry - perhaps static is the wrong word. I meant there is only one
UD, like there is only one number 1, so there's no way the UD  
could be

different in the case of difference consious states.



This is ambiguous. There are infinities of UD programs. And the
consciousness instantiated in the UD, is never the UD's
consciousness, but the consciousness of the person executed in some
part of the UD processing. With sup-phys, this entails that there
are finite portion of UD* which do the conscious person
computation. We can apply MGA. It might be that in some of those
computation some register are not used, and, with 323, we can remove
them.





...



I don't see the need to apply Maudlin's argument to the whole
UD, just the
branches that are relevant. There are surely counterfactuals
between these
branches?


Again, all one proves with Maudlin's argument is that consciousness
does not supervene on the physical implementation of the dovetailer,


That is enough to throw out physicalism.


This seems to contradict your earlier statement in this post where you
say consciousness only supervenes on part of the UD.


To supervene of X entails to supervene on any Y extending X.
If my consciousness supervenes on X, then a change in my consciousness  
does necessitate a change in X, which necessitates a change in X union  
Y.










it may still supervene on the multiversal physics.


Like it may still supervene on a God's created multiversal physics.
Yes. Why not. But you need to say that it might still supervene ONLY
on a multiversal physics. But then why not ONLY a God's created
multiversal physics? Such move can always be done, but it is a
crime against Occam, because the reasoning shows that there is
nothing computationally relevant in those additions.
If it where, it would mean we have been incorrect in the choice of
the substitution level.



So long as the supervenience is on phenomoinal physics experienced by
the conscious entitity, it really matters not whether the physics is
made by a God. I don't particularly care if I supervene on a computer
located on the 3rd planet of beta Carianae - what matters is that I
supervene on the physics of this world, right here and now - whatever
that physics actually is.


OK. My point is that such a physics cannot be primary. Sorry if I was  
unclear.








Maybe the implied assumption here is that if physics is emulable,  
and

something does not supervene on the emulated physics, then it cannot
supervene on the original.


?


Its a pretty straight forward question. I'll put it in symbols. Let  
sup

mean supervene and em mean emulates:

If X em Y, then A not sup X = A not sup Y.

Is this true? If so, why?


If a low level emulate a high level, and if something does not  
supervene on the low level X *when doing that emulation*, it will not  
supervene on the higher level too. That's why once we can say yes to  
the doctor for a correct level, we can automatically say yes for any  
coarse grained level (if we can afford it). If I emulate my brain at  
the level of quantum strings, and if my consciousness is not present  
in that emulation, it means the real level is lower, not higher.













Is this assumption being made? Can it be proved?


It seems to me neither assumed, nor used (but it is a bit unclear,
also, so I might miss something).



Because I don't otherwise see how one can go from showing lack of
supervenience on an emulation to showing lack of supervenience on  
the original.


It would mean that the emulation is not done at the right (or below)  
level.





It is not used in Maudlin's argument, but in your extension to handle
multiversal supervenience.


You might make this precise, because I don't see the point. But the  
best answer to your concrete multiverse argument, is that such  
multiverse has to be robust to handle the universal counterfactuals,  
but then it contains a UD*, and we are back at the step 7, and *in  
that case* the step seven is enough for the reversal physics/ 
mathematical computer science (arithmetic).


Bruno


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



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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-26 Thread Russell Standish

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:09:27AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 On 26 Dec 2011, at 02:00, Russell Standish wrote:
 
 On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 The concept of supervenience has no purchase on the concreteness or
 otherwise of the supervened on.
 
 Maudlin uses supervenience for physical supervenience, like Kim
 and most expert on supervenience.
 I use physical supervenience, because in the dilemma mechanism/
 materialsim I choose mechanism. I keep comp, and withdraw the
 physical supervenience, so what remains is comp-supervenience, which
 do no more refer to anything physical. the physical belongs at this
 stage to the appearance of physical, and we have to retrieve the
 physical laws from machine's psychology/theology. Which motivates
 for AUDA.
 
 Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
 indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness
 supervenes on
 it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.
 
 Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys. It
 is a notion invented by the materialist/naturalist.
 We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys
 supervenience.
 I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.
 

This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of primitiveness.


 Good analogy. Let's explore it further. Tommy is in the classroom. So
 is Samantha. Let's swap Tommy's consciousness for Samantha's. But the
 classroom does not change!
 
 Are you swapping the brain? That would be a change in the classroom.
 If you swap just the consciousness, I don't see the meaning, nor the
 relevance.
 

No, swapping the consciousness, not the brains. First consider whether
Tommy's consciousness supervenes on the classroom. If yes, then
consider whether Samantha's consciousness supervenes on the
classroom. By symmetry with Tommy, one should also say yes. In that
case you have two conscious entities supervening on the same
hardware, which contradicts the definition of supervenience.

Therefore we must conclude that nobody supervenes on the classroom.

 
 
 So neither Tommy's nor Samantha's
 consciousness supervenes on the classroom as a whole, only (possibly)
 on subsystems of the classroom.
 
 They supervene on the whole activity of the classroom, in
 particular. A change in their consciousness (like seeing a bird)
 entails some change in the classroom.
 
 Bruno
 
 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
 
 
 
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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

On 26 Dec 2011, at 12:06, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:09:27AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Dec 2011, at 02:00, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The concept of supervenience has no purchase on the concreteness
or

otherwise of the supervened on.

Maudlin uses supervenience for physical supervenience, like Kim
and most expert on supervenience.
I use physical supervenience, because in the dilemma mechanism/
materialsim I choose mechanism. I keep comp, and withdraw the
physical supervenience, so what remains is comp-supervenience,
which

do no more refer to anything physical. the physical belongs at this
stage to the appearance of physical, and we have to retrieve the
physical laws from machine's psychology/theology. Which motivates
for AUDA.

Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness
supervenes on
it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.

Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys. It
is a notion invented by the materialist/naturalist.
We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys
supervenience.
I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.

This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
primitiveness.

Suopervenience, as used in today's philosophy of mind, is a 100%
Aristotelian notion, relating consciousness to physical events,
thought as being primitive by definition. It is naturalism, weak
materialism. Maudlins completely lacks the idea that physics might not
be the fundamental science. This is clear in his book on QM too.
Most people conceive matter as being primitive. The notion of non
primitive matter has been completely abandoned since the dismissing of
Platonist conception of reality. Nobody doubts the primitive nature of
matter, except when they begin to grasp the comp mind-body problem.
Thare has been a time where I use the word matter in the its
primitive Aristotelian sense, but this leads to the shocking statement
that matter does not exist (which of course meant (Aristotle primary
matter does not exist in any sense relating it to consciousness).

Good analogy. Let's explore it further. Tommy is in the classroom.
So
is Samantha. Let's swap Tommy's consciousness for Samantha's. But
the

classroom does not change!

Are you swapping the brain? That would be a change in the classroom.
If you swap just the consciousness, I don't see the meaning, nor the
relevance.

No, swapping the consciousness, not the brains.

What would that mean?

I don't see this at all. If I run the UD, an infinity of different
consciousness will supervene on the physical phenomenon consisting in
that execution. I do already believe that different consciousness
occur in my own brain: they supervene on the activity of the whole
brain though. Supervenience of Y on X, means only that a change of Y
needs a change on X, not the reverse.

If Y supervene on X, Y supervene on X united to anything.

Therefore we must conclude that nobody supervenes on the classroom.

I have no understanding of what you mean by swapping consciousness of
two people.

Bruno

So neither Tommy's nor Samantha's
consciousness supervenes on the classroom as a whole, only
(possibly)

on subsystems of the classroom.

They supervene on the whole activity of the classroom, in
particular. A change in their consciousness (like seeing a bird)
entails some change in the classroom.

Bruno

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

Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation



On 26 Dec 2011, at 14:50, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au  
wrote:



I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.



This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of  
primitiveness.


The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
arbitrarily trivial level.


Yet, it never occurs to Maudlin that we might just abandon the  
supervenience of mind or computation on matter.
In his book on quantum mechanics, he seems reluctant to accept the MW,  
for similar reason.






But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
hypotheses.


This is not entirely obvious. Many people, like Peter Jones on this  
list, will define real by primitively material, and will believe  
that a computation can bring consciousness only if that computation is  
implemented in some primitively material set up.





The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
effect).


For a reductionist materialist only, not for a dualist. We do explain  
complex program behavior from a higher level description of a program,  
but most people will think that what makes Deep Blue (say) real is  
provided by its real (physical) implementation.






The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
required to make any sense of the supervention claim.


Because they take the very idea of qua materia for granted. Of  
course we know better, I guess.





On reflection,
this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).


Some people, like Peter Jones (and many others) believe that  
consciousness might need both a computation together with at least one  
concrete primitive physical implementation. MGA is supposed to help  
those people to see that such an option cannot work.




That's it, in a
nutshell.


Good summary, but I am not sure it can convince some die hard  
atheists, believing in both primitive matter and abstract computation,  
which does not really exists for them, unless they are concretely  
implemented.


Bruno



On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:09:27AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 26 Dec 2011, at 02:00, Russell Standish wrote:


On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 04:44:41PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:


The concept of supervenience has no purchase on the  
concreteness or

otherwise of the supervened on.


Maudlin uses supervenience for physical supervenience, like  
Kim

and most expert on supervenience.
I use physical supervenience, because in the dilemma mechanism/
materialsim I choose mechanism. I keep comp, and withdraw the
physical supervenience, so what remains is comp-supervenience,  
which
do no more refer to anything physical. the physical belongs at  
this

stage to the appearance of physical, and we have to retrieve the
physical laws from machine's psychology/theology. Which motivates
for AUDA.


Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness
supervenes on
it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.


Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys. It
is a notion invented by the materialist/naturalist.
We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys
supervenience.
I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.



This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of  
primitiveness.



Good analogy. Let's explore it further. Tommy is in the  
classroom. So
is Samantha. Let's swap Tommy's consciousness for Samantha's. But  
the

classroom does not

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-26 Thread David Nyman

On 26 December 2011 16:23, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On reflection,
 this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
 distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
 are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
 consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).


 Some people, like Peter Jones (and many others) believe that consciousness
 might need both a computation together with at least one concrete primitive
 physical implementation. MGA is supposed to help those people to see that
 such an option cannot work.

But then they are dualists, even if they can't or won't admit it.  The
fact that they go on thinking and talking in a dualist way but won't
confess to it is why I say the ambiguity is studied.  Dennett, for
example, winks at it when he describes himself as a third-person
absolutist, revealing in the process perhaps a stronger commitment to
doctrine than truth; and consequently, despite his analytical rigour,
he is often led to use bullying and sophistry to defend absolutism
where truthfulness does not serve his purpose.

But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing that
either there are two primitives in play here or only one.  If the
former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
distance from the other (as Kant shows us).  Should one consequently
lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
terms of the other.

If we attempt to collapse computation into the primitive physics
that implements it, then we are left just with physics; everything
must in the end be accounted for qua materia.  But in the presence of
consciousness, this is frankly incoherent, or more simply, impossible.
In the light of this, as Sherlock Holmes sagaciously observed, the
alternative, however improbable, must be true: if computation is to be
the chosen supervention base for consciousness, there can be no sense
in further appeal to any more primitive ontology.  Quod erat
demonstrandum.

David



 On 26 Dec 2011, at 14:50, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.


 This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
 primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
 argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
 primitiveness.


 The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
 definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
 simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
 supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
 computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
 supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
 option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
 activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
 arbitrarily trivial level.


 Yet, it never occurs to Maudlin that we might just abandon the supervenience
 of mind or computation on matter.
 In his book on quantum mechanics, he seems reluctant to accept the MW, for
 similar reason.





 But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
 surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
 activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
 then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
 analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
 hypotheses.


 This is not entirely obvious. Many people, like Peter Jones on this list,
 will define real by primitively material, and will believe that a
 computation can bring consciousness only if that computation is implemented
 in some primitively material set up.




 The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
 to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
 explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
 effect).


 For a reductionist materialist only, not for a dualist. We do explain
 complex program behavior from a higher level description of a program, but
 most people will think that what makes Deep Blue (say) real is provided by
 its real (physical) implementation.





 The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
 appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
 distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
 required to make any sense of the supervention claim.


 Because they take the very idea of qua materia for granted. Of course we
 know better, I guess.




 On reflection,
 this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
 distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or

Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/26/2011 2:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Even if the physics is not concrete, but purely phenomenological as
indicated by steps 1-7 of the UDA, and if the consciousness supervenes on
it, it is still physical supervenience, surely.


Not in the usual sense of supervenience, or what I call sup-phys. It is a notion 
invented by the materialist/naturalist.

We can still have (and we shoud have) a remaining comp-phys supervenience.
I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS. 


So are saying that consciousness must always supervene on physics, but that the physics 
(and the consciousness) is not fundamental; Both arise from computation?


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/26/2011 2:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
If a low level emulate a high level, and if something does not supervene on the low 
level X *when doing that emulation*, it will not supervene on the higher level too. 
That's why once we can say yes to the doctor for a correct level, we can automatically 
say yes for any coarse grained level (if we can afford it). 


You mean fine grained, don't you?

Brent

If I emulate my brain at the level of quantum strings, and if my consciousness is not 
present in that emulation, it means the real level is lower, not higher.




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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/26/2011 5:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au  wrote:



  I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.



  This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
  primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
  argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of primitiveness.

The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
arbitrarily trivial level.

But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
hypotheses.  The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
effect).  The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
required to make any sense of the supervention claim.  On reflection,
this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).  That's it, in a
nutshell.


Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the same data - as 
quantum field theory can be done with either fields or particles.


Brent

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-26 Thread David Nyman

On 26 December 2011 17:59, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the same
 data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or particles.

Yes, perhaps, but then what precisely is the word neutral supposed
to signify here?  Can one distinguish it meaningfully from
immaterial (i.e. not material)?  At any rate, organizing data is
an implicit appeal to computation, so in so far as consciousness is
deemed to supervene on something, we still seem to be appealing to
some sort of computational organisation.  That said, another question
obtrudes: if we are to think in terms of two different ways of
organizing the same data - perhaps physical ways and mental ways
- can either be considered as taking logical precedence over the
other?

ISTM that in Bruno's schema, the physical computations are to be
seen as emerging from (or being filtered by) the mental ones.  Or
more precisely, the physical computations to which we have access (and
which define us) as observers seem so to emerge; but both of these are
embedded within the much more extensive totality of computable
functions which are neither physical nor mental.  Perhaps this is
indeed a neutral background, in something like the sense you intend.

David

 On 12/26/2011 5:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au  wrote:


   I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.
 

 
   This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
   primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
   argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
  primitiveness.

 The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
 definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
 simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
 supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
 computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
 supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
 option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
 activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
 arbitrarily trivial level.

 But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
 surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
 activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
 then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
 analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
 hypotheses.  The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
 to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
 explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
 effect).  The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
 appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
 distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
 required to make any sense of the supervention claim.  On reflection,
 this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
 distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
 are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
 consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).  That's it, in a
 nutshell.


 Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the same
 data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or particles.

 Brent


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation


On 12/26/2011 11:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 17:59, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:


Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the same
data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or particles.

Yes, perhaps, but then what precisely is the word neutral supposed
to signify here?  Can one distinguish it meaningfully from
immaterial (i.e. not material)?


You can distinguish computation from both material and consciousness.


At any rate, organizing data is
an implicit appeal to computation, so in so far as consciousness is
deemed to supervene on something, we still seem to be appealing to
some sort of computational organisation.  That said, another question
obtrudes: if we are to think in terms of two different ways of
organizing the same data - perhaps physical ways and mental ways
- can either be considered as taking logical precedence over the
other?

ISTM that in Bruno's schema, the physical computations are to be
seen as emerging from (or being filtered by) the mental ones.


He's often taken that way.  But I think I now understand Bruno's idea that consciousness 
still supervenes on (some kind of) physics. It's just that neither is fundamental.  They 
are both generated by computation.



   Or
more precisely, the physical computations to which we have access (and
which define us) as observers seem so to emerge; but both of these are
embedded within the much more extensive totality of computable
functions which are neither physical nor mental.  Perhaps this is
indeed a neutral background, in something like the sense you intend.


Right.

Brent


David


On 12/26/2011 5:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.auwrote:



  I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.


  This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
  primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
  argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
primitiveness.

The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
arbitrarily trivial level.

But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
hypotheses.  The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
effect).  The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
required to make any sense of the supervention claim.  On reflection,
this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).  That's it, in a
nutshell.


Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the same
data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or particles.

Brent


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-26 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Dec 26, 12:35 pm, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote:


 But once the central ontological distinction is made between qua
 materia and qua computatio, a truthful eye cannot avoid seeing that
 either there are two primitives in play here or only one.  If the
 former, then a dualism of some kind must be contemplated, though a
 duality in which one pole is placed at an unbridgeable epistemic
 distance from the other (as Kant shows us).  Should one consequently
 lean towards the latter option as more parsimonious, one of the pair
 of ontological primitives must be dispensed with - i.e. redefined in
 terms of the other.

Not if the sense of dualism *is* the primitive. A single continuum
which is ontologically perpendicular to itself in one sense,
unambiguously unified in another, and explicated as a spectrum of
combinatorial sense channels at every point in between. It's the
possibility of topological symmetry and algebraic-sequential
progression that gives rise to realism. Each primitive can be
redefined in terms of the other figuratively but not literally.
Computation is not realism. It is an analytical extraction through
which our intellectual sense can model many common exterior behaviors
and experiences, but I think it is not a primitive and has no causal
efficacy independent of a physical mechanism. Computationalism is
seductive as a primitive because it's purpose is to transparently
model universality and in so doing becomes conflated with universality
in our minds, but this equivalence is figurative, not literal.

Craig

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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation

2011-12-26 Thread David Nyman

On 26 December 2011 19:49, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 ISTM that in Bruno's schema, the physical computations are to be
 seen as emerging from (or being filtered by) the mental ones.


 He's often taken that way.  But I think I now understand Bruno's idea that
 consciousness still supervenes on (some kind of) physics. It's just that
 neither is fundamental.  They are both generated by computation.

Yes, I get that too - the recent conversations have been helpful.

 Or more precisely, the physical computations to which we have access (and
 which define us) as observers seem so to emerge; but both of these are
 embedded within the much more extensive totality of computable
 functions which are neither physical nor mental.  Perhaps this is
 indeed a neutral background, in something like the sense you intend.


 Right.

Good.

David


 On 12/26/2011 11:37 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 December 2011 17:59, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net  wrote:

 Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the
 same
 data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or
 particles.

 Yes, perhaps, but then what precisely is the word neutral supposed
 to signify here?  Can one distinguish it meaningfully from
 immaterial (i.e. not material)?


 You can distinguish computation from both material and consciousness.


 At any rate, organizing data is
 an implicit appeal to computation, so in so far as consciousness is
 deemed to supervene on something, we still seem to be appealing to
 some sort of computational organisation.  That said, another question
 obtrudes: if we are to think in terms of two different ways of
 organizing the same data - perhaps physical ways and mental ways
 - can either be considered as taking logical precedence over the
 other?

 ISTM that in Bruno's schema, the physical computations are to be
 seen as emerging from (or being filtered by) the mental ones.


 He's often taken that way.  But I think I now understand Bruno's idea that
 consciousness still supervenes on (some kind of) physics. It's just that
 neither is fundamental.  They are both generated by computation.


   Or
 more precisely, the physical computations to which we have access (and
 which define us) as observers seem so to emerge; but both of these are
 embedded within the much more extensive totality of computable
 functions which are neither physical nor mental.  Perhaps this is
 indeed a neutral background, in something like the sense you intend.


 Right.

 Brent


 David

 On 12/26/2011 5:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:

 On 26 December 2011 11:06, Russell Standishli...@hpcoders.com.au
  wrote:


  I guess I should make this clearer. SUP-PHYS is SUP-PRIMITIVE-PHYS.

  This does clarify some things. But I still don't see where
  primitiveness is defined, or comes into the argument. Maudlin's
  argument is about regular supervenience, with no mention of
 primitiveness.

 The confusion is surely a consequence of a studied ambiguity in the
 definition of supervention in the computational theory of mind: it is
 simply not stipulated explicitly whether consciousness is supposed to
 supervene on a physical system - qua materia - or on the abstract
 computation it implements - qua computatio.  Maudlin's argument is
 supposed to pump our intuition about the absurdity of the former
 option, by showing that it is possible to reduce the structure and
 activity of a physical implementation (qua materia) to some
 arbitrarily trivial level.

 But if we remove the aforesaid ambiguity, the qua materia option is
 surely empty of content from the outset.  If primitive physical
 activity is supposed to be what ultimately determines what is real,
 then second-order notions such as computation must be, in the final
 analysis, explanatorily irrelevant - we have no need of such
 hypotheses.  The behaviour of any physical system can always be shown
 to be fully adequate, qua materia, in its own terms, and further
 explanation is consequently otiose (i.e. the zombie argument, in
 effect).  The ambiguity in the definition of CTM is that it makes an
 appeal to computation without making the explicit ontological
 distinction between qua computatio and qua materia that is
 required to make any sense of the supervention claim.  On reflection,
 this distinction can be made explicit in two ways: either they are
 distinct and separable (i.e. physico-computational dualism), or they
 are ultimately indistinguishable (i.e. frank eliminativism about
 consciousness, or immaterialism - take your pick).  That's it, in a
 nutshell.


 Or a neutral monism in which they are different ways of organizing the
 same
 data - as quantum field theory can be done with either fields or
 particles.

 Brent


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Re: Movie Graph Argument: A Refutation