subject:"Re\: Bruno's blasphemy."



On 21 Jul 2011, at 20:30, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:




On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:

On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces  
computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.

If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,  
everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the  
existence of the computation implementing your mind.


Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has  
a concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other  
branches of the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?   
How would an AI or human in a virtual environment point to the  
concrete computer that is rendering its environment?



They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be  
described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So  
the fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description  
of relations.


Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea  
of a chair?


The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and  
chairs.


Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the  
existence of number relations explains the existence of matter,


That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the  
existence of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or  
equivalent.


Not at all. The UD is a collection of number relation, and its  
existence is a theorem in elementary arithmetic.






It requires the existence of all computation.


That is Sigma_1 truth. That is contained in a tiny fragment of  
provable truth in elementary arithmetic.





I see no reason to suppose these exist, at least not in any  
conventional meaning of 'exist'.



It exists in the sense of even numbers exist.




It certainly doesn't follow from my saying Yes to the doctor that  
I believe they exist.



It does follow.




It also has the problem that it explains too much - the white rabbit  
problem.


But that is *the* interesting things. Matter become a mathematical  
problem. You can refute comp by showing that there is too much white  
rabbits. But the logic of self-reference shows that it is not trivial.  
The logic S4Grz1, X1* and Z1*  explains already why the white rabbits  
might be very rare, perhaps even more rare than with QM.






but the existence of matter does not explain the existence of  
number relations.


It may not explain them, but it exemplifies them.  And in fact  
that's how we learn what numbers are and how to count - long before  
we learn Peano's axioms and Cantor's diagonalization.


That is normal. We are embedded in the reality of numbers, and cannot  
see the numbers before seeing matter. This is explain in the theory.






It is therefore a simpler theory to suppose the existence of number  
relations is fundamental and the appearance of matter is a  
consequence, than to suppose both exist independently of each other.


Simpler, yes.  But then, God did it and Everything exists. are  
simple too.  An explanation with no predictive power isn't much of  
an explanation.


It predicts physics and consciousness. Quantitively and qualitatively.  
OK, it has not YET find a new particle, and that might take time. But  
the theory explains much more than physics has ever explain, and this  
with much fewer assumptions.


Bruno



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



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 22, 1:53 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 7:43 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  On Jul 21, 11:55 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
   On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the
  existence
of
 number relations explains the existence of matter, but the existence
  of
 matter does not explain the existence of number relations.

Yes it does. Any number relation  that has ever been grasped by
anybody exists in their mind, and therefore in their brain. And as
for the ungrasped ones...so what? It can make no difference
if they are there or not.

   Perhaps if those ungrasped ones did not exist then we might not exist.
   It
   is premature to say their existence does not make a difference to us.

  The existence of matter can explain the existence of numbers.
  The reverse might also be the case, but that is not a disproof.

   I think may also be incorrect to say we need to grasp numbers or their
   relations for them to matter.  Consider this example: I generate a large
   random number X, with no obvious factors (I think it is prime), but when
  I
   compute (y^(X - 1)) and divide by X (where y is not a multiple of X), I
  find
   the remainder is not 1.  This means X is not prime: it has factors other
   than 1 and X, but I haven't grasped what those factors are.  Nor is there
   any efficient method for finding out what they are.

   Now the existence of these ungrasped numbers does make a difference.  If
  I
   attempted to build an RSA key using X and another legitimately prime
  number
   (instead of two prime numbers), then the encryption won't work properly.
   I
   won't be able to determine a private key because I don't know all the
   factors.

  The contingent fact that is your failure to grasp a mathematical
  truth is makes a difference.

 Just above you said mathematical objects only exist if they exist physically
 in some brain.  This is a case where the factors are not only unknown by me,
 but likely unknown by anyone in the observable universe.

  Mathematical truths are not contingent,
  so
  what difference can they make?

 If they are not contingent then you accept they exist even without the
 existence of the physical universe?

No. They are epistemically necessary. That says nothing about
their existence. The argument is that since they can make no
difference,
they should be assumed to have no  mind independent existence.

 If so, then see my post in the other
 thread where I explain how mathematical truth can explain the existence of
 life and consciousness.

 Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 22, 4:08 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
  **
  On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
  to be there.

  The computations are concrete relations.

   If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.

  If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
  everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of 
  the
  computation implementing your mind.

  Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
  concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches 
  of
  the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
  human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
  rendering its environment?

  They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
  described by some axiomatic.

   And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
  fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of 
  relations.

  Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
  chair?

  The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.

  Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
  of number relations explains the existence of matter,

   That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the existence
  of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or equivalent.

  The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
  It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2).
  This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number line
  has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
  Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of numbers
  (different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of these
  definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
  defined ways,

  There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves around or
  computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers are
  not.

 Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent view
 given relativity.

 Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
 relations between the bits.

And every computation either stops or doens't? There seems
to me a mismatch between timelessness and computation.

   some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even evolve
  into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
  themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness, as
  they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future observations
  of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
  There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve their
  survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
  Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences of
  numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
  sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of recursive
  relations).

  I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still accept
  that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that John
  Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.

 Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe,


Meaning they end with the universe? Why assume that? What difference
does it make.

 if
 not the cause of the universe.

Causation requires events. Maths is timeless.

 In that sense, they are just as concrete if
 not more concrete than any physical object.  Your view is like that of a
 being who has spent its whole life in a simulated virtual environment: It
 believes the virtual reality and items in it are more real than the actual
 computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only
 justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer using
 his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.

 Jason

I think we all have  a pretty strong justification for the Real
Reality
theory in the shape of Occam's razor.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 22, 6:24 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
  **
  On 7/21/2011 8:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

   On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
  to be there.

  The computations are concrete relations.

   If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.

  If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
  everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of 
  the
  computation implementing your mind.

  Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
  concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches 
  of
  the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
  human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
  rendering its environment?

  They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
  described by some axiomatic.

   And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
  fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of 
  relations.

  Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
  chair?

  The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.

  Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
  of number relations explains the existence of matter,

   That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the
  existence of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or
  equivalent.

  The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
  It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2).
  This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number line
  has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
  Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of numbers
  (different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of these
  definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
  defined ways,

   There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves around or
  computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers are
  not.

  Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent view
  given relativity.

  Different t == different g_ab.

 Different N == different Fib(N)

  That's change in physics.  Anyway, GR must be incomplete since it's not
  compatible with QM.

 All the relevant parts of relativity which imply block time have been
 confirmed.  The above is like arguing against gravity because Newton's
 theory wasn't compatible with the observations of Mercury's orbit.





  Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
  relations between the bits.

   some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even evolve
  into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
  themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness, as
  they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future observations
  of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
  There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve their
  survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
  Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences of
  numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
  sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of recursive
  relations).

   I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still accept
  that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that John
  Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.

  Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe, if
  not the cause of the universe.

  That assumes numbers exist.

 It is no worse than assuming the physical universe exists.  Both theories
 are consistent with observation.



     In that sense, they are just as concrete if not more concrete than any
  physical object.  Your view is like that of a being who has spent its whole
  life in a simulated virtual environment: It believes the virtual reality and
  items in it are more real than the actual computer which implements the
  virtual environment.  The beings only justification for this belief is that
  he can't access that computer using his senses, nor point is he able to
  point to it.

  That's logically possible and maybe nomologically possible - but there's
  also

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-22 Thread Jason Resch

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 7:01 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



  Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
  relations between the bits.

 And every computation either stops or doens't? There seems
 to me a mismatch between timelessness and computation.


Not at all.  Consider the analogy with a universe:  It either is infinitely
long in the time dimension or finite.  This doesn't preclude block time.



some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even
 evolve
   into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
   themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness,
 as
   they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future
 observations
   of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
   There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve
 their
   survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
   Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences
 of
   numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
   sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of
 recursive
   relations).
 
   I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still
 accept
   that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that
 John
   Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.
 
  Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe,


 Meaning they end with the universe? Why assume that? What difference
 does it make.


The universe doesn't end (time as something we move through) only appears to
observers.  This is true with both the block universe view, and the I exist
in some number relation view.  It is easy to see how this view arises if
you consider the example I gave earlier with a life form developing through
the successive states of a recursive function.



  if
  not the cause of the universe.

 Causation requires events. Maths is timeless.

  In that sense, they are just as concrete if
  not more concrete than any physical object.  Your view is like that of a
  being who has spent its whole life in a simulated virtual environment: It
  believes the virtual reality and items in it are more real than the
 actual
  computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only
  justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer using
  his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.
 
  Jason

 I think we all have  a pretty strong justification for the Real
 Reality
 theory in the shape of Occam's razor.


As I already said, both theories consequences math exists primarily or
physics exists primarily are equally verified by observation.  They are
equally scientific and make the same number of assumptions.  The question
then becomes: Is it redundant to assume a primary existence in the physical
universe, if one accepts math exists independently of the physical world?

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-22 Thread Jason Resch

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 7:08 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



 On Jul 22, 6:24 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
   **
   On 7/21/2011 8:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
 
   On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
 wrote:
 
On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
 
   On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
 wrote:
 
On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
 
   On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
 wrote:
 
   On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
   Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces
 computation
   to be there.
 
   The computations are concrete relations.
 
If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.
 
   If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
   everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence
 of the
   computation implementing your mind.
 
   Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
   concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other
 branches of
   the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an
 AI or
   human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
   rendering its environment?
 
   They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
   described by some axiomatic.
 
And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So
 the
   fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of
 relations.
 
   Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of
 a
   chair?
 
   The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and
 chairs.
 
   Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the
 existence
   of number relations explains the existence of matter,
 
That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the
   existence of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or
   equivalent.
 
   The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89,
 144...
   It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) +
 Fib(n-2).
   This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number
 line
   has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
   Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of
 numbers
   (different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of
 these
   definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
   defined ways,
 
There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves
 around or
   computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers
 are
   not.
 
   Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent
 view
   given relativity.
 
   Different t == different g_ab.
 
  Different N == different Fib(N)
 
   That's change in physics.  Anyway, GR must be incomplete since it's not
   compatible with QM.
 
  All the relevant parts of relativity which imply block time have been
  confirmed.  The above is like arguing against gravity because Newton's
  theory wasn't compatible with the observations of Mercury's orbit.
 
 
 
 
 
   Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well
 defined
   relations between the bits.
 
some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even
 evolve
   into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
   themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness,
 as
   they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future
 observations
   of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
   There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve
 their
   survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
   Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences
 of
   numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
   sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of
 recursive
   relations).
 
I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still
 accept
   that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that
 John
   Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.
 
   Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe,
 if
   not the cause of the universe.
 
   That assumes numbers exist.
 
  It is no worse than assuming the physical universe exists.  Both theories
  are consistent with observation.
 
 
 
  In that sense, they are just as concrete if not more concrete than
 any
   physical object.  Your view is like that of a being who has spent its
 whole
   life in a simulated virtual environment: It believes the virtual
 reality and
   items in it are more real than the actual computer which implements
 the
   virtual environment.  The beings only

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 22, 3:59 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 7:01 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
   relations between the bits.

  And every computation either stops or doens't? There seems
  to me a mismatch between timelessness and computation.

 Not at all.  Consider the analogy with a universe:  It either is infinitely
 long in the time dimension or finite.  This doesn't preclude block time.

What are computations *for*, if their results timeless exist
somewhere?




 some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even
  evolve
into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness,
  as
they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future
  observations
of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve
  their
survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences
  of
numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of
  recursive
relations).

I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still
  accept
that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that
  John
Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.

   Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe,

  Meaning they end with the universe? Why assume that? What difference
  does it make.

 The universe doesn't end (time as something we move through) only appears to
 observers.  This is true with both the block universe view, and the I exist
 in some number relation view.  It is easy to see how this view arises if
 you consider the example I gave earlier with a life form developing through
 the successive states of a recursive function.





   if
   not the cause of the universe.

  Causation requires events. Maths is timeless.

   In that sense, they are just as concrete if
   not more concrete than any physical object.  Your view is like that of a
   being who has spent its whole life in a simulated virtual environment: It
   believes the virtual reality and items in it are more real than the
  actual
   computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only
   justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer using
   his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.

   Jason

  I think we all have  a pretty strong justification for the Real
  Reality
  theory in the shape of Occam's razor.

 As I already said, both theories consequences math exists primarily or
 physics exists primarily are equally verified by observation.  

Nope. The things we see seem to be things, not numbers.

They are
 equally scientific and make the same number of assumptions.  The question
 then becomes: Is it redundant to assume a primary existence in the physical
 universe, if one accepts math exists independently of the physical world?

 Jason

Before that question, you need the question: does maths exist
independently.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-22 Thread Jason Resch

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:31 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



 On Jul 22, 3:59 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 7:01 AM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well
 defined
relations between the bits.
 
   And every computation either stops or doens't? There seems
   to me a mismatch between timelessness and computation.
 
  Not at all.  Consider the analogy with a universe:  It either is
 infinitely
  long in the time dimension or finite.  This doesn't preclude block time.

 What are computations *for*, if their results timeless exist
 somewhere?


A result out of context is meaningless information, what is needed is a
relation.



 
 
  some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even
   evolve
 into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
 themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve
 consciousness,
   as
 they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future
   observations
 of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function
 Universe.
 There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve
   their
 survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
 Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such
 sequences
   of
 numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the
 Fibonacci
 sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of
   recursive
 relations).
 
 I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still
   accept
 that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept
 that
   John
 Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.
 
Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the
 universe,
 
   Meaning they end with the universe? Why assume that? What difference
   does it make.
 
  The universe doesn't end (time as something we move through) only appears
 to
  observers.  This is true with both the block universe view, and the I
 exist
  in some number relation view.  It is easy to see how this view arises if
  you consider the example I gave earlier with a life form developing
 through
  the successive states of a recursive function.
 
 
 
 
 
if
not the cause of the universe.
 
   Causation requires events. Maths is timeless.
 
In that sense, they are just as concrete if
not more concrete than any physical object.  Your view is like that
 of a
being who has spent its whole life in a simulated virtual
 environment: It
believes the virtual reality and items in it are more real than the
   actual
computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only
justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer
 using
his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.
 
Jason
 
   I think we all have  a pretty strong justification for the Real
   Reality
   theory in the shape of Occam's razor.
 
  As I already said, both theories consequences math exists primarily or
  physics exists primarily are equally verified by observation.

 Nope. The things we see seem to be things, not numbers.


That they seem to be things is explained by the theory.  Again, consider the
example of a life form in a progression of numbers.  They are a pattern
which may receive information about other patterns, which exist within that
number.



 They are
  equally scientific and make the same number of assumptions.  The question
  then becomes: Is it redundant to assume a primary existence in the
 physical
  universe, if one accepts math exists independently of the physical
 world?
 
  Jason

 Before that question, you need the question: does maths exist
 independently.


If you want to debate this question I am happy to.  It is the assumption
made by most mathematicians and scientists.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-22 Thread meekerdb


On 7/22/2011 2:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 21 Jul 2011, at 17:54, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But I think you beg the question by demanding an axiomatic 
definition and rejecting ostensive ones.


Why?
The point is that ostensive definition does not work for justifying 
an ontology.


That seems to be a non-sequitur.  How can any kind of definition 
justify an ontology?


Because a definition or an axiomatization refer to an intended model, 
of a theory which handle existential quantifier. The theory of group 
requires the existence of a neutral elements, for example. The theory 
of number requires zero, etc.


Satisfying an existentially quantified proposition implies existence 
within that model.  It doesn't justify the model or its ontology.






 Definitions are about the meaning of words.  If I point to a table 
and say Table. I'm defining table, not justifying an ontology.


OK. And then what? You are just pointing on some pattern.





That's what the dream argument shows. Being axiomatic does not beg 
the question. You can be materialist and develop an axiomatic of 
primitive matter. The whole point of an axiomatic approach consists 
in being as neutral as possible on ontological commitment.



But what you demanded was a *physical* axiomatic definition.  Which 
seems to be a demand that the definition be physical, yet not 
ostensive.  I think that's contradictory.


I did not asked for a physical axiomatic definition, but for an 
axiomatic definition of physical (and this without using something 
equivalent to the numbers, to stay on topic).


An axiomatic definition isn't possible except within an axiomatic 
system.  The whole argument is over the question of whether the physical 
world is an axiomatic system.  I think it very doubtful.  The model of 
physics takes x exists to mean we can interact with x through our 
senses (including indirectly through instruments which exist), but this 
is not an axiom.













Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces 
computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.


If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


Either by concrete you mean physical, and that beg the question.


It was your word.

If not, I can point on many computations is arithmetic. 


No, you can only point to physically realized representations.

This needs Gödel's ariothmetization, and so is a bit tedious, but it 
is non-controversial that such things exist. Indeed RA and PA proves 
their existence.






They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be 
described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the 
fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of 
relations. The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of 
tables and chairs.


Indeed.





This means only that we *can* agree on simple (but very fertile) 
basic number relations. For primitive matter, that does not exist, 
and that is why people recourse to ostensive definition. They 
knock the table, and say you will not tell me that this table does 
not exist. The problem, for them, is that I can dream of people 
knocking tables. So for the basic fundamental ontology, you just 
cannot use the ostensive move (or you have to abandon the dream 
argument, classical theory of knowledge, or comp). But this moves 
seems an ad hoc non-comp move, if not a rather naive attitude.


What dream argument?  That all we think of as real could be a 
dream?  I think that is as worthless as solipism.


This is the recurring confusion between subjective idealism and 
objective idealism. Objective idealism is not a choice, but a 
consequence of the comp assumption and the weak Occam razor.


And the assumption that the UD exists (?)

Brent



Bruno

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





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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-22 Thread meekerdb


On 7/22/2011 9:40 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Before that question, you need the question: does maths exist
independently.


If you want to debate this question I am happy to.  It is the 
assumption made by most mathematicians and scientists.


Jason


Actually I was friends with two professors of mathematics (one now 
deceased).  One helds that numbers exist - but in some way different 
from tables and chairs.  The other denies that they exist.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On 22 Jul 2011, at 14:17, 1Z wrote:

On Jul 22, 10:08 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 21 Jul 2011, at 17:54, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

But I think you beg the question by demanding an axiomatic
definition and rejecting ostensive ones.

Why?
The point is that ostensive definition does not work for justifying
an ontology.

That seems to be a non-sequitur. How can any kind of definition
justify an ontology?

Because a definition or an axiomatization refer to an intended model,
of a theory which handle existential quantifier. The theory of group
requires the existence of a neutral elements, for example. The theory
of number requires zero, etc.

But the ontology of a model need not be real, or be intended to be.
The intended model could be a fictional world. for instance.

The question is: do you believe really that Fermat theorem is fiction?

Definitions are about the meaning of words. If I point to a table
and say Table. I'm defining table, not justifying an ontology.

OK. And then what? You are just pointing on some pattern.

That's what the dream argument shows. Being axiomatic does not beg
the question. You can be materialist and develop an axiomatic of
primitive matter. The whole point of an axiomatic approach consists
in being as neutral as possible on ontological commitment.

But what you demanded was a *physical* axiomatic definition. Which
seems to be a demand that the definition be physical, yet not
ostensive. I think that's contradictory.

I did not asked for a physical axiomatic definition, but for an
axiomatic definition of physical (and this without using something
equivalent to the numbers, to stay on topic).

Numbers aren't intended to be real (or unreal) in physics
That protons are really made of three quarks is asserted, but that
is asserting the real exsistence of quarks, not of 3.

What do you mean by real existence? If you mean primitive
existence then you just contradict comp.

Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces
computation to be there.

The computations are concrete relations.

If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.

Either by concrete you mean physical, and that beg the question.
If not, I can point on many computations is arithmetic

What would make them concrete, if not being physical?

If physical means concrete, then comp is false, or you have to point
on a flaw in the UD Argument.

. This needs
Gödel's ariothmetization, and so is a bit tedious, but it is non-
controversial that such things exist. Indeed RA and PA proves their
existence.

They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
described by some axiomatic.

And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations. So
the fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of
relations. The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of
tables and chairs.

Indeed.

This means only that we *can* agree on simple (but very fertile)
basic number relations. For primitive matter, that does not exist,
and that is why people recourse to ostensive definition. They
knock the table, and say you will not tell me that this table does
not exist. The problem, for them, is that I can dream of people
knocking tables. So for the basic fundamental ontology, you just
cannot use the ostensive move (or you have to abandon the dream
argument, classical theory of knowledge, or comp). But this moves
seems an ad hoc non-comp move, if not a rather naive attitude.

What dream argument? That all we think of as real could be a
dream? I think that is as worthless as solipism.

This is the recurring confusion between subjective idealism and
objective idealism. Objective idealism is not a choice, but a
consequence of the comp assumption and the weak Occam razor.

Bruno

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

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On 22 Jul 2011, at 21:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/22/2011 2:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 21 Jul 2011, at 17:54, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But I think you beg the question by demanding an axiomatic  
definition and rejecting ostensive ones.


Why?
The point is that ostensive definition does not work for  
justifying an ontology.


That seems to be a non-sequitur.  How can any kind of definition  
justify an ontology?


Because a definition or an axiomatization refer to an intended  
model, of a theory which handle existential quantifier. The theory  
of group requires the existence of a neutral elements, for example.  
The theory of number requires zero, etc.


Satisfying an existentially quantified proposition implies existence  
within that model.  It doesn't justify the model or its ontology.



That is true in general, but not, by definition, for a theory which  
aspires as being a TOE.
Obviously your argument here is correct for any theory. Also for a  
theory of matter. If it assumes matter, matter will exist in its model.










Definitions are about the meaning of words.  If I point to a table  
and say Table. I'm defining table, not justifying an ontology.


OK. And then what? You are just pointing on some pattern.





That's what the dream argument shows. Being axiomatic does not  
beg the question. You can be materialist and develop an axiomatic  
of primitive matter. The whole point of an axiomatic approach  
consists in being as neutral as possible on ontological commitment.



But what you demanded was a *physical* axiomatic definition.   
Which seems to be a demand that the definition be physical, yet  
not ostensive.  I think that's contradictory.


I did not asked for a physical axiomatic definition, but for an  
axiomatic definition of physical (and this without using something  
equivalent to the numbers, to stay on topic).


An axiomatic definition isn't possible except within an axiomatic  
system.


?



The whole argument is over the question of whether the physical  
world is an axiomatic system.


It is not, provably so in comp. Nor is consciousness. Both matter and  
consciousness can be entirely axiomatized (nor can be arithmetic!).





I think it very doubtful.


Good.



 The model of physics takes x exists to mean we can interact with  
x through our senses (including indirectly through instruments which  
exist), but this is not an axiom.


You are right. But I want a starting axiomatic for the TOE, just to  
avoid philosophy.

















Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces  
computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.


If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


Either by concrete you mean physical, and that beg the question.


It was your word.


OK. I shoud avoid that; but I am used to consider the arithmetical  
relations as the most concrete things I can imagine. Concrete physical  
object are abstract token, but we are so programmed that we feel them  
as concrete.







If not, I can point on many computations is arithmetic.


No, you can only point to physically realized representations.


You beg the question. I can point on computation in arithmetic. It is  
a bit tedious, because I need the arithmetization of Gödel. But a  
physician needs a primitive universe, and that is treachery and hides  
the mind-body problem, and furthermore misses the quale.





This needs Gödel's ariothmetization, and so is a bit tedious, but  
it is non-controversial that such things exist. Indeed RA and PA  
proves their existence.






They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be  
described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So  
the fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description  
of relations. The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of  
tables and chairs.


Indeed.





This means only that we *can* agree on simple (but very fertile)  
basic number relations. For primitive matter, that does not  
exist, and that is why people recourse to ostensive definition.  
They knock the table, and say you will not tell me that this  
table does not exist. The problem, for them, is that I can dream  
of people knocking tables. So for the basic fundamental ontology,  
you just cannot use the ostensive move (or you have to abandon  
the dream argument, classical theory of knowledge, or comp). But  
this moves seems an ad hoc non-comp move, if not a rather naive  
attitude.


What dream argument?  That all we think of as real could be a  
dream?  I think that is as worthless as solipism.


This is the recurring confusion between subjective idealism and  
objective idealism. Objective idealism is not a choice, but a  
consequence of the comp assumption and the weak Occam razor.


And the assumption that the UD exists (?)


It is not an assumption but a theorem in arithmetic.

Bruno

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On 22 Jul 2011, at 22:54, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/22/2011 9:40 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


Before that question, you need the question: does maths exist
independently.


If you want to debate this question I am happy to.  It is the  
assumption made by most mathematicians and scientists.


Jason


Actually I was friends with two professors of mathematics (one now  
deceased).  One helds that numbers exist - but in some way different  
from tables and chairs.


OK. Like me and the LUMs.




The other denies that they exist.


During the math course or the week-end? I don't believe that he does  
not believe in the existence of numbers. He meant something else, I  
think. People sometimes put to much metaphysics in the term  
existence. I think they are just doing non genuine Sunday  
philosophy. I try to avoid the term existence and use instead the  
notion of being true independently of me, or of the hulans, etc..


Bruno


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



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But I think you beg the question by demanding an axiomatic definition 
and rejecting ostensive ones.


Why?
The point is that ostensive definition does not work for justifying an 
ontology.


That seems to be a non-sequitur.  How can any kind of definition justify 
an ontology?  Definitions are about the meaning of words.  If I point to 
a table and say Table. I'm defining table, not justifying an ontology.


That's what the dream argument shows. Being axiomatic does not beg the 
question. You can be materialist and develop an axiomatic of primitive 
matter. The whole point of an axiomatic approach consists in being as 
neutral as possible on ontological commitment.



But what you demanded was a *physical* axiomatic definition.  Which 
seems to be a demand that the definition be physical, yet not 
ostensive.  I think that's contradictory.






Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces 
computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.


If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.

They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be 
described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the 
fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of 
relations. The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables 
and chairs.


This means only that we *can* agree on simple (but very fertile) basic 
number relations. For primitive matter, that does not exist, and that 
is why people recourse to ostensive definition. They knock the 
table, and say you will not tell me that this table does not exist. 
The problem, for them, is that I can dream of people knocking tables. 
So for the basic fundamental ontology, you just cannot use the 
ostensive move (or you have to abandon the dream argument, classical 
theory of knowledge, or comp). But this moves seems an ad hoc non-comp 
move, if not a rather naive attitude.


What dream argument?  That all we think of as real could be a dream?  
I think that is as worthless as solipism.


Brent



Bruno


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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




  Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
 to be there.


 The computations are concrete relations.


 If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them, everything
you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of the
computation implementing your mind.

Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches of
the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
rendering its environment?



  They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
 described by some axiomatic.


 And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
 fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of relations.


Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
chair?


 The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.


Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence of
number relations explains the existence of matter, but the existence of
matter does not explain the existence of number relations.  It is therefore
a simpler theory to suppose the existence of number relations is fundamental
and the appearance of matter is a consequence, than to suppose both exist
independently of each other.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 10, 2:20 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:
 You might find out that molecules in brain are unconscious too.

 The fact that consciousness changes predictably when different
 molecules are introduced to the brain, and that we are able to produce
 different molecules by changing the content of our consciousness
 subjectively suggests to me that it makes sense to give molecules the
 benefit of the doubt.

 What in the brain would be not Turing emulable

 Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out of
 ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
 perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
 automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units are
 vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself? Does the
 ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or
 does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point
 does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
 options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the minimum
 mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

 You need to speculate
  on a new physics,

 Yes, I do speculate on a new physics. I think that what we can
 possibly see outside of ourselves is half of what exists. What we
 experience is only a small part of the other half. Physics wouldn't
 change, but it would be seen as the exterior half of a universal
 topology. I did a post this morning that might 
 help:http://s33light.org/post/7453105138

1) if conventional physics gives an adequate causal account,does and
experience is explained
with New Physics, does that make experience epiphenomenal?

2) What is it about the mathematical structures and functions of your
New
Physics that makes it more apt for describing experience than the
Old Physics?

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 11, 4:48 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 This philosophy has already shown great success for anything that stores,
 transmits or processes information.  Data can be stored as magnetic poles on
 hard drives and tape, different levels of reflectivity on CDs and DVDs, as
 charges of electrons in flash memory, etc.  Data can be sent as vibrations
 in the air, electric fields in wires, photons in glass fibers, or ions
 between nerve cells.  Data can be processed by electromechanical machines,
 vacuum tubes, transistors, or biological neural networks.  These different
 technologies can be meshed together without causing any problem.  You can
 have packets sent over a copper wire in an Ethernet cable, and then be
 bridged to a fiber optic connection and represented as groups of photons,
 and then translated again to vibrations in the air, and then after being
 received by a cochlea, transmitted as releases of ions between nerve cells.
 Data can be copied from the flash memory in a digital camera, to a hard
 drive in a computer, and then encoded into a persons brain by way of a
 monitor.  To believe in the impossibility of an artificial brain is to
 believe there is some form of information which can only be transmitted by
 neurons, or some computation performed by neurons which cannot be reproduced
 by any other substrate.

Not necessarily. It could just be a disbelief in artificial qualia.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 **
 On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




  Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
 to be there.


 The computations are concrete relations.


  If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


 If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
 everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of the
 computation implementing your mind.

 Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
 concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches of
 the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
 human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
 rendering its environment?



  They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
 described by some axiomatic.


  And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
 fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of relations.


 Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
 chair?


 The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.


 Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence of
 number relations explains the existence of matter,


 That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the existence
 of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or equivalent.


The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2).
This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number line
has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of numbers
(different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of these
definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
defined ways, some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may
even evolve into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to
reproduce themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve
consciousness, as they build brains which attempt to discern and predict
future observations of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this
function Universe.  There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n)
which improve their survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting
parts of Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such
sequences of numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the
Fibonacci sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of
recursive relations).


Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-21 Thread Craig Weinberg

i don't see a much of a connection between those statements.
Complexity could be necessary but insufficient. It is,
for instance, difficult to see how you could have
simple colour qualia. Colours represent a lot of intormation.

Yes, I agree, complexity could be necessary but insufficient. Just as
complex arrangements of inorganic molecules do not lead to organisms,
but in particular cases of organic molecules, they lead to cells, some
cells can lead to animals, some animals are vertebrates, some
vertebrates are like us, etc. Complex arrangements of daisy cells
don't lead to a gorilla, etc.

I'm not sure that color represents any information per se, it could be
that the visual subject, informed by color, informs the cognitive
subjects, which projects it's own semantic associative content on top
of the visual qualia. The 'information' may be separable qualia.

They could report one thing whilst experiencing or
having experienced another. Let's they have bits
of their brain replaced by functionally equivalent
silicon; let's also say that silicon can't have qualia.
Then, as the replacement procedes, their qualia
will fade...but they will continue to report them,
because of the functional equivalence.

Right, yes. That's why I was saying it would come close to convincing
me (rather than making me sure). In my view, silicon could have
qualia, I would just guess that it doesn't scale up to rich subjective
depth. The way we build with silicon, it never reaches the state of
becoming a living organism, so I think it's likely limited to pre-
biotic qualia. Permittivity and permeability perhaps, wattage.


On Jul 21, 3:26 pm, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 On Jul 11, 2:52 am, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

   I'm saying that
  the potential for awareness must be built in to matter at the lowest
  level or not at all. Complexity alone cannot cause awareness in
  inanimate objects, let alone the kind of rich, ididopathic phenomena
  we think of as qualia.

 i don't see a much of a connection between those statements.
 Complexity could be necessary but insufficient. It is,
 for instance, difficult to see how you could have
 simple colour qualia. Colours represent a lot of intormation.

  The only thing that would come close to convincing me that a
  virtualized brain was successful in producing human consciousness
  would be if a person could live with half of their brain emulated for
  a while, then switch to the other half emulated for a while and report
  as to whether their memories and experiences of being emulated were
  faithful.

 They could report one thing whilst experiencing or
 having experienced another. Let's they have bits
 of their brain replaced by functionally equivalent
 silicon; let's also say that silicon can't have qualia.
 Then, as the replacement procedes, their qualia
 will fade...but they will continue to report them,
 because of the functional equivalence.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 12, 11:50 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 My view of awareness is now subtractive and holographic (think pinhole
 camera), so that I would read fading qualia in a different way. More
 like dementia.. attenuating connectivity between different aspects of
 the self, not changing qualia necessarily. The brain might respond to
 the implanted chips, even ruling out organic rejection, the native
 neurology may strengthen it's remaining connections and attempt to
 compensate for the implants with neuroplasticity, routing around the
 'damage'

By hypothesis the replacements preserve functioning.
Dementia is  a change in functioning, so it won't occur.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 20, 2:43 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 20 Jul 2011, at 15:21, 1Z wrote:





  On Jul 8, 5:53 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 08 Jul 2011, at 02:35, meekerdb wrote:

  On 7/7/2011 4:59 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
  On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 10:12:45PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

  One that happens to be incompatible with
  theory that our minds are computer programs.

  Can you explain that?  It seems to be Bruno's central claim, but  
  so
  far as I can see he only tries to prove that a physical reality is
  otiose.

  Brent

  Here's my take on it. I guess you read the version I wrote 6 years
  ago
  in ToN.

  Once you allow the existence of a universal dovetailer, we are far
  more likely to be running on the dovetailer (which is a simple
  program) than on a much more complicated program (such as  
  simulating
  the universe as we currently see it). Under COMP, the dovetailer is
  capable of generating all possible experiences (which is why it is
  universal). Therefore, everything we call physics (electrons,  
  quarks,
  electromagnetic fields, etc) is phenomena caused by the running of
  the
  dovetailer. By Church-Turing thesis, the dovetailer could be  
  running
  on anything capable of supporting universal computation. To use
  Kantian terminology, what the dovetailer runs on is the noumenon,
  unknowable reality, which need have no connection which the
  phenomenon
  we observe. In fact with the CT-thesis, we cannot even know which
  noumenon we're running on, in the case there may be more than  
  one. We
  might just as well be running on some demigod's child's  
  playstation,
  as running on Platonic arithmetic. It is in principle unknowable,
  even
  by any putative omniscient God - there is simply no matter of fact
  there to know.

  So ultimately, this is why Bruno eliminates the concrete  
  dovetailer,
  in the manner of Laplace eliminating God Sire, je n'ai besoin de  
  cet
  hypothese.

  Anyway, Bruno will no doubt correct any mistaken conceptions  
  here :).

  Cheers

  That's what I thought he said.  But I see no reason to suppose a UD
  is running, much less running without physics.  We don't know of any
  computation that occurs immaterially.

  I'm afraid this is not true. Some people even argue that computation
  does not exist, the physical world only approximate them, according  
  to
  them.
  I have not yet seen a physical definition of computation

  How about a series of causally connected states which process
  information

 Can you give me a physical definition of the terms series, causal,  
 connected, states, process, and information?
 And I am very demanding: I would like an axiomatic definition.

There is no reason you should be entitled  to  one. Physicsts
happily define time as what clocks measure.

 In absence of such a definition, you are just describing an  
 implementation of a computation in what you assume, implicitly, to be  
 a natural universal system.





  , except by
  natural phenomenon emulating a mathematical computation. Computer and
  computations have been discovered by mathematicians, and there many
  equivalent definition of the concept, but only if we accept Church
  thesis.

  Now if you accept the idea that the propositions like if x divides 4
  then x divides 8, or there is an infinity of twin primes are true
  or false independently of you, then arithmetical truth makes *all*  
  the
  propositions about all computations true or false independently of
  you. The root of why it is so is Gödel arithmetization of the syntax
  of arithmetic (or Principia). To be a piece of a computation is
  arithmetical, even if intensional (can depend on the *existence* of
  coding, but the coding is entirely arithmetical itself.

  In short, I can prove to you that there is computations in elementary
  arithmetical truth, but you have to speculate on many things to claim
  that there are physical computations. Locally, typing on this
  computer, makes me OK with the idea that the physical reality  
  emulates
  computations, and that makes the white rabbit problems even more
  complex, but then we have not the choice, given the assumption.

  So I assumed I didn't understand Bruno's argument correctly.

  You seem to have a difficulty to see that elementary arithmetic run
  the UD, not in time and space, but in the arithmetical truth.

  He should. Truth is not existence.

 What is existence?

This. [[points in all directions]].

If you refer to physics, then you are begging the  
 question, or you are just assuming that we are not machine.

 Bruno





  Even the
  tiny Robinson arithmetic proves all the propositions of the form it
  exist i, j, s such that phi_i(j)^s is the s first step of the
  computation of phi_i(j). And RA gives already all the proves, and so
  already define a UD, which works is entirely made true by the
  arithmetical reality, which I hope you can imagine as being not
  dependent of us,

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 21, 8:23 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:
  1) if conventional physics gives an adequate causal account,does and
  experience is explained
  with New Physics, does that make experience epiphenomenal?

 In my view, physics, experience, and the underlying relation between
 them are all co-phenomenal and co-epiphenomenal

I have  no idea what that means.

  2) What is it about the mathematical structures and functions of your
  New
  Physics that makes it more apt for describing experience than the
  Old Physics?

 Because it recognizes that experience cannot be described in third
 person terms

How can you have physics that is not describable in 3 terms? How
do people write papers about it or devise tests for it.

, and that this fact is not a problem. Rather, the
 compulsion to turn it into a problem is explained by the understanding
 that we ourselves are inherently biased because we cannot get outside
 of the sense of our own collective experience. Instead, we see the
 function of privatized phenomenology as a natural feature of, as well
 as a function of matter.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 21, 9:54 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:35 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  On Jul 11, 4:51 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

automatic consequences which
arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
computations.

   Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing

  Although no one knows how

 It is easy to imagine a simple process which is aware of a single bit of
 information.  Let's say it is some program which is connected to a photo
 sensor, thus it can tell if the room is dark or light, and when the process
 is queried for this status it can report whether the room is light or dark.
 Though it concerns only a single bit, is this not an example of awareness?
 Perhaps human consciousness is fundamentally no different, it is just
 awareness of a vastly greater amount of information (more bits).

 Jason

Qualia are something more specific than awareness.
You can't get colour by summing lots of monochrome,no matter how
complex

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:


  Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
 of
  number relations explains the existence of matter, but the existence of
  matter does not explain the existence of number relations.

 Yes it does. Any number relation  that has ever been grasped by
 anybody exists in their mind, and therefore in their brain. And as
 for the ungrasped ones...so what? It can make no difference
 if they are there or not.


Perhaps if those ungrasped ones did not exist then we might not exist.  It
is premature to say their existence does not make a difference to us.

I think may also be incorrect to say we need to grasp numbers or their
relations for them to matter.  Consider this example: I generate a large
random number X, with no obvious factors (I think it is prime), but when I
compute (y^(X - 1)) and divide by X (where y is not a multiple of X), I find
the remainder is not 1.  This means X is not prime: it has factors other
than 1 and X, but I haven't grasped what those factors are.  Nor is there
any efficient method for finding out what they are.

Now the existence of these ungrasped numbers does make a difference.  If I
attempted to build an RSA key using X and another legitimately prime number
(instead of two prime numbers), then the encryption won't work properly.  I
won't be able to determine a private key because I don't know all the
factors.

What would you say about the existence of the factors of X?  Do they
actually exist, despite that no one has any clue what they are?  And does
their existence (despite being unknown) matter?

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 5:02 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



 On Jul 21, 9:54 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:35 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
   On Jul 11, 4:51 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 automatic consequences which
 arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
 computations.
 
Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing
 
   Although no one knows how
 
  It is easy to imagine a simple process which is aware of a single bit of
  information.  Let's say it is some program which is connected to a photo
  sensor, thus it can tell if the room is dark or light, and when the
 process
  is queried for this status it can report whether the room is light or
 dark.
  Though it concerns only a single bit, is this not an example of
 awareness?
  Perhaps human consciousness is fundamentally no different, it is just
  awareness of a vastly greater amount of information (more bits).
 
  Jason

 Qualia are something more specific than awareness.
 You can't get colour by summing lots of monochrome,no matter how
 complex



There are other ways of combining information besides addition.  Colors are
multidimensional representations, they cannot be represented as a single
magnitude.  So I agree, being aware of the sum of the values of a bunch of
monochrome pixels will not yield trichromatic vision, yet the awareness of
three different values perhaps can.  Our brains are obviously doing it with
the colorless nerve impulses (information) that comes in from the optic
nerve.  I think most people lack appreciation for just how complex the brain
is, and conclude this or that is impossible for any process (no matter how
complex) to do.  The brain has 10^15 connections, each of which can change
its state up to 10^3 times per second.  Most people have trouble imagining
10^6, never mind 10^15.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/21/2011 3:55 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com 
mailto:peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



 Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the
existence of
 number relations explains the existence of matter, but the
existence of
 matter does not explain the existence of number relations.

Yes it does. Any number relation  that has ever been grasped by
anybody exists in their mind, and therefore in their brain. And as
for the ungrasped ones...so what? It can make no difference
if they are there or not.


Perhaps if those ungrasped ones did not exist then we might not 
exist.  It is premature to say their existence does not make a 
difference to us.


I think may also be incorrect to say we need to grasp numbers or their 
relations for them to matter.  Consider this example: I generate a 
large random number X, with no obvious factors (I think it is prime), 
but when I compute (y^(X - 1)) and divide by X (where y is not a 
multiple of X), I find the remainder is not 1.  This means X is not 
prime: it has factors other than 1 and X, but I haven't grasped what 
those factors are.  Nor is there any efficient method for finding out 
what they are.


Now the existence of these ungrasped numbers does make a difference.  
If I attempted to build an RSA key using X and another legitimately 
prime number (instead of two prime numbers), then the encryption won't 
work properly.  I won't be able to determine a private key because I 
don't know all the factors.


What would you say about the existence of the factors of X?  Do they 
actually exist, despite that no one has any clue what they are?  And 
does their existence (despite being unknown) matter?


Jason



I'd say they 'exist' in Platonia; just like the factors of 10 'exist'.  
It just means that if I have ten things I can imagine them in two rows 
of five.  It's quite different from the existence of material objects.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On Jul 21, 11:55 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
  of
   number relations explains the existence of matter, but the existence of
   matter does not explain the existence of number relations.

  Yes it does. Any number relation  that has ever been grasped by
  anybody exists in their mind, and therefore in their brain. And as
  for the ungrasped ones...so what? It can make no difference
  if they are there or not.

 Perhaps if those ungrasped ones did not exist then we might not exist.  It
 is premature to say their existence does not make a difference to us.

The existence of matter can explain the existence of numbers.
The reverse might also be the case, but that is not a disproof.

 I think may also be incorrect to say we need to grasp numbers or their
 relations for them to matter.  Consider this example: I generate a large
 random number X, with no obvious factors (I think it is prime), but when I
 compute (y^(X - 1)) and divide by X (where y is not a multiple of X), I find
 the remainder is not 1.  This means X is not prime: it has factors other
 than 1 and X, but I haven't grasped what those factors are.  Nor is there
 any efficient method for finding out what they are.

 Now the existence of these ungrasped numbers does make a difference.  If I
 attempted to build an RSA key using X and another legitimately prime number
 (instead of two prime numbers), then the encryption won't work properly.  I
 won't be able to determine a private key because I don't know all the
 factors.


The contingent fact that is your failure to grasp a mathematical
truth is makes a difference. Mathematical truths are not contingent,
so
what difference can they make?
 What would you say about the existence of the factors of X?  Do they
 actually exist, despite that no one has any clue what they are?  And does
 their existence (despite being unknown) matter?

 Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-21 Thread Craig Weinberg

 In my view, physics, experience, and the underlying relation between
 them are all co-phenomenal and co-epiphenomenal

I have  no idea what that means.

I'm trying to say that from the vantage point of physical externality,
experience is deterministically caused by physical laws, but from the
perspective of subjective experience, it is the self which chooses to
cause physical changes to the world through the instrument of their
mind and body. Both sides are self-knowing and self-ignorant and
reflect additional levels of self-knowing and self-ignorance through
interaction with each other.

  2) What is it about the mathematical structures and functions of your
  New
  Physics that makes it more apt for describing experience than the
  Old Physics?

 Because it recognizes that experience cannot be described in third
 person terms

How can you have physics that is not describable in 3 terms? How
do people write papers about it or devise tests for it.

By becoming smarter about it. It freaks me out to hear that the
response to Here is the simple truth of what the cosmos actually is
should be how do people write papers about it?. Lets put paper
writing in the museum and make 10 dimensional virtual reality
demonstrations about it instead.

Craig
http://s33light.org


On Jul 21, 5:59 pm, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 On Jul 21, 8:23 pm, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

   1) if conventional physics gives an adequate causal account,does and
   experience is explained
   with New Physics, does that make experience epiphenomenal?

  In my view, physics, experience, and the underlying relation between
  them are all co-phenomenal and co-epiphenomenal

 I have  no idea what that means.

   2) What is it about the mathematical structures and functions of your
   New
   Physics that makes it more apt for describing experience than the
   Old Physics?

  Because it recognizes that experience cannot be described in third
  person terms

 How can you have physics that is not describable in 3 terms? How
 do people write papers about it or devise tests for it.







 , and that this fact is not a problem. Rather, the
  compulsion to turn it into a problem is explained by the understanding
  that we ourselves are inherently biased because we cannot get outside
  of the sense of our own collective experience. Instead, we see the
  function of privatized phenomenology as a natural feature of, as well
  as a function of matter.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 7:43 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



 On Jul 21, 11:55 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the
 existence
   of
number relations explains the existence of matter, but the existence
 of
matter does not explain the existence of number relations.
 
   Yes it does. Any number relation  that has ever been grasped by
   anybody exists in their mind, and therefore in their brain. And as
   for the ungrasped ones...so what? It can make no difference
   if they are there or not.
 
  Perhaps if those ungrasped ones did not exist then we might not exist.
  It
  is premature to say their existence does not make a difference to us.

 The existence of matter can explain the existence of numbers.
 The reverse might also be the case, but that is not a disproof.

  I think may also be incorrect to say we need to grasp numbers or their
  relations for them to matter.  Consider this example: I generate a large
  random number X, with no obvious factors (I think it is prime), but when
 I
  compute (y^(X - 1)) and divide by X (where y is not a multiple of X), I
 find
  the remainder is not 1.  This means X is not prime: it has factors other
  than 1 and X, but I haven't grasped what those factors are.  Nor is there
  any efficient method for finding out what they are.

  Now the existence of these ungrasped numbers does make a difference.  If
 I
  attempted to build an RSA key using X and another legitimately prime
 number
  (instead of two prime numbers), then the encryption won't work properly.
  I
  won't be able to determine a private key because I don't know all the
  factors.


 The contingent fact that is your failure to grasp a mathematical
 truth is makes a difference.


Just above you said mathematical objects only exist if they exist physically
in some brain.  This is a case where the factors are not only unknown by me,
but likely unknown by anyone in the observable universe.


 Mathematical truths are not contingent,
 so
 what difference can they make?


If they are not contingent then you accept they exist even without the
existence of the physical universe?  If so, then see my post in the other
thread where I explain how mathematical truth can explain the existence of
life and consciousness.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-21 Thread Craig Weinberg

Our brains are obviously doing it with
the colorless nerve impulses (information) that comes in from the optic
nerve.  I think most people lack appreciation for just how complex the brain
is, and conclude this or that is impossible for any process (no matter how
complex) to do.  The brain has 10^15 connections, each of which can change
its state up to 10^3 times per second.  Most people have trouble imagining
10^6, never mind 10^15.

There is no such thing as information in a nerve impulse. It has no
data in it except for what relates to modulations of the homeostasis
routines of cells. Biochemistry. The color yellow is not represented
by nervous tissue, it is presented within nervous tissue aggregates as
a subjective experience. The brain is not creating color, it is
experiencing the shared experience of many nerve cells from the inside
out. It is not the function of any nerve cell to produce color
anywhere physically. What we think of as a neuron is just the exterior
of the phenomenon, it's just doing neuron things, not psychological
things. It's the synergistic trans-terior of the whole thing - brain,
body, illuminated 'light' source, etc. What we think of as light is
the interior of our own optical gear as it passes along it's
experience to the rest of the self.

The staggering staggeryness of the brain, yeah I at least try to get a
sense of it. It's unfathomably absurd. It's like oceans per second or
something. I think that it adds to it all to realize that it would be
all forever mute, blind, and intangible were it not for awareness and
qualia - an interior side which permits participation with the thing
and the universe that it thinks it's in. The potential in the universe
for Sense and sanity are more important than a trillion barrels of
brains.

Craig
http://s33light.org

On Jul 21, 7:08 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 5:02 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  On Jul 21, 9:54 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
   On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:35 PM, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Jul 11, 4:51 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

  automatic consequences which
  arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
  computations.

 Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing

Although no one knows how

   It is easy to imagine a simple process which is aware of a single bit of
   information.  Let's say it is some program which is connected to a photo
   sensor, thus it can tell if the room is dark or light, and when the
  process
   is queried for this status it can report whether the room is light or
  dark.
   Though it concerns only a single bit, is this not an example of
  awareness?
   Perhaps human consciousness is fundamentally no different, it is just
   awareness of a vastly greater amount of information (more bits).

   Jason

  Qualia are something more specific than awareness.
  You can't get colour by summing lots of monochrome,no matter how
  complex

 There are other ways of combining information besides addition.  Colors are
 multidimensional representations, they cannot be represented as a single
 magnitude.  So I agree, being aware of the sum of the values of a bunch of
 monochrome pixels will not yield trichromatic vision, yet the awareness of
 three different values perhaps can.  Our brains are obviously doing it with
 the colorless nerve impulses (information) that comes in from the optic
 nerve.  I think most people lack appreciation for just how complex the brain
 is, and conclude this or that is impossible for any process (no matter how
 complex) to do.  The brain has 10^15 connections, each of which can change
 its state up to 10^3 times per second.  Most people have trouble imagining
 10^6, never mind 10^15.

 Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that
forces computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.


If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the
existence of the computation implementing your mind.

Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that
has a concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the
other branches of the wave function, or an eternalist point to
the past?  How would an AI or human in a virtual environment
point to the concrete computer that is rendering its environment?


They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers
relation can be described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.
 So the fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a
description of relations. 



Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea
of a chair?

The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables
and chairs.


Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the
existence of number relations explains the existence of matter,


That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the
existence of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD
or equivalent.


The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + 
Fib(n-2).  This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say 
the number line has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = 
Number(n-1) + 1.  Different recursive definitions result in different 
sequences of numbers (different ways of progressing through the 
integers).  In some of these definitions, bits patterns (within the 
number) may move around in well defined ways,


There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves around 
or computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers 
are not.


some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even 
evolve into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to 
reproduce themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve 
consciousness, as they build brains which attempt to discern and 
predict future observations of bit patterns within the number.  Let's 
call this function Universe.  There may be bit patterns (life forms) 
in Universe(n) which improve their survival or reproductive success by 
correctly predicting parts of Universe(n+x).  There are number 
relations which define such sequences of numbers; you cannot deny 
their existence without denying the Fibonacci sequence or the number 
line (these are just simpler instances of recursive relations).


I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still accept 
that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that 
John Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.


Brent




Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 **
 On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




 Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
 to be there.


 The computations are concrete relations.


  If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


 If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
 everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of the
 computation implementing your mind.

 Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
 concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches of
 the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
 human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
 rendering its environment?



 They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
 described by some axiomatic.


  And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
 fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of relations.


 Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
 chair?


 The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.


 Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
 of number relations explains the existence of matter,


  That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the existence
 of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or equivalent.


 The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
 It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2).
 This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number line
 has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
 Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of numbers
 (different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of these
 definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
 defined ways,


 There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves around or
 computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers are
 not.


Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent view
given relativity.

Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
relations between the bits.



  some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even evolve
 into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
 themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness, as
 they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future observations
 of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
 There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve their
 survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
 Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences of
 numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
 sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of recursive
 relations).


 I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still accept
 that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that John
 Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.


Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe, if
not the cause of the universe.  In that sense, they are just as concrete if
not more concrete than any physical object.  Your view is like that of a
being who has spent its whole life in a simulated virtual environment: It
believes the virtual reality and items in it are more real than the actual
computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only
justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer using
his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/21/2011 8:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net 
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:


On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb
meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course
that forces computation to be there.


The computations are concrete relations.


If the are concrete then we should be able to point to
them.


If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to
them, everything you see and experience is direct evidence
of the existence of the computation implementing your mind.

Also, I don't think the point test works for everything
that has a concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder
point to the other branches of the wave function, or an
eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or human in a
virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
rendering its environment?


They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers
relation can be described by some axiomatic.


And one can regard the numbers as defined by their
relations.  So the fundamental ontology of numbers is
reduced to a description of relations. 



Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an
idea of a chair?

The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of
tables and chairs.


Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp,
the existence of number relations explains the existence of
matter,


That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than
the existence of number relations, it requires the existence
of a UD or equivalent.


The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55,
89, 144...
It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) +
Fib(n-2).  This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even
say the number line has a simple recursive definition, where
Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.  Different recursive definitions
result in different sequences of numbers (different ways of
progressing through the integers).  In some of these definitions,
bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well defined
ways,


There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves
around or computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like
101101.  Numbers are not.


Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent 
view given relativity.


Different t == different g_ab.  That's change in physics.  Anyway, GR 
must be incomplete since it's not compatible with QM.




Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well 
defined relations between the bits.




some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even
evolve into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to
reproduce themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve
consciousness, as they build brains which attempt to discern and
predict future observations of bit patterns within the number. 
Let's call this function Universe.  There may be bit patterns

(life forms) in Universe(n) which improve their survival or
reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such
sequences of numbers; you cannot deny their existence without
denying the Fibonacci sequence or the number line (these are just
simpler instances of recursive relations).


I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still
accept that certain relations are true of them; just like I can
accept that John Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.


Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the 
universe, if not the cause of the universe.


That assumes numbers exist.

  In that sense, they are just as concrete if not more concrete than 
any physical object.  Your view is like that of a being who has spent 
its whole life in a simulated virtual environment: It believes the 
virtual reality and items in it are more real than the actual 
computer which implements the virtual environment.  The beings only 
justification for this belief is that he can't access that computer 
using his senses, nor point is he able to point to it.


That's logically possible and maybe nomologically possible - but there's 
also not an iota of evidence for it.  So my view is *also* like that of

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 **
 On 7/21/2011 8:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/21/2011 1:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 1:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 7/21/2011 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



 On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:54 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 7/21/2011 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:




 Axiomatics are already in Platonia so of course that forces computation
 to be there.


 The computations are concrete relations.


  If the are concrete then we should be able to point to them.


 If your mind is a computer, you don't even need to point to them,
 everything you see and experience is direct evidence of the existence of the
 computation implementing your mind.

 Also, I don't think the point test works for everything that has a
 concrete existence.  How would a many-worlder point to the other branches of
 the wave function, or an eternalist point to the past?  How would an AI or
 human in a virtual environment point to the concrete computer that is
 rendering its environment?



 They don't need axioms to exist. Then the numbers relation can be
 described by some axiomatic.


  And one can regard the numbers as defined by their relations.  So the
 fundamental ontology of numbers is reduced to a description of relations.


 Is a chair the same thing as a description of a chair, or an idea of a
 chair?


 The is no need to suppose they exist in the sense of tables and chairs.


 Assume both matter and number relations exist.  With comp, the existence
 of number relations explains the existence of matter,


  That's the question.  It seems that comp requires more than the
 existence of number relations, it requires the existence of a UD or
 equivalent.


 The Fibonacci sequence is, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...
 It is defined by the simple number relation Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2).
 This is a simple recursive definition.  You might even say the number line
 has a simple recursive definition, where Number(n) = Number(n-1) + 1.
 Different recursive definitions result in different sequences of numbers
 (different ways of progressing through the integers).  In some of these
 definitions, bits patterns (within the number) may move around in well
 defined ways,


  There's the rub.  Nothing changes in Platonia.  Nothing moves around or
 computes.  Bit patterns are physical things, like 101101.  Numbers are
 not.


 Nothing changes in physics either.  Block time is the only consistent view
 given relativity.


 Different t == different g_ab.


Different N == different Fib(N)


 That's change in physics.  Anyway, GR must be incomplete since it's not
 compatible with QM.


All the relevant parts of relativity which imply block time have been
confirmed.  The above is like arguing against gravity because Newton's
theory wasn't compatible with the observations of Mercury's orbit.




 Things don't need to move to compute, there just need to be well defined
 relations between the bits.



  some of these bit patterns become self-reproducing, and may even evolve
 into more complex bit patterns, which are better able to reproduce
 themselves.  Some of these bit patterns may even evolve consciousness, as
 they build brains which attempt to discern and predict future observations
 of bit patterns within the number.  Let's call this function Universe.
 There may be bit patterns (life forms) in Universe(n) which improve their
 survival or reproductive success by correctly predicting parts of
 Universe(n+x).  There are number relations which define such sequences of
 numbers; you cannot deny their existence without denying the Fibonacci
 sequence or the number line (these are just simpler instances of recursive
 relations).


  I can deny that the numbers exist the way tables and do and still accept
 that certain relations are true of them; just like I can accept that John
 Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes.


 Numbers, unlike fictional characters, are co-eternal with the universe, if
 not the cause of the universe.


 That assumes numbers exist.


It is no worse than assuming the physical universe exists.  Both theories
are consistent with observation.




In that sense, they are just as concrete if not more concrete than any
 physical object.  Your view is like that of a being who has spent its whole
 life in a simulated virtual environment: It believes the virtual reality and
 items in it are more real than the actual computer which implements the
 virtual environment.  The beings only justification for this belief is that
 he can't access that computer using his senses, nor point is he able to
 point to it.


 That's logically possible and maybe nomologically possible - but there's
 also not an iota of evidence for it.


There is not one iota for evidence that matter is primary.

On the other hand,

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-20 Thread 1Z



On Jul 8, 12:59 am, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 10:12:45PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
  One that happens to be incompatible with
  theory that our minds are computer programs.

  Can you explain that?  It seems to be Bruno's central claim, but so
  far as I can see he only tries to prove that a physical reality is
  otiose.

  Brent

 Here's my take on it. I guess you read the version I wrote 6 years ago
 in ToN.

 Once you allow the existence of a universal dovetailer, we are far
 more likely to be running on the dovetailer (which is a simple
 program) than on a much more complicated program (such as simulating
 the universe as we currently see it). Under COMP, the dovetailer is
 capable of generating all possible experiences (which is why it is
 universal). Therefore, everything we call physics (electrons, quarks,
 electromagnetic fields, etc) is phenomena caused by the running of the
 dovetailer. By Church-Turing thesis, the dovetailer could be running
 on anything capable of supporting universal computation. To use
 Kantian terminology, what the dovetailer runs on is the noumenon,
 unknowable reality,

If it is unknowable, we don't know the UD is running on it. So I don't
accept the existence of  a UD.

 which need have no connection which the phenomenon
 we observe. In fact with the CT-thesis, we cannot even know which
 noumenon we're running on, in the case there may be more than one. We
 might just as well be running on some demigod's child's playstation,
 as running on Platonic arithmetic. It is in principle unknowable, even
 by any putative omniscient God - there is simply no matter of fact
 there to know.

Hurrah for Occam!

 So ultimately, this is why Bruno eliminates the concrete dovetailer,
 in the manner of Laplace eliminating God Sire, je n'ai besoin de cet
 hypothese.

And why i reject the abstract dovetailer.

 Anyway, Bruno will no doubt correct any mistaken conceptions here :).

 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: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-20 Thread 1Z



On Jul 8, 5:53 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 08 Jul 2011, at 02:35, meekerdb wrote:



  On 7/7/2011 4:59 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
  On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 10:12:45PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

  One that happens to be incompatible with
  theory that our minds are computer programs.

  Can you explain that?  It seems to be Bruno's central claim, but so
  far as I can see he only tries to prove that a physical reality is
  otiose.

  Brent

  Here's my take on it. I guess you read the version I wrote 6 years  
  ago
  in ToN.

  Once you allow the existence of a universal dovetailer, we are far
  more likely to be running on the dovetailer (which is a simple
  program) than on a much more complicated program (such as simulating
  the universe as we currently see it). Under COMP, the dovetailer is
  capable of generating all possible experiences (which is why it is
  universal). Therefore, everything we call physics (electrons, quarks,
  electromagnetic fields, etc) is phenomena caused by the running of  
  the
  dovetailer. By Church-Turing thesis, the dovetailer could be running
  on anything capable of supporting universal computation. To use
  Kantian terminology, what the dovetailer runs on is the noumenon,
  unknowable reality, which need have no connection which the  
  phenomenon
  we observe. In fact with the CT-thesis, we cannot even know which
  noumenon we're running on, in the case there may be more than one. We
  might just as well be running on some demigod's child's playstation,
  as running on Platonic arithmetic. It is in principle unknowable,  
  even
  by any putative omniscient God - there is simply no matter of fact
  there to know.

  So ultimately, this is why Bruno eliminates the concrete dovetailer,
  in the manner of Laplace eliminating God Sire, je n'ai besoin de cet
  hypothese.

  Anyway, Bruno will no doubt correct any mistaken conceptions here :).

  Cheers

  That's what I thought he said.  But I see no reason to suppose a UD  
  is running, much less running without physics.  We don't know of any  
  computation that occurs immaterially.

 I'm afraid this is not true. Some people even argue that computation  
 does not exist, the physical world only approximate them, according to  
 them.
 I have not yet seen a physical definition of computation

How about a series of causally connected states which process
information

, except by  
 natural phenomenon emulating a mathematical computation. Computer and  
 computations have been discovered by mathematicians, and there many  
 equivalent definition of the concept, but only if we accept Church  
 thesis.

 Now if you accept the idea that the propositions like if x divides 4  
 then x divides 8, or there is an infinity of twin primes are true  
 or false independently of you, then arithmetical truth makes *all* the  
 propositions about all computations true or false independently of  
 you. The root of why it is so is Gödel arithmetization of the syntax  
 of arithmetic (or Principia). To be a piece of a computation is  
 arithmetical, even if intensional (can depend on the *existence* of  
 coding, but the coding is entirely arithmetical itself.

 In short, I can prove to you that there is computations in elementary  
 arithmetical truth, but you have to speculate on many things to claim  
 that there are physical computations. Locally, typing on this  
 computer, makes me OK with the idea that the physical reality emulates  
 computations, and that makes the white rabbit problems even more  
 complex, but then we have not the choice, given the assumption.

  So I assumed I didn't understand Bruno's argument correctly.

 You seem to have a difficulty to see that elementary arithmetic run  
 the UD, not in time and space, but in the arithmetical truth.

He should. Truth is not existence.

Even the  
 tiny Robinson arithmetic proves all the propositions of the form it  
 exist i, j, s such that phi_i(j)^s is the s first step of the  
 computation of phi_i(j). And RA gives already all the proves, and so  
 already define a UD, which works is entirely made true by the  
 arithmetical reality, which I hope you can imagine as being not  
 dependent of us, the human, nor the alien, nor the Löbian machines  
 themselves (RA+ the inductions).

 The arithmetization is not entirely obvious. It uses the Chinese  
 theorem on remainders, you need Bezout theorem, and all in all it is  
 like implementing a very high level programming languages in a very  
 low level machine language, with very few instructions.  
 Matiyasevitch has deeply extended that result, by making it possible  
 to construct a creative set (a universal machine) as the set of non  
 negative integers of a degree four diophantine equation. This has the  
 consequence that you can verify the presence (but not necessarily the  
 absence) of *any* state in the UD (like the galactic state described  
 above) in less that 100 additions and

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-20 Thread 1Z



On Jul 6, 12:44 pm, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 Constantine, this is a rather trollish comment coming from an ignorant
 position.

 Let me put the following gedanken experiment - consider the
 possibility that T. Rex might be either green or blue creatures, and
 that either possibility is physically consistent with everything we
 know about them. In a Multiverse (such as we consider here), we are in
 a superposition of histories, which include both green and blue
 T. Rexes.

 Then one day, someone discovers an exquisitely fossilised T. Rex
 feather, from which it is possible to determine the T. Rex's colour by
 means of photonics. Let us say, that the colour was determined to be
 green to everybody's satisfaction. But there is an alternate universe,
 where the colour was determined to be blue. This universe has now
 differentiated from our own, on the single fact of T. Rex colour.

 The question is, when was the colour of the dinosaur established as a
 fact? Many of us many worlders would argue it wasn't established
 until the photonics measurement was made - there was no 'matter of
 fact' about the dinosaur colour prior to that.

 Generalising from this, it is quite plausible that suns and stars did
 not exist

You are playing on two meanings of fact; that something is not
known until time T does not mean it pops into existence at time
T. Truth is not existence.

prior to there being minds to perceive them. It is somewhat
 disorienting to realise this possibility, ingrained as we are from
 birth to believing in a directly perecived external reality. Yet the
 reality we perceive is very definitely a construction of our minds - a
 confabulation as it were, and there is not one scrap of evidence that
 that reality exists independently of our minds.

The evidence that reality exists independent of out minds
is just the evidence that other people's brains exist and
work in such-and-such a way. No scientific evidence can disprove
reality, including evidence about brains.

It may well be the case that our perceptions of reality
include feed-forward, reconstruction, interpretation, etc, etc.
But that does not mean there is no objective world. Indirect
perception of the world is still perception of the world,
Indirect perception does not move reality inside
the head anymore than photography steals souls.

 BTW Bruno is not assuming that consciousness preceded matter, he is
 instead assuming that consciousness is the result of the running of
 some computer program, as I'm sure he would tell you. The consequence
 of that latter assumption is that perceived reality is just that - a
 perception.




 On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 08:14:23PM -0700, Constantine Pseudonymous wrote:
  Bruno assumes that consciousness preceded matter

  then why do we only find consciousness as a terrestrial phenomena
  (suns and stars aren't conscious).. and as a later stage terrestrial
  phenomena for that matter i.e. water, plants, minerals etc. are
  not conscious. and intellect and understanding in any real sense
  are found in even later stage terrestrial forms, and we have physical
  explanations for this...

  Bruno sins against naturalism and all that we know and intuit.

  He will do anything to resurrect from the dead some rudimentary and
  vague Mysticism.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-20 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 20 Jul 2011, at 15:21, 1Z wrote:




On Jul 8, 5:53 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 08 Jul 2011, at 02:35, meekerdb wrote:




On 7/7/2011 4:59 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 10:12:45PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:



One that happens to be incompatible with
theory that our minds are computer programs.


Can you explain that?  It seems to be Bruno's central claim, but  
so

far as I can see he only tries to prove that a physical reality is
otiose.



Brent



Here's my take on it. I guess you read the version I wrote 6 years
ago
in ToN.



Once you allow the existence of a universal dovetailer, we are far
more likely to be running on the dovetailer (which is a simple
program) than on a much more complicated program (such as  
simulating

the universe as we currently see it). Under COMP, the dovetailer is
capable of generating all possible experiences (which is why it is
universal). Therefore, everything we call physics (electrons,  
quarks,

electromagnetic fields, etc) is phenomena caused by the running of
the
dovetailer. By Church-Turing thesis, the dovetailer could be  
running

on anything capable of supporting universal computation. To use
Kantian terminology, what the dovetailer runs on is the noumenon,
unknowable reality, which need have no connection which the
phenomenon
we observe. In fact with the CT-thesis, we cannot even know which
noumenon we're running on, in the case there may be more than  
one. We
might just as well be running on some demigod's child's  
playstation,

as running on Platonic arithmetic. It is in principle unknowable,
even
by any putative omniscient God - there is simply no matter of fact
there to know.


So ultimately, this is why Bruno eliminates the concrete  
dovetailer,
in the manner of Laplace eliminating God Sire, je n'ai besoin de  
cet

hypothese.


Anyway, Bruno will no doubt correct any mistaken conceptions  
here :).



Cheers



That's what I thought he said.  But I see no reason to suppose a UD
is running, much less running without physics.  We don't know of any
computation that occurs immaterially.


I'm afraid this is not true. Some people even argue that computation
does not exist, the physical world only approximate them, according  
to

them.
I have not yet seen a physical definition of computation


How about a series of causally connected states which process
information



Can you give me a physical definition of the terms series, causal,  
connected, states, process, and information?

And I am very demanding: I would like an axiomatic definition.
In absence of such a definition, you are just describing an  
implementation of a computation in what you assume, implicitly, to be  
a natural universal system.






, except by
natural phenomenon emulating a mathematical computation. Computer and
computations have been discovered by mathematicians, and there many
equivalent definition of the concept, but only if we accept Church
thesis.

Now if you accept the idea that the propositions like if x divides 4
then x divides 8, or there is an infinity of twin primes are true
or false independently of you, then arithmetical truth makes *all*  
the

propositions about all computations true or false independently of
you. The root of why it is so is Gödel arithmetization of the syntax
of arithmetic (or Principia). To be a piece of a computation is
arithmetical, even if intensional (can depend on the *existence* of
coding, but the coding is entirely arithmetical itself.

In short, I can prove to you that there is computations in elementary
arithmetical truth, but you have to speculate on many things to claim
that there are physical computations. Locally, typing on this
computer, makes me OK with the idea that the physical reality  
emulates

computations, and that makes the white rabbit problems even more
complex, but then we have not the choice, given the assumption.


So I assumed I didn't understand Bruno's argument correctly.


You seem to have a difficulty to see that elementary arithmetic run
the UD, not in time and space, but in the arithmetical truth.


He should. Truth is not existence.


What is existence? If you refer to physics, then you are begging the  
question, or you are just assuming that we are not machine.


Bruno






Even the
tiny Robinson arithmetic proves all the propositions of the form it
exist i, j, s such that phi_i(j)^s is the s first step of the
computation of phi_i(j). And RA gives already all the proves, and so
already define a UD, which works is entirely made true by the
arithmetical reality, which I hope you can imagine as being not
dependent of us, the human, nor the alien, nor the Löbian machines
themselves (RA+ the inductions).

The arithmetization is not entirely obvious. It uses the Chinese
theorem on remainders, you need Bezout theorem, and all in all it is
like implementing a very high level programming languages in a very
low level machine language, with very few instructions.

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-20 Thread ronaldheld

Bruno:
 You may be correct that it is only an intellectual exercise. How many
lines of LISP code comprises the UD?
 I may have been infomally exposed to LISP in college, but that was
decades ago.
Ronald

On Jul 20, 5:01 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Jul 2011, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote:

  On 7/19/2011 11:32 AM, ronaldheld wrote:
  Given limited resources and for only 1 program, it does not seem
  logical to learn LISP. Are there Windows or DOS executables of the  
  UD?
  FWIW. I use MAPLE and not Mathematica.
                 Ronald

  Maple is based on LISP.  An executable UD wouldn't be very  
  interesting.  Since it doesn't halt what would you do with it?  It's  
  the program itself that is more interesting.

 Absolutely. Even more important is the understanding that the UD, and  
 its mathematical execution is embedded in the first order arithmetical  
 true relation. This is not obvious, nor easy to prove. But it is  
 proved in any accurate proof of Gödel's theorem for arithmetic.

 Also, I would say to Ronald that it is easy to write a code for the UD  
 in any language. I guess it will be a tedious work in a language like  
 Fortran, but that might be a good exercise in programming. But again,  
 you are right: it makes no sense to program a UD. The running is  
 infinite. The only reasons to program it are pedagogical and  
 illustrative.

 Bruno

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

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-19 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 18 Jul 2011, at 21:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 18.07.2011 14:21 ronaldheld said the following:

Bruno:
   I do not know LISP. Any UD code written in Fortran?
Ronald



Very good book to learn LISP is

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html


A great classic book indeed. Very good indeed.

For the beginners, The Little Lisper by Daniel P. Friedman is a chef- 
d'oeuvre of pedagogy.

I don't find any version online, alas.
Here are reference for its third edition (but it looks out of print!):

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2tid=4879




Just click Next page, read and so on. By the way, List is much nicer  
than Fortran. I have learned Lisp after Fortran - C - C++ and I  
should say that I love Lisp (well, I prefer Mathematica - it is a  
Lisp with a human face).


I guess we have a different conception of what is a human face :)
I do have problems with the syntax of Mathematica, but it might be  
that I have never succeeded in compiling it in the right way. It might  
be due also to the fact that I use cheap versions, I dunno.





Yet, the real programmer must start with Lisp. If she will be scared  
by too many brackets, for example


(define (fast-expt b n)
 (cond ((= n 0) 1)
   ((even? n) (square (fast-expt b (/ n 2
   (else (* b (fast-expt b (- n 1))

then she should forget about programming.


Of course, the brackets are what makes the syntax of Lisp so  
transparent. Indeed the programs have the structure of the data- 
structures handled naturally by Lisp (the lists). This makes meta- 
programming very easy. The Gödel number of (define ...) is just  
(quote (define ...)). Together with its functional nature, it makes  
Lisp particularly easy for (third person) self-reference. Lisp is very  
close, in spirit, with the combinators or the lambda calculus, on  
which I have talked about regularly.


Bruno

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



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-19 Thread meekerdb


On 7/19/2011 11:32 AM, ronaldheld wrote:

Given limited resources and for only 1 program, it does not seem
logical to learn LISP. Are there Windows or DOS executables of the UD?
FWIW. I use MAPLE and not Mathematica.
Ronald
   


Maple is based on LISP.  An executable UD wouldn't be very interesting.  
Since it doesn't halt what would you do with it?  It's the program 
itself that is more interesting.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 17 Jul 2011, at 19:52, Jason Resch wrote:




On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:



The interior of the
singularity is the interior of the cosmos with all of the spacetime
vacuumed out of it. Spacetime is what exteriorizes the big bang
(meaning it's more of a Big Break, where the void of space rushes
inward. There is no exterior to the big bang since it prefigures
timespace, therefore it can only be conceived of accurately from the
interior perspective. explicates matter as volume and the void of time
explicates 'energy' (the experience of matter) as sequence-memory. The
Singularity then is always happening and never happening, since it is
outside timespace, the hub of the wheel of Runtime/UD.

The UD is a mathematical being. It is an open question if the  
apparent physical universe run a UD, without stopping.
One has run, in my office, for one week. Such a program is demanding  
in memory, to say the least.



Bruno,

Is the source of this program available?  I am curious how many  
lines of (Fortran?) code is was.



Jason,

Click on

Φ-LISP  Φ-DOVE

in the volume 4 of Conscience et Mécanisme here:

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/consciencemecanisme.html

It is not in FORTRAN, but in LISP. The UD is written in a personal  
LISP, described itself there too (in Allegro Common Lisp).


Sorry for the comments in french, but if you know a few LISP, the code  
is self-explaining. Examples are given for most subroutines. The whole  
program makes about 300 lines.


Best,

Bruno


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



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 17 Jul 2011, at 20:28, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/17/2011 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Jul 2011, at 18:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken  
too much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the  
fact that math is about immaterial relation between non material  
beings. Could you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36  
by using a physics which does not presuppose implicitly the  
numbers.



||


Nice, indeed. We do agree that 34 is less than 36, and what that  
means.
I am not sure your proof is physical thought. Physics has been very  
useful to convey the idea, and I thank God for not having made my  
computer crashed when reading your post, but I see you only  
teleporting information. That fact that you are using the physical  
reality to convey an idea does not make that idea physical.

I was expecting a physical definition of the numbers.


Of course there is no physical definition of the numbers because the  
usual definition includes the axiom of infinity.


You don't need the axiom of infinity for axiomatizing the numbers. The  
axiom of infinity is typical for set theories, not natural number  
theories. You need it to have OMEGA and others infinite ordinals and  
cardinals.







As finite beings we can hypothesize infinities.


Yes, but we don't need this for numbers. On the contrary, the  
induction axioms are limitation axioms to prevent the rising of  
infinite numbers.






By thinking that I can understand your proof, you are presupposing  
many things, including the numbers, and the way to compare them.


On the contrary I think you (and Peano) conceived of numbers by  
considering such such examples.  The examples presuppose very little  
- probably just the perceptual power the evolution endowed us with.


That is provably impossible. No machine can infer numbers from  
examples, without having them preprogrammed at the start. You need the  
truth on number to make sense on any inference of any notion.










So it is a funny answer, which did surprise me, but which avoids  
the difficulty of defining what (finite) numbers are.
It *is* a theorem in logic, that we can't define them univocally  
in first order logical system. We can define them in second order  
logic, but this one use the intuition of number.


If you agree that physics is well described by QM, an explanation  
of 34  36 should be a theorem in quantum physics,


I'm sure it is.  If you add 34 electrons to 36 positrons you get two  
positrons left over.


Physics is not an axiomatic system.


That is the main defect of physics. But things evolve. Without making  
physics into an axiomatic, the whole intepretation problem of the  
physical laws will remain sunday philosophy handwaving. Physicists are  
just very naïve on what can be an interpretation. The reason is they  
religious view of the universe. They take it for granted, which is  
problematic, because that is not a scientific attitude.





Physicists use mathematics (in preference to other languages) in  
order to be precise and to avoid self-contradiction.


That is the main error of the physicists. They confuse mathematics  
with a language. Even Einstein was wrong on this. Wheeler, Deutsch and  
Penrose are already far less wrong on this. Mathematics is independent  
of language. We can be wrong on this because mathematics is highly  
dependent on language when we want to *communicate* mathematical  
facts. Logic can help to make this precise. But when logic is studied  
superficially, it can aggravate the confusion, due to the role of the  
formal languages.





That doesn't mean that physics is mathematics.


A good point. Even with comp, physics is not mathematics, nor is  
theology pure mathematics. But with comp, math plays a more  
fundamental role, and in a sense, theology (of a provably correct  
machine) is a branch of arithmetic. But it happens we cannot know that  
for ourselves. This is coherent with the fact that the proposition I  
am conscious cannot be made mathematical. The first person is, from  
its point of view, beyond math (and physics).





That || is fewer than ||| is a fact about the world,


... about reality. OK. The word world is ambiguous.



that 57 is a theorem in mathematics which may be interpreted as a  
description of that fact.


I would say that it is a justification, or explanation of that fact.  
The description is still another thing.




But when talking philosophy we should be careful to distinguish  
facts from descriptions of the facts.


And to distinguish description and justification-proof, which can  
themselves be described, like in logic-metamathematics.






but the problem here is that quantum physics assumes real numbers  
and waves (trigonometrical functions), and that reintroduce the

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread ronaldheld

Bruno:
   I do not know LISP. Any UD code written in Fortran?
Ronald

On Jul 18, 5:26 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 17 Jul 2011, at 19:52, Jason Resch wrote:







  On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
  wrote:

  The interior of the
  singularity is the interior of the cosmos with all of the spacetime
  vacuumed out of it. Spacetime is what exteriorizes the big bang
  (meaning it's more of a Big Break, where the void of space rushes
  inward. There is no exterior to the big bang since it prefigures
  timespace, therefore it can only be conceived of accurately from the
  interior perspective. explicates matter as volume and the void of time
  explicates 'energy' (the experience of matter) as sequence-memory. The
  Singularity then is always happening and never happening, since it is
  outside timespace, the hub of the wheel of Runtime/UD.

  The UD is a mathematical being. It is an open question if the  
  apparent physical universe run a UD, without stopping.
  One has run, in my office, for one week. Such a program is demanding  
  in memory, to say the least.

  Bruno,

  Is the source of this program available?  I am curious how many  
  lines of (Fortran?) code is was.

 Jason,

 Click on

 Φ-LISP  Φ-DOVE

 in the volume 4 of Conscience et Mécanisme here:

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/bxlthesis/consciencemecanisme.html

 It is not in FORTRAN, but in LISP. The UD is written in a personal  
 LISP, described itself there too (in Allegro Common Lisp).

 Sorry for the comments in french, but if you know a few LISP, the code  
 is self-explaining. Examples are given for most subroutines. The whole  
 program makes about 300 lines.

 Best,

 Bruno

 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -

 - Show quoted text -

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread meekerdb


On 7/18/2011 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 17 Jul 2011, at 20:28, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/17/2011 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Jul 2011, at 18:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken 
too much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact 
that math is about immaterial relation between non material 
beings. Could you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 
by using a physics which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers.



||


Nice, indeed. We do agree that 34 is less than 36, and what that means.
I am not sure your proof is physical thought. Physics has been very 
useful to convey the idea, and I thank God for not having made my 
computer crashed when reading your post, but I see you only 
teleporting information. That fact that you are using the physical 
reality to convey an idea does not make that idea physical.

I was expecting a physical definition of the numbers.


Of course there is no physical definition of the numbers because the 
usual definition includes the axiom of infinity.


You don't need the axiom of infinity for axiomatizing the numbers. The 
axiom of infinity is typical for set theories, not natural number 
theories. You need it to have OMEGA and others infinite ordinals and 
cardinals.







As finite beings we can hypothesize infinities.


Yes, but we don't need this for numbers. On the contrary, the 
induction axioms are limitation axioms to prevent the rising of 
infinite numbers.






By thinking that I can understand your proof, you are presupposing 
many things, including the numbers, and the way to compare them.


On the contrary I think you (and Peano) conceived of numbers by 
considering such such examples.  The examples presuppose very little 
- probably just the perceptual power the evolution endowed us with.


That is provably impossible. No machine can infer numbers from 
examples, without having them preprogrammed at the start. You need the 
truth on number to make sense on any inference of any notion.



Nothing can be proven that is not implicit in the axioms and rules of 
inference.  So I doubt the significance of this proven impossibility.












So it is a funny answer, which did surprise me, but which avoids the 
difficulty of defining what (finite) numbers are.
It *is* a theorem in logic, that we can't define them univocally 
in first order logical system. We can define them in second order 
logic, but this one use the intuition of number.


If you agree that physics is well described by QM, an explanation of 
34  36 should be a theorem in quantum physics,


I'm sure it is.  If you add 34 electrons to 36 positrons you get two 
positrons left over.


Physics is not an axiomatic system.


That is the main defect of physics. But things evolve. Without making 
physics into an axiomatic, the whole intepretation problem of the 
physical laws will remain sunday philosophy handwaving. Physicists are 
just very naïve on what can be an interpretation. The reason is they 
religious view of the universe. They take it for granted, which is 
problematic, because that is not a scientific attitude.


Accepting what you can feel and see and test is the antithesis of taking 
it for granted and the epitome of the scientific attitude.  The trouble 
with axiomatic methods is that they prove what you put into them.  They 
make no provision for what may loosely be called boundary conditions.  
Physics is successful because it doesn't try to explain everything.  
Religions fall into dogma because they do.








Physicists use mathematics (in preference to other languages) in 
order to be precise and to avoid self-contradiction.


That is the main error of the physicists. They confuse mathematics 
with a language. 


And the main error of mathematicians is they confuse proof with truth.

Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 18 Jul 2011, at 19:14, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/18/2011 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 17 Jul 2011, at 20:28, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/17/2011 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Jul 2011, at 18:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken  
too much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the  
fact that math is about immaterial relation between non  
material beings. Could you give me an explanation that 34 is  
less than 36 by using a physics which does not presuppose  
implicitly the numbers.



||


Nice, indeed. We do agree that 34 is less than 36, and what that  
means.
I am not sure your proof is physical thought. Physics has been  
very useful to convey the idea, and I thank God for not having  
made my computer crashed when reading your post, but I see you  
only teleporting information. That fact that you are using the  
physical reality to convey an idea does not make that idea  
physical.

I was expecting a physical definition of the numbers.


Of course there is no physical definition of the numbers because  
the usual definition includes the axiom of infinity.


You don't need the axiom of infinity for axiomatizing the numbers.  
The axiom of infinity is typical for set theories, not natural  
number theories. You need it to have OMEGA and others infinite  
ordinals and cardinals.







As finite beings we can hypothesize infinities.


Yes, but we don't need this for numbers. On the contrary, the  
induction axioms are limitation axioms to prevent the rising of  
infinite numbers.






By thinking that I can understand your proof, you are  
presupposing many things, including the numbers, and the way to  
compare them.


On the contrary I think you (and Peano) conceived of numbers by  
considering such such examples.  The examples presuppose very  
little - probably just the perceptual power the evolution endowed  
us with.


That is provably impossible. No machine can infer numbers from  
examples, without having them preprogrammed at the start. You need  
the truth on number to make sense on any inference of any notion.



Nothing can be proven that is not implicit in the axioms and rules  
of inference.


OK.





 So I doubt the significance of this proven impossibility.



?

It means, contrary of the expectations of the logicist that the  
natural numbers existence is not implicit in many logical system.
We cannot derive them from logic alone, nor from first order theories  
of the real numbers, nor from most algebra, etc. So, if we want  
natural numbers in the intended model of the theory, they have to be  
postulated, implicitly (like in wave theory, set theory) or  
explicitly, like in RA or PA.

















So it is a funny answer, which did surprise me, but which avoids  
the difficulty of defining what (finite) numbers are.
It *is* a theorem in logic, that we can't define them  
univocally in first order logical system. We can define them in  
second order logic, but this one use the intuition of number.


If you agree that physics is well described by QM, an explanation  
of 34  36 should be a theorem in quantum physics,


I'm sure it is.  If you add 34 electrons to 36 positrons you get  
two positrons left over.


Physics is not an axiomatic system.


That is the main defect of physics. But things evolve. Without  
making physics into an axiomatic, the whole intepretation problem  
of the physical laws will remain sunday philosophy handwaving.  
Physicists are just very naïve on what can be an interpretation.  
The reason is they religious view of the universe. They take it  
for granted, which is problematic, because that is not a scientific  
attitude.


Accepting what you can feel and see and test is the antithesis of  
taking it for granted and the epitome of the scientific attitude.


That is Aristotle definition of reality (in modern vocabulary). But  
the platonist defend the idea that what we feel, see and test, is only  
number relation, and that the true reality, be it a universe or a god,  
is what we try to extrapolate.


We certainly don't see, feel, or test a *primitive* physical universe.  
The existence of such a primitive physical reality is a metaphysical  
proposition. We cannot test that. This follows directly from the dream  
argument. That is what Plato will try to explain with the cave.







The trouble with axiomatic methods is that they prove what you put  
into them.  They make no provision for what may loosely be called  
boundary conditions.  Physics is successful because it doesn't try  
to explain everything.  Religions fall into dogma because they do.


I don't criticize physics, but aristotelian physicalism. which is, for  
many scientists, a sort of dogma.
Religion fall into dogma, because humans have perhaps not yet the  
maturity to be able to doubt on

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-18 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 18.07.2011 14:21 ronaldheld said the following:

Bruno:
I do not know LISP. Any UD code written in Fortran?
 Ronald



Very good book to learn LISP is

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

Just click Next page, read and so on. By the way, List is much nicer 
than Fortran. I have learned Lisp after Fortran - C - C++ and I should 
say that I love Lisp (well, I prefer Mathematica - it is a Lisp with a 
human face). Yet, the real programmer must start with Lisp. If she will 
be scared by too many brackets, for example


(define (fast-expt b n)
  (cond ((= n 0) 1)
((even? n) (square (fast-expt b (/ n 2
(else (* b (fast-expt b (- n 1))

then she should forget about programming.

Evgenii
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-17 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 15 Jul 2011, at 14:08, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Interesting stuff. I had a marathon info download with Stephen and
he's helping me access your theory more. Still scratching the surface
but at least getting a better idea of how to approach it.

What you call UDA I think of as 'Runtime' in comparison to the
hardware which I think of as the Singularity.


I use axiomatic. I understand a word only if you can related it to  
something I can understand. Normally, what you say should be word  
independent.
I don't know what you mean by singularity, runtime, etc. In the UDA I  
use some consensual reality to support an argument, but in fine I  
isolated an axiomatic theory.

You should bet I am 12 years old and explain things with simple terms.





The interior of the
singularity is the interior of the cosmos with all of the spacetime
vacuumed out of it. Spacetime is what exteriorizes the big bang
(meaning it's more of a Big Break, where the void of space rushes
inward. There is no exterior to the big bang since it prefigures
timespace, therefore it can only be conceived of accurately from the
interior perspective. explicates matter as volume and the void of time
explicates 'energy' (the experience of matter) as sequence-memory. The
Singularity then is always happening and never happening, since it is
outside timespace, the hub of the wheel of Runtime/UD.


The UD is a mathematical being. It is an open question if the apparent  
physical universe run a UD, without stopping.
One has run, in my office, for one week. Such a program is demanding  
in memory, to say the least.






I get what you are saying about Mickey Mouse as far as an Inception/
Matrix/Maya sense of value-weighted coherence within a semiotic frame
of reference, although I think there is something good there that you
are over looking. Something about the density of the simulated
universe which, by definition, can only be realized in comparison to
the experience of a denser, more discrete version of the simulation.
It's qualia of density/mass but there's something unique - it's the
qualia that pretends not to be qualia. I'm not seduced by the promise
of the Higgs or Einsteinian curved space (a brilliantly useful
metaphor, but the opposite of what is literally true)


You talk like if you knew the truth. Are you a sort of guru of what?




- more at a
concept of Cumulative Entanglement, where the sensotimotive relation
of processes separated by space is warped such that scale and density
is respected. Motive power is inversely proportionate to the
difference in the scale of the two densities, so that it's not gravity
exerting a field of force holding you to the ground, it's the
magnitude of the Earth, (and the momentum of it's rotation and
revolution? or no? Not an astrophysicist, haha) which weakens your
motive power to escape becoming part of it.


?




So yes, I am certainly willing to entertain comp as far as the cosmos
not being a concrete stuff


I am agnostic about comp.
I just show that comp makes Aristotle's theology wrong. With comp,   
there is no basic primitive universe that you can relate to  
consciousness, but the physical reality appearance is explained by a  
self limitation property of universal machine (again a mathematical,  
arithmetical notion).






but rather principles having an experience
of concreteness (by pretending they are the opposite end of what they
essentially are - ie chasing their tail, thus becoming existential and
completing the sensorimotive circuit of the singularity to become the
opposite of the singularity: not just everything and anything, but
finite, coherent things which come and go into existence, as well is
less coherent non-things that are literally felt out of insistence).


?




I
don't want to limit comp to numbers though. I see that numbers have an
interior topology as well. That's qualia, and that's what numerology
tries to tap into. You're right, it is poetry, but that is the
interior of the cosmos. It insists. One has a personality. It's the
first, the only, the new, the solitary, etc. It's bold yet timid (it's
only frame of reference is 0 and 2). Two is a whole emergent identity,
coupling, relation, cooperation, equality, inequality, etc. So any
definition of comp to me would have to include the qualitative
interiority of numbers, the potential feelings, figurative,
metaphorical evocations which tie in the echo of the future by
subtracting from the singularity interior. Poetry pulls it down from
'heaven'.

Happy day-after-the-full moon Bruno. My head is banging on too many
cylinders right now but I look forward to continuing this soon. We
should trade tips on how to lower the control rods into our own
psychic fission pile and turn off the machine.



It is very hard to make sense of what you are saying.
From my work you can take deduce that you need special non Turing  
emulable components in some primitive matter (nor even quantum  
emulable).


With comp, on the contrary, we need ,

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-17 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 15 Jul 2011, at 18:41, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken too
much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact that
math is about immaterial relation between non material beings.
Could you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 by using a
physics which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers.

Nice, indeed. We do agree that 34 is less than 36, and what that means.
I am not sure your proof is physical thought. Physics has been very
useful to convey the idea, and I thank God for not having made my
computer crashed when reading your post, but I see you only
teleporting information. That fact that you are using the physical
reality to convey an idea does not make that idea physical.
I was expecting a physical definition of the numbers. By thinking that
I can understand your proof, you are presupposing many things,
including the numbers, and the way to compare them.

So it is a funny answer, which did surprise me, but which avoids the
difficulty of defining what (finite) numbers are.
It *is* a theorem in logic, that we can't define them univocally in
first order logical system. We can define them in second order logic,
but this one use the intuition of number.

If you agree that physics is well described by QM, an explanation of
34 36 should be a theorem in quantum physics, but the problem here
is that quantum physics assumes real numbers and waves
(trigonometrical functions), and that reintroduce the numbers at the
base.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-17 Thread Jason Resch

On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:



  The interior of the
 singularity is the interior of the cosmos with all of the spacetime
 vacuumed out of it. Spacetime is what exteriorizes the big bang
 (meaning it's more of a Big Break, where the void of space rushes
 inward. There is no exterior to the big bang since it prefigures
 timespace, therefore it can only be conceived of accurately from the
 interior perspective. explicates matter as volume and the void of time
 explicates 'energy' (the experience of matter) as sequence-memory. The
 Singularity then is always happening and never happening, since it is
 outside timespace, the hub of the wheel of Runtime/UD.


 The UD is a mathematical being. It is an open question if the apparent
 physical universe run a UD, without stopping.
 One has run, in my office, for one week. Such a program is demanding in
 memory, to say the least.


Bruno,

Is the source of this program available?  I am curious how many lines of
(Fortran?) code is was.

Thanks,

Jason







 I get what you are saying about Mickey Mouse as far as an Inception/
 Matrix/Maya sense of value-weighted coherence within a semiotic frame
 of reference, although I think there is something good there that you
 are over looking. Something about the density of the simulated
 universe which, by definition, can only be realized in comparison to
 the experience of a denser, more discrete version of the simulation.
 It's qualia of density/mass but there's something unique - it's the
 qualia that pretends not to be qualia. I'm not seduced by the promise
 of the Higgs or Einsteinian curved space (a brilliantly useful
 metaphor, but the opposite of what is literally true)


 You talk like if you knew the truth. Are you a sort of guru of what?




  - more at a
 concept of Cumulative Entanglement, where the sensotimotive relation
 of processes separated by space is warped such that scale and density
 is respected. Motive power is inversely proportionate to the
 difference in the scale of the two densities, so that it's not gravity
 exerting a field of force holding you to the ground, it's the
 magnitude of the Earth, (and the momentum of it's rotation and
 revolution? or no? Not an astrophysicist, haha) which weakens your
 motive power to escape becoming part of it.


 ?



 So yes, I am certainly willing to entertain comp as far as the cosmos
 not being a concrete stuff


 I am agnostic about comp.
 I just show that comp makes Aristotle's theology wrong. With comp,  there
 is no basic primitive universe that you can relate to consciousness, but the
 physical reality appearance is explained by a self limitation property of
 universal machine (again a mathematical, arithmetical notion).





  but rather principles having an experience
 of concreteness (by pretending they are the opposite end of what they
 essentially are - ie chasing their tail, thus becoming existential and
 completing the sensorimotive circuit of the singularity to become the
 opposite of the singularity: not just everything and anything, but
 finite, coherent things which come and go into existence, as well is
 less coherent non-things that are literally felt out of insistence).


 ?



  I
 don't want to limit comp to numbers though. I see that numbers have an
 interior topology as well. That's qualia, and that's what numerology
 tries to tap into. You're right, it is poetry, but that is the
 interior of the cosmos. It insists. One has a personality. It's the
 first, the only, the new, the solitary, etc. It's bold yet timid (it's
 only frame of reference is 0 and 2). Two is a whole emergent identity,
 coupling, relation, cooperation, equality, inequality, etc. So any
 definition of comp to me would have to include the qualitative
 interiority of numbers, the potential feelings, figurative,
 metaphorical evocations which tie in the echo of the future by
 subtracting from the singularity interior. Poetry pulls it down from
 'heaven'.

 Happy day-after-the-full moon Bruno. My head is banging on too many
 cylinders right now but I look forward to continuing this soon. We
 should trade tips on how to lower the control rods into our own
 psychic fission pile and turn off the machine.



 It is very hard to make sense of what you are saying.
 From my work you can take deduce that you need special non Turing emulable
 components in some primitive matter (nor even quantum emulable).

 With comp, on the contrary, we need , more exactly: we can only use,
 addition and multiplication of natural numbers. The mind will correspond to
 whatever a universal machine can talk about when introspecting (well defined
 by Gödel like technics), and matter appearances are retrieved from limiting
 attribute of such a mind. I do not propose any new theory. I show that all
 this is unavoidable once we postulate some (rather weak) version of
 mechanism. Basically, all this made Plato like theology more coherent with
 the facts and

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-17 Thread meekerdb


On 7/17/2011 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 15 Jul 2011, at 18:41, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken too 
much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact that 
math is about immaterial relation between non material beings. Could 
you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 by using a 
physics which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers.



||


Nice, indeed. We do agree that 34 is less than 36, and what that means.
 I am not sure your proof is physical thought. Physics has been very 
useful to convey the idea, and I thank God for not having made my 
computer crashed when reading your post, but I see you only 
teleporting information. That fact that you are using the physical 
reality to convey an idea does not make that idea physical.
I was expecting a physical definition of the numbers. 


Of course there is no physical definition of the numbers because the 
usual definition includes the axiom of infinity.  As finite beings we 
can hypothesize infinities.


By thinking that I can understand your proof, you are presupposing 
many things, including the numbers, and the way to compare them.


On the contrary I think you (and Peano) conceived of numbers by 
considering such such examples.  The examples presuppose very little - 
probably just the perceptual power the evolution endowed us with.




So it is a funny answer, which did surprise me, but which avoids the 
difficulty of defining what (finite) numbers are.
It *is* a theorem in logic, that we can't define them univocally in 
first order logical system. We can define them in second order logic, 
but this one use the intuition of number.


If you agree that physics is well described by QM, an explanation of 
34  36 should be a theorem in quantum physics, 


I'm sure it is.  If you add 34 electrons to 36 positrons you get two 
positrons left over.


Physics is not an axiomatic system.  Physicists use mathematics (in 
preference to other languages) in order to be precise and to avoid 
self-contradiction.  That doesn't mean that physics is mathematics.  
That || is fewer than ||| is a fact about the world, that 57 is 
a theorem in mathematics which may be interpreted as a description of 
that fact.  But when talking philosophy we should be careful to 
distinguish facts from descriptions of the facts.


but the problem here is that quantum physics assumes real numbers and 
waves (trigonometrical functions), and that reintroduce the numbers at 
the base.


If it were an axiomatic system it would have lots of axioms (probably 
including Peano's) but it isn't.  I'm not sure axioms are assumptions 
though.


Brent





Bruno





Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-17 Thread Craig Weinberg

I don't know what you mean by singularity, runtime, etc. In the UDA I
use some consensual reality to support an argument, but in fine I
isolated an axiomatic theory.

By singularity I mean the sum total of all phenomena minus timespace.
The idea of a monad from which all temporal phenomena emerges through
a program-like process or 'Runtime', within which spacetime sequences
are strictly observed. That's what I thought you meant by UDA - the
layer of reality in which we participate where we are limited by the
constraints of what kind of a thing we are - what scale, position, how
much matter in what kind of arrangement, etc.

You talk like if you knew the truth. Are you a sort of guru of what?

No, it's just that it gets redundant to constantly use words like 'I
think' 'my guess is', etc. I'm just presenting a hypothetical
cosmology, so everything I say should be assumed to be my own opinions
and ideas.

Motive power is inversely proportionate to the
 difference in the scale of the two densities, so that it's not gravity
 exerting a field of force holding you to the ground,

?

I'm saying that gravity is not a field that physically exists in
space, it's more like a function of how matter is organized. I think
that gravity may be like a Kryptonite effect which drains the
effectiveness of motive force exerted against a greater body.

 but rather principles having an experience
 of concreteness (by pretending they are the opposite end of what they
 essentially are - ie chasing their tail, thus becoming existential and
 completing the sensorimotive circuit of the singularity to become the
 opposite of the singularity: not just everything and anything, but
 finite, coherent things which come and go into existence, as well is
 less coherent non-things that are literally felt out of insistence).

?

I'm describing why I think phenomena come into existence. I'm
suggesting that the Singularity is the ground of being, but that it
seeks to temporarily be the opposite of itself, and that it does this
by dividing itself through the creation of timespace (Runtime) within
itself, so that each discrete phenomena has a sensorimotive and an
electromagnetic nature. The sensorimotive side is the immaterial side
which seeks a circuitous experience of breaking apart from the
Singularity, and then returning to it's source, thus giving rise to
sequence and the experience of time, which is perception. The
electomagnetic side is the container of sensorimotive experience which
serves to physically define the relations between the exteriors of
phenomena in space.

The nature of electromagnetic existence, then, is exterior phenomena
coexisting in space, while the sensorimotive experience is an
insistence felt from within. When we see a magnet attract an iron
filing, we experience it objectively as a iron filings being passively
pulled by invisible magnetic waves. What I'm suggesting is that like
gravity, magnetism is experienced from within as a powerlessness to
escape becoming part of something more powerful.

It is very hard to make sense of what you are saying.
 From my work you can take deduce that you need special non Turing
emulable components in some primitive matter (nor even quantum
emulable).

The only primitive matter would be the Singularity, which would be
both primitive and the teleological antithesis of primitive, since it
is the container of all spacetime production and not a product of
spacetime processes.

Craig

On Jul 17, 11:38 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 15 Jul 2011, at 14:08, Craig Weinberg wrote:

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-15 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 15 Jul 2011, at 00:42, Craig Weinberg wrote:


The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will
needs the global structure of all computations.
If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown
physics.


I don't consider it an unknown physics, just a physics that doesn't
disqualify 1p phenomena.


So either you naturalize the quale, which can't work (it is a base on  
a category error), or you introduce an identity thesis, which is ad  
hoc, and logically incompatible with the comp. assumption.






I don't get why yellow is any less stable
than a number.


Yellow, or any qualia. This is a consequence of the UDA. Are you  
willing to imagine that comp *might* be true for studying its  
consequence?






Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything
physical.


I get what you're saying, but you could put a drug in your brain that
affects your thinking, and your thinking can be affected by chemistry
in your brain that you cannot control with your thoughts. In my
sensorimotive electromagnetism schema, everything physical has an
experiential aspect and vice versa.


That's a form of pantheism, which does not explain what is matter, nor  
mind.





Bruno:
It is more an information pattern which can emulate all
computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It
exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in
the
physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at
least Turing universal.

CW: It sounds like what you're suggesting is that numbers exist
independently of physical matter, whereas I would say that numbers
insist through the experiences within physical matter.


I find natural to suppose that 17 is prime independently of universes  
and human beings. I need it if only to grasp actual theories of matter  
which presuppose them logically. I don't need to know what numbers  
are. I need only some agreement on some axioms, like for all natural  
numbers x we have that s(x) is different from 0, etc. Then I can  
explain the appearances of matter and mind from the relations  
inherited by only addition and multiplication. It is amazing (for non  
logician) but if comp is true, we don't need more than elementary  
arithmetic. We don't need to postulate a physical universe, nor  
consciousness.








 The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither
physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study
the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp
hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.


Hmm. If the universe isn't made of anything than your point isn't made
of anything either. I don't get it.


The game of bridge is not made of quarks and electron. No mathematical  
object is made of something. My point is a reasoning, you have to  
cjeck his validity. It is non sense to assume a logical point has to  
be made of something. You are confusing software and hardware (and  
with comp, the difference is relative, and eventually hardware does  
not exist: it is in the head of the universal machines: that is  
enough to derive physics (which becomes a first person plural measure  
on possible computational histories).







Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just
a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.


Have you read any numerology?


Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken too  
much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact that  
math is about immaterial relation between non material beings. Could  
you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 by using a physics  
which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers.







Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now
that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why  
numbers

have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can
already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a very
simple mathematical operation defines a montruously complex object.


The complexity is in the eye of the perceiver. Your human visual sense
is what unites the Mandelbrot set into a fractal pattern. There is no
independent 'pattern' there unless what you are made of can relate to
it as a coherent whole rather than a million unrelated pixels as your
video card sees it, or maybe as a nondescript moving blur as a gopher
might see it.


OK, but I don't take human as primitive. I explain human by  
(special) universal machine (a purely mathematical notion whose  
existence is a consequence of addition and multiplication). That  
explain matter, too. Indeed, that makes physics completely derivable  
(not derived!) from arithmetic. So we can test the comp. hyp. by  
comparing the comp physics, and empiric data.






I cannot be satisfied with this, because it put what I want to  
explain

(mind and matter) in the starting

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-15 Thread meekerdb


On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken too 
much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact that 
math is about immaterial relation between non material beings. Could 
you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 by using a physics 
which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers. 



||

Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-15 Thread Craig Weinberg

nice

On Jul 15, 12:41 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/15/2011 2:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Numerology is poetry. Can be very cute, but should not be taken too
  much seriously. Are you saying that you disagree with the fact that
  math is about immaterial relation between non material beings. Could
  you give me an explanation that 34 is less than 36 by using a physics
  which does not presuppose implicitly the numbers.

 
 ||

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-14 Thread Bruno Marchal

Evgenii,

Why don't you make a course for dummies about this? (For example in
Second Life)

Because in the second life, the students already know that they are in
a virtual reality :)

It looks more difficult to explain this with first life inquirers.

But is it, really? Got the feeling that those who don't understand are
those who don't study, or don't make the necessary work. Psychological
contingent reasons? (I think on UDA, not on AUDA, which needs a one
year course in mathematical logic/computer science).

But your suggestion is pleasing and fun, and who knows, I might think
about it.

That will not cure my computer addiction, though :(

Bruno

On 11.07.2011 16:01 Bruno Marchal said the following:

On 11 Jul 2011, at 14:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:

On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:

...

Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain
out of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations,
does it perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of
electromagnetism automatically, or does it see yellow when it's
own emulated units are vibrating on the functionally
proportionate scale to itself? Does the ping pong ball brain
see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or does yellow =
electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point does the
yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the
minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to
distinguish third person point of view and first person points of
view. The machine already have a theory of qualia, with an
explanation of why qualia and quanta seems different.

Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about
that statement? (But please not in French)

I am afraid the only text which explains this in simple way is my
sane04 paper(*). It is in the second part (the interview of the
machine), and it uses Smullyan popular explanation of the logic of
self-reference (G) from his Forever Undecided popular book.

Popular attempts to explain Gödel's theorem are often incorrect, and
the whole matter is very delicate. Philosophers, like Lucas, or
physicists, like Penrose, illustrate that it is hard to explain
Gödel's result to non logicians. I'm afraid the time has not yet come
for popular explanation of machine's theology.

Let me try a short attempt. By Gödel's theorem we know that for any
machine, the set of true propositions about the machine is bigger
than the set of the propositions provable by the machine. Now, Gödel
already knew that a machine can prove that very fact about herself,
and so can be aware of its own limitations. Such a machine is
forced to discover a vast range of true proposition about her that
she cannot prove, and such a machine can study the logic to which
such propositions are obeying.

Then, it is a technical fact that such logics (of the non provable,
yet discoverable propositions) obeys some theories of qualia which
have been proposed in the literature (by J.L. Bell, for example).

So the machine which introspects itself (the mystical machine) is
bounded to discover the gap between the provable and truth (the G-G*
gap), but also the difference between all the points of view (third
person = provable, first person = provable-and-true, observable with
probability 1 = provable-and-consistent, feelable =
provable-and-consistent-and-true, etc.).

When the machine studies the logic of those propositions, she
rediscovers more or less a picture of reality akin to the mystical
rationalists (like Plato, Plotinus, but also Nagasena, and many
others).

If you are familiar with the logic G, I might be able to explain
more. If not, read Smullyan's book, perhaps. All this is new
material, and, premature popular version can be misleading.
Elementary logic is just not yet well enough known.

In fact, the UDA *is* the human-popular version of all this. The AUDA
is the proper machine's technical version.

If you read the sane04(*) paper, feel free to ask for any
precisions.

Best,

Bruno

(*)
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

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

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-14 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 13 Jul 2011, at 01:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:


Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
differently than a biological plant.



Sure. But they have not the same function.


They both decorate a vase. How do we know when we build a chip that
it's performing the same function that a neuron performs and not just
what we think it performs, especially considering that neurology
produces qualitative phenomena which cannot be detected at all outside
of our personal experience. Maybe the brain is a haunted house built
of prehistoric stones under layers of medieval catacombs and the chip
is a brand new suburban tract home made to look like a grand old
mansion but it's made of drywall and stucco and ghosts aren't
interested.

Because all known laws of nature, even their approximations, which  
can

still function at some high level, are Turing emulable.


But consciousness isn't observable in nature, outside of our own
interiority. Is yellow Turing emulable?


The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will  
needs the global structure of all computations.
If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown  
physics.






By computers I mean universal
machine, and this is a mathematical notion.


I don't know, man. I think computers are just gigantic electronic
abacuses. They don't feel anything, but you can arrange their beads
into patterns which act as a vessel for us to feel, see, know, think,
etc.


Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything  
physical. It is more an information pattern which can emulate all  
computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It  
exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in the  
physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at  
least Turing universal.









That's a bad note! What is the first 5th % that you don't understand?


Each sentence is a struggle for me. I could go through each one if you
want:

I will first present a non constructive argument showing that the
mechanist
hypothesis in cognitive science gives enough constraints to decide
what a physical reality
can possibly consist in.


This is the abstract. The paper explains its meaning.






I read that as I will first present a theoretical argument showing
that the hypothesis of consciousness arising from purely mechanical
interactions in the brain is sufficient to support a physical reality.


Not to support. To derive. I mean physics is a branch of machine's  
theology.






Right away I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm guessing that
you mean the mechanics of the brain look like physical reality to us.


I mean physics is not the fundamental branch. You have to study the  
proof, not to speculate on a theorem.






Which I would have agreed with a couple years ago, but my hypothesis
now makes more sense to me, that the exterior mechanism and interior
experience are related in a dynamic continuum topology in which they
diverge sharply at one end and are indistinguishable in another.


That's unclear.





Read just the UDA. The first seven steps gives the picture. Of  
course,
you have to be able to reason with an hypothesis, keeping it all  
along

in the reasoning.


I'm trying, but it's not working. I think each step would have to be
condensed into two sentences.

No, they are related to arithmetical relations and set of  
arithmetical relations.

Maybe that's the issue. I can't really parse math. I had to take
Algebra 2 twice and never took another math class again. If the
universe is made of math


The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither  
physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study  
the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp  
hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.






I would have a hard time explaining that. Why
is math hard for some people if we are made of math?


Well, I could ask you why physics is hard if we obey to the laws of  
physics. this is a non sequitur.
Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just  
a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.






Why is math
something we don't learn until long after we understand words, colors,
facial expressions, etc?


Because we are not supposed to understand how we work. The  
understanding of facial expression asks for many complex mathematical  
operations done unconsciously. We learn to use our brain well before  
even knowing we have a brain.






God create the natural numbers, all the rest is created by the  
natural numbers.

Numbers create things? Why?


Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now  
that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why numbers  
have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can  
already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-14 Thread Craig Weinberg

The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will
needs the global structure of all computations.
If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown
physics.

I don't consider it an unknown physics, just a physics that doesn't
disqualify 1p phenomena. I don't get why yellow is any less stable
than a number.

Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything
physical.

I get what you're saying, but you could put a drug in your brain that
affects your thinking, and your thinking can be affected by chemistry
in your brain that you cannot control with your thoughts. In my
sensorimotive electromagnetism schema, everything physical has an
experiential aspect and vice versa.

 It is more an information pattern which can emulate all
computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It
exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in
the
physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at
least Turing universal.

It sounds like what you're suggesting is that numbers exist
independently of physical matter, whereas I would say that numbers
insist through the experiences within physical matter.

The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither
physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study
the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp
hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.

Hmm. If the universe isn't made of anything than your point isn't made
of anything either. I don't get it.

Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just
a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.

Have you read any numerology?

Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now
that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why numbers
have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can
already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a very
simple mathematical operation defines a montruously complex object.

The complexity is in the eye of the perceiver. Your human visual sense
is what unites the Mandelbrot set into a fractal pattern. There is no
independent 'pattern' there unless what you are made of can relate to
it as a coherent whole rather than a million unrelated pixels as your
video card sees it, or maybe as a nondescript moving blur as a gopher
might see it.

I cannot be satisfied with this, because it put what I want to explain
(mind and matter) in the starting premises.
Then I show that comp leads to a precise (and mathematical)
reformulation of the mind-body problem.

Are you more interested in satisfying your premise, or discovering a
true model of the cosmos?

 You're not saying that Mickey Mouse has mass and velocity though,
 right? I don't get it.

It depends on the context. Mickey Mouse is a fiction. as such it has a
mass, relatively to its fictive world. That world is not complex
enough to attribute meaning to physical attribute, nor mental one, so
that your question does not make much sense.

How does Mickey Mouse have mass? Whoever is drawing the cartoon can
make the universe he is in be whatever they want. It doesn't have to
have pseudophysical laws like gravity. He can just teleport around a
Mandelbrot set.

Craig

On Jul 13, 5:43 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 13 Jul 2011, at 01:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:









  Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
  differently than a biological plant.

  Sure. But they have not the same function.

  They both decorate a vase. How do we know when we build a chip that
  it's performing the same function that a neuron performs and not just
  what we think it performs, especially considering that neurology
  produces qualitative phenomena which cannot be detected at all outside
  of our personal experience. Maybe the brain is a haunted house built
  of prehistoric stones under layers of medieval catacombs and the chip
  is a brand new suburban tract home made to look like a grand old
  mansion but it's made of drywall and stucco and ghosts aren't
  interested.

  Because all known laws of nature, even their approximations, which  
  can
  still function at some high level, are Turing emulable.

  But consciousness isn't observable in nature, outside of our own
  interiority. Is yellow Turing emulable?

 The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will  
 needs the global structure of all computations.
 If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown  
 physics.



  By computers I mean universal
  machine, and this is a mathematical notion.

  I don't know, man. I think computers are just gigantic electronic
  abacuses. They don't feel anything, but you can arrange their beads
  into patterns which act as a vessel for us to feel, see, know, think,
  etc.

 Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
 And a

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-14 Thread L.W. Sterritt

What is a person?  What can a person be but the continuos response of a wet 
chemical neural network to exogenous and endogenous inputs.  The response will 
be modified by changes in the networks chemical environment, and now we learn 
by strong external pulsed magnetic fields.  In a series of very relevant 
experiments, with readily reproduced results, subjecting certain brain regions 
to a pulsed magnetic field, changes the brains notions of ethics/morality, 
while the field is applied.  When the field is turned off, the brain returns to 
it's previous perceptions of the world.  The technique, Transcutaneous Magnetic 
Stimulation (TMS) was first developed as a noninvasive treatment for 
depression, being much less disruptive than ECT.  Then researchers asked, can 
we modify the functioning of healthy brains - possibly even improve functions 
such as memory ?

Participants in this exchange might enjoy a subscription to Nature: 
Neuroscience.  It's not an easy read, but interesting.

Lanny
 
On Jul 14, 2011, at 3:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

 The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will
 needs the global structure of all computations.
 If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown
 physics.
 
 I don't consider it an unknown physics, just a physics that doesn't
 disqualify 1p phenomena. I don't get why yellow is any less stable
 than a number.
 
 Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
 And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything
 physical.
 
 I get what you're saying, but you could put a drug in your brain that
 affects your thinking, and your thinking can be affected by chemistry
 in your brain that you cannot control with your thoughts. In my
 sensorimotive electromagnetism schema, everything physical has an
 experiential aspect and vice versa.
 
 It is more an information pattern which can emulate all
 computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It
 exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in
 the
 physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at
 least Turing universal.
 
 It sounds like what you're suggesting is that numbers exist
 independently of physical matter, whereas I would say that numbers
 insist through the experiences within physical matter.
 
 The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither
 physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study
 the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp
 hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.
 
 Hmm. If the universe isn't made of anything than your point isn't made
 of anything either. I don't get it.
 
 Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just
 a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.
 
 Have you read any numerology?
 
 Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now
 that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why numbers
 have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can
 already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a very
 simple mathematical operation defines a montruously complex object.
 
 The complexity is in the eye of the perceiver. Your human visual sense
 is what unites the Mandelbrot set into a fractal pattern. There is no
 independent 'pattern' there unless what you are made of can relate to
 it as a coherent whole rather than a million unrelated pixels as your
 video card sees it, or maybe as a nondescript moving blur as a gopher
 might see it.
 
 I cannot be satisfied with this, because it put what I want to explain
 (mind and matter) in the starting premises.
 Then I show that comp leads to a precise (and mathematical)
 reformulation of the mind-body problem.
 
 Are you more interested in satisfying your premise, or discovering a
 true model of the cosmos?
 
 You're not saying that Mickey Mouse has mass and velocity though,
 right? I don't get it.
 
 It depends on the context. Mickey Mouse is a fiction. as such it has a
 mass, relatively to its fictive world. That world is not complex
 enough to attribute meaning to physical attribute, nor mental one, so
 that your question does not make much sense.
 
 How does Mickey Mouse have mass? Whoever is drawing the cartoon can
 make the universe he is in be whatever they want. It doesn't have to
 have pseudophysical laws like gravity. He can just teleport around a
 Mandelbrot set.
 
 Craig
 
 On Jul 13, 5:43 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 13 Jul 2011, at 01:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
 differently than a biological plant.
 
 Sure. But they have not the same function.
 
 They both decorate a vase. How do we know when we build a chip that
 it's performing the same function that a neuron performs and not just
 what we think it performs, especially considering that neurology
 produces qualitative

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-14 Thread Craig Weinberg

But a person also makes changes to their chemical network by
exercising their will out of purely semantic conscious intent, having
no biochemical rationale or specific neurogeographical constraint. You
don't have to get from one part of your brain to another part to think
about something else, 'you' are already are at both places. I think
that the neural network and its sensorimotive content (perception) are
two ends of a single involuted topolology. I'm a big fan of TMS. I
wish there were a lot more research being done with it. (I thought it
was Transcranial?).

On Jul 14, 7:28 pm, L.W. Sterritt lannysterr...@comcast.net wrote:
 What is a person?  What can a person be but the continuos response of a 
 wet chemical neural network to exogenous and endogenous inputs.  The response 
 will be modified by changes in the networks chemical environment, and now we 
 learn by strong external pulsed magnetic fields.  In a series of very 
 relevant experiments, with readily reproduced results, subjecting certain 
 brain regions to a pulsed magnetic field, changes the brains notions of 
 ethics/morality, while the field is applied.  When the field is turned off, 
 the brain returns to it's previous perceptions of the world.  The technique, 
 Transcutaneous Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) was first developed as a 
 noninvasive treatment for depression, being much less disruptive than ECT.  
 Then researchers asked, can we modify the functioning of healthy brains - 
 possibly even improve functions such as memory ?

 Participants in this exchange might enjoy a subscription to Nature: 
 Neuroscience.  It's not an easy read, but interesting.

 Lanny

 On Jul 14, 2011, at 3:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:







  The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will
  needs the global structure of all computations.
  If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown
  physics.

  I don't consider it an unknown physics, just a physics that doesn't
  disqualify 1p phenomena. I don't get why yellow is any less stable
  than a number.

  Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
  And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything
  physical.

  I get what you're saying, but you could put a drug in your brain that
  affects your thinking, and your thinking can be affected by chemistry
  in your brain that you cannot control with your thoughts. In my
  sensorimotive electromagnetism schema, everything physical has an
  experiential aspect and vice versa.

  It is more an information pattern which can emulate all
  computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It
  exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in
  the
  physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at
  least Turing universal.

  It sounds like what you're suggesting is that numbers exist
  independently of physical matter, whereas I would say that numbers
  insist through the experiences within physical matter.

  The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither
  physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study
  the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp
  hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.

  Hmm. If the universe isn't made of anything than your point isn't made
  of anything either. I don't get it.

  Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just
  a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.

  Have you read any numerology?

  Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now
  that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why numbers
  have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can
  already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a very
  simple mathematical operation defines a montruously complex object.

  The complexity is in the eye of the perceiver. Your human visual sense
  is what unites the Mandelbrot set into a fractal pattern. There is no
  independent 'pattern' there unless what you are made of can relate to
  it as a coherent whole rather than a million unrelated pixels as your
  video card sees it, or maybe as a nondescript moving blur as a gopher
  might see it.

  I cannot be satisfied with this, because it put what I want to explain
  (mind and matter) in the starting premises.
  Then I show that comp leads to a precise (and mathematical)
  reformulation of the mind-body problem.

  Are you more interested in satisfying your premise, or discovering a
  true model of the cosmos?

  You're not saying that Mickey Mouse has mass and velocity though,
  right? I don't get it.

  It depends on the context. Mickey Mouse is a fiction. as such it has a
  mass, relatively to its fictive world. That world is not complex
  enough to attribute meaning to physical attribute, nor mental one, so
  that your question does not make much sense.

  How does Mickey Mouse have mass? Whoever is drawing

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


Bruno,

Why don't you make a course for dummies about this? (For example in 
Second Life)


Evgenii


On 11.07.2011 16:01 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 11 Jul 2011, at 14:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


...



Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain
out of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations,
does it perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of
electromagnetism automatically, or does it see yellow when it's
own emulated units are vibrating on the functionally
proportionate scale to itself? Does the ping pong ball brain
see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or does yellow =
electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point does the
yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the
minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?


Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to
distinguish third person point of view and first person points of
view. The machine already have a theory of qualia, with an
explanation of why qualia and quanta seems different.



Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about
 that statement? (But please not in French)


I am afraid the only text which explains this in simple way is my
sane04 paper(*). It is in the second part (the interview of the
machine), and it uses Smullyan popular explanation of the logic of
self-reference (G) from his Forever Undecided popular book.

Popular attempts to explain Gödel's theorem are often incorrect, and
the whole matter is very delicate. Philosophers, like Lucas, or
physicists, like Penrose, illustrate that it is hard to explain
Gödel's result to non logicians. I'm afraid the time has not yet come
for popular explanation of machine's theology.

Let me try a short attempt. By Gödel's theorem we know that for any
machine, the set of true propositions about the machine is bigger
than the set of the propositions provable by the machine. Now, Gödel
already knew that a machine can prove that very fact about herself,
and so can be aware of its own limitations. Such a machine is
forced to discover a vast range of true proposition about her that
she cannot prove, and such a machine can study the logic to which
such propositions are obeying.

Then, it is a technical fact that such logics (of the non provable,
yet discoverable propositions) obeys some theories of qualia which
have been proposed in the literature (by J.L. Bell, for example).

So the machine which introspects itself (the mystical machine) is
bounded to discover the gap between the provable and truth (the G-G*
 gap), but also the difference between all the points of view (third
 person = provable, first person = provable-and-true, observable with
 probability 1 = provable-and-consistent, feelable =
provable-and-consistent-and-true, etc.).

When the machine studies the logic of those propositions, she
rediscovers more or less a picture of reality akin to the mystical
rationalists (like Plato, Plotinus, but also Nagasena, and many
others).

If you are familiar with the logic G, I might be able to explain
more. If not, read Smullyan's book, perhaps. All this is new
material, and, premature popular version can be misleading.
Elementary logic is just not yet well enough known.

In fact, the UDA *is* the human-popular version of all this. The AUDA
is the proper machine's technical version.

If you read the sane04(*) paper, feel free to ask for any
precisions.

Best,

Bruno

(*)
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

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





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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Hi Stephen,

I have to do a Part I now and get into Part II later on.

   How does this causality flows in both directions  work? I have a
model of something that has that kind of feature, but I am curious about
yours.

Subjectively we feel, (and see, hear, remember, understand) that we
can voluntarily cause our mind to focus on different subjects or to
exert our will (motive/motor functionality). We know that this
correlates to electromagnetic activity in the brain and nervous system
which can physically cause muscles to contract or relax themselves.
When we choose to move our arm, it's for a semantic reason known by
our conscious mind rather than a biochemical or physiological purpose
which we just imagine is meaningful. We do actually control our body
and conscious mind to some extent and through that are able to control
our responses to our lives to some extent.

If you're looking for a more mechanical explanation of how subjective
will and objective determinism work I would start with objective
properties being rooted in an ontology of separateness added together
by relativity while subjective properties are subtractive as well -
they use your participation to fill in the blanks between seemingly
separate perceptions (I think of 'black magic', the crayon and
toothpick kind: 
http://paintcutpaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/DSC_0182.jpg)

   How, exactly, are you defining identity as implicit in your
question here? To say that X is X, as in the phrase ...what they are
..., is to assume that you known what X is exactly, no? Is this public
or private information?

I try to avoid definitions if I can help it (I think they can detract
from meaning as well as clarify), and I'm not very familiar with
philosophy conventions. I'm just talking about an atom can do things
that my idea of an atom could not, since at some point groups of
groups of atoms get together and form a living cell which eventually,
we know, can host or facilitate human consciousness. As far as X is X,
I don't think that's strictly true. In that sentence the first X is
located five chars to the left of the second X, which is followed by a
comma rather than a space. X is only X because we subjectively make
that semantic equation. In an absolute sense, nothing is anything else
but what it is. There is no truly identical identity.

 Are you taking into account, for example, decoherence? Are you
assuming a classical or quantum world?

Yes, I'm aware of decoherence. As with probability and superposition
it can be used by QM to explain away just about anything that may
threaten it. I think that QM is likely to be the postmodern version of
Ptolemaic deferent and epicycle as far as it being useful (and precise
to a fantastic degree in the case of QM...because it's the consequence
of extreme occidental focus rather than pre-occidental archaic) but
ultimately getting it completely wrong. I think the whole Standard
Model needs to be completely reimagined as a map of observed atomic
moods rather than physical phenomena.

 What difference in kind is there between a component that is
equivalent in function *and* is integrable with the system to be
substituted? To say that it is made of cobalt alloy would be merely an
argument from illicit substitution of identicals!

Not entirely sure what you're asking. I'm just saying that the
function we assume isn't necessarily the only factor. I don't know if
it's an illicit substitution, I'm just saying cobalt blood isn't
identical (enough) for the body to treat it as blood for all of the
functions that blood performs. If it's not cells for instance, maybe
your bone marrow goes crazy and produces leukocytes, or maybe it
atrophies and you become dependent on the synthetic blood. You can't
assume that just because a fluid delivers oxygen that you can use it
instead of blood indefinitely, and you can't assume that a silicon
sculpture of neural logic can be used to feel anything.

 How is the specification of wires relevant to the claim?

Earlier I had said that a tangle of wires isn't going to feel anything
regardless of how long or tangled it is. Jason responded that he
thinks it can. I'm asking what else can wires do? Everything? Can
anything do anything if put into the right shape? I think organization
doesn't matter at all unless the units you are organizing have
potentials to develop those particular emergent properties you desire.

 Umm, are you not implicitly assuming cartoons in the process of
generation where the constructors of the cartoons have, as available
information, the changing positions of colored lines and points?

I don't think so. I'm looking at a finished cartoon as it is being
watched and saying that it is a machine of visual image, different
from computer logic only in it's physical substrate.

 From whence obtains meaning? Is the yellow an illusion or some
phantom to bewitch the mind? How do you know what yellow is like from
the first person aspect of an algae? I don't

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 09 Jul 2011, at 04:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

You assumptions are not enough clear so I never know if you talk of  
what is or of what seems to be.

I'm trying for 'what seems to be what is',


OK. But what is your assumption?




since what is isn't
knowable


In which theory. I think that a part of 'what is' is knowable (for  
example consciousness). And I think elementary arithmetical conviction  
is communicable. I am pretty sure I can prove to you that 17 is a  
prime number, or even (less obvious) that the equation x^2 = 2 *( y^2)  
has no non null integers solution.






and what seems to be doesn't matter if it doesn't reflect
what is.


OK. But the question is: what are you assuming? I get the feeling that  
you assume a primitively physical universe.
I am OK with that theory, which might indeed be true, except that even  
without QM, the question of the interpretation of the physical laws is  
not entirely trivial for me.
But then, as you do, (so you are coherent with comp) you need a non  
computationalist theory of mind.
My point is a proof that you are coherent. Sane04 sum up an argument  
showing that mechanism (comp) and materialism (physicalism) are  
logically (with some nuances) incompatible.


Now, in the branching dilemma materialism XOR mechanism, you keep  
materialism, apparently.


I keep doubting, but keeping mechanism for the sake of the reasoning,  
transforms the mind-body problem into a body problem in theoretical  
computer science (which is a branch of number theory).
The mind theory is then very natural: it is the study of what machine  
can prove, know, observe, feel, hope about herself.
The matter theory is counterintuitive. But not so much weird than most  
interpretation of QM.


The theory of everything becomes number theory.
And then a miracle occurs! By the incompleteness theorem of Gödel,  
which is among what machine can prove, numbers can distinguish (or  
numbers get deluded, I don't know) provability from knowledge,  
observation, sensations, etc.





I limit the mystery to the numbers through the notion of machines  
and self-reference.

If you limit the mystery, then won't what you get back be defined by
how you have defined those limits?


Sorry. I was unclear. Consciousness and Matter are the mysteries I  
work on. What I pretend, is two things:


1) if you (at least) agree that your daughter marries a guy who got,  
to survive some diseases, an artificial heart, an artificial kidney,  
and an artificial brain. The heart is just a pump, and the brain is  
just a computer. The idea here is that the brain is a natural carbon  
based computer. Computer, as it happens, can all emulate each others.  
Well, If you agree to think about that hypothesis, you can see that we  
have literally no choice: we have to extract the physical patterns and  
the reason of their stability in the way machine's dreams can become  
first person sharable, and relate to more particular universal number.


2) Some Löbian machine already exists, like PA and ZF, and are very  
well studied, and thanks to the work of Gödel and others, we can  
axiomatize completely the theology of the universal machine.
The proper theology is just computer science minus computer's computer  
science. In this epoch you can also paraphrazed it by Tarski minus  
Gödel (truth on computer minus what computers can prove).
But computer can do much more things than proving, than can know,  
observe, etc. Even in the naïve theory of ideally correct machine,  
with believable = provable, knowable = provable and true, observable =  
provable and consistent, feelable (sorry for that word) = provable and  
consistent and true.








Consciousness content, like fear, can modify the matter distribution
around. At a deeper level, we select the realities which support us
since a long time (deep computation).

I think that's true or half true, but not even the most evolved lama
or enlightened yogi can fail to react to multiple bullets fired
through their head or a massive dose of cyanide.



Of course. Although we don't know, for sure, their first person  
experiences.







The problem is to relate them to third person sharable notions.

They can't be related except through direct neurological intervention.


?

Are you using an brain-mind identity thesis. I guess so. It is OK,  
because, well you believe that your daughter married a (philosophical)  
zombie.




There is never going to be a quantitative expression to bring the
color blue to a mind which is part of a brain that has never seen
blue.


OK. (Except serendipitously)




You can, however, potentially intervene upon the brain
electronically, perhaps simulate a conjoined twin connection, and
create a memory of blue. Blue cannot be described quantitatively
however.


You are right on this. But Blue cannot be described quantitatively  
is a qualitative assertion, and machines can make qualitative  
assertion too. They too can understand that their

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Part II

 What is your source of that information?
About human tetrachromats?
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf

Everything else is just my hypothesis.

To suspect that ... is
to bet that ... is true. How different is that from what Bruno is
talking about with the Yes, Doctor? You seem to be using Bruno's
definition of /Theaetetian/ conception of knowledge without even
acknowledging it! What is holding you back?

I don't get the connection. From Bruno's Yes, Doctor I get the idea of
substitution level, although most of what I'm talking about isn't to
do with prosthetic computation, it's about a topological hypothesis of
ontology. I haven't been able to make sense of Bruno's Theaetetian
conception yet so I can't say if I'm telepathically plagiarizing him.

 Seriously, Craig, you are asking for too much! A lack of an
explanation that you can understand is not evidence of falsehood! How do
you know that you understand the idea?

I think I understand Jason's idea if that's what you're referring to,
I just reject it on the grounds that it is contingent upon the
existence of something which I consider to be a logical impossibility.
There can be no ancestor of red. It either has red or it doesn't. It
can't be something that is almost color but still a little bit goat
horn. To quote you in the future... non-sequitur,

At best you can bet that you are
correct; you can not be certain. Yes, you can have certainty that X is X
and that it cannot contradict its own existence, but what can this tell
you of the properties of X?

It can tell you that you know more about X or red than you think you
do. If that's what you're asking.

 Knowledge of the truth values of questions
about the properties of X implies that you can process the meaning of X
is {a, b, c, ...} statements. How exactly do you process meanings?

Not sure what this means really. Meanings are not processed, they are
revealed. Understood (the etymology of understand gives a better sense
of this *nter-standing as in, entero, something that supports you in
the gut, that settles you as it settles within you). The gap between
the sense of what you are and what the meaning is closes so that the
sensorimotor circuit is completed - irrespective of physical presence.
You can understand things which are not physically present, but some
semblance of their meaning is semantically present.

You use your brain.

More accurate to say that I am my brain? I don't use a brain to think,
I am a brain that thinks.

 If that brain is hardwired from DNA to process some
range of frequencies as red then guess what, u will see red when some
EMF excitation stimulated some rod or cone in the retina of your eye...

Where does the DNA get red from?

 All of this physical process involves work that generates entropy.
So there is a physical aspect to this.

I would say that since sensorimotive phenomena is the interior side of
electromagnetism, and is it's ontological opposite, that qualia
generates negentropy which balances the existential-relativity-entropy
side.

 If that were true, then unplugging your monitor would change the
 content of the internet. Regardless of the form a computer presents
 it's data to us in, it is processed the same way to itself, machine
 language, bytes.

[SPK]
 Non-sequitur.

I'm just saying that formatting is important to us, not to the
computer. It's a false equivalence to presume that just because you
see information formatted through a human friendly presentation layer
doesn't mean that that layer has it's own awareness. It's a drawing. A
cartoon.

 Don't know. That's more of a cosmological question. The ontology of
 awareness is not only mysterious, it is mystery itself.

 {SPK]
 obscurum per obscurius?

Yes and no. Mystery arises from the privatization of sense through the
subjective topology. Sensorimotive experience gives rise to mystery
just as wealth gives rise to poverty. Knowing means knowing that you
don't know, which is another way of saying that the self feels what it
is by feeling what it is not (how else could there be a self?)

 I agree, but we need to show necessitation of the
organic-somatic-neurological.

The interior topology is not about necessity, it's about freedom,
imagination, joy, violence. Color exists because it is desirable. On
the subjective side of the curtain, the universe, she just wanna have
fun.

That is just 'level of substitution specifications!

Not getting the connection.

 And what exactly defined sense as in beneath
arithmetic is sense? Whose sense? Are you claiming that Consciousness
is prior to Existence?

I doubt that whatever sense gives rise to arithmetic sense would be
recognizable to us as Consciousness, but since it's beyond time and
space, it could be described as both absolutely omniscient, absolutely
unconscious, and maybe even relatively semi-conscious too. Sort of
like Yahweh-Cthulhu-frisbee-akashic records-interior of the big bang.

 What is the

RE: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Jesse Mazer


Craig, I wonder what you'd think of Chalmers' Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, 
Dancing Qualia argument at http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html which to me 
makes a strong argument for organizational invariance, which says physical 
systems organized the same way should produce the same qualia, so for example a 
computer which simulated each of my neurons and their interactions with 
sufficient accuracy would give rise to the same qualia as my biological brain. 
The basic idea of the argument is that if you gradually replaced my brain's 
neurons with computer chips that simulated the behavior of the removed neurons 
and had the same input/output relationships, my qualia should not change or 
fade in any reasonable theory of consciousness (an unreasonable one would be 
one that had a total disconnect between qualia and behavior, so that for 
example my qualia could be gradually fading or changing, or even changing on a 
second-by-second basis, and yet behaviorally I would argue emphatically that 
they were remaining unchanged)
Jesse 

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 11 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:


I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying.


Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.



That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you
believe in substantial infinite souls.


Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
differently than a biological plant.


Sure. But they have not the same function.




A computer chip behaves
differently than a neuron.


Not necessarily. It might, if well programmed enough, do the same  
thing, and then it is a question of interfacing different sort of  
hardware, to replace the neuron, by the chips.






Why assume that a computer chip can feel
what a living cell can feel?


Because all known laws of nature, even their approximations, which can  
still function at some high level, are Turing emulable. In the case of  
biology, there is strong evidence that nature has already bet on the  
functional substitution, because it happens all the time at the  
biomolecular level.
Even the quantum level is Turing emulable, but no more in real time,  
and you need a quantum chips. But few believes the brain can be a  
quantum computer, and it would change nothing in our argumentation.








Your computer
can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.



Why?


I'm talking about your actual computer that you are reading this on.
Are you asking me why it can't commit suicide or spontaneously develop
a hankering for ammonia?


Because, it is a baby, and its universality is exploited by the  
sellers, or the nerds.
And we don't allow it any form of introspection, except some disk  
verification. So it has no reason, and no real means, to think about  
suicide. He has still no life, except that (weird) form of blank  
consciousness I begin to suspect. My computer is not a good example,  
when talking about computers in general. By computers I mean universal  
machine, and this is a mathematical notion.


A physical computer seems to be a mathematical computer implemented in  
a well, another probable universal being in some neighborhood. With  
comp, they are numerous. With QM, too.







The other side is well explained in the comp theory.


I'm giving it a good try reading your SANE2004 pdf but I think I'm
hovering at around 4% comprehension.


That's a bad note! What is the first 5th % that you don't understand?




If you want me to be able to
consider your hypothesis I think that you will have to radically
simplify it's insights to concrete examples which are not dependent
upon references to anyone else's work, logical/mathematical/or
philosophical notation, teleportation, or Turing anything.


Read just the UDA. The first seven steps gives the picture. Of course,  
you have to be able to reason with an hypothesis, keeping it all along  
in the reasoning.






As near as I can tell, it seems like you are looking at the hows and
whys of sensation - how physics and sensation are both logical
relations


No, they are related to arithmetical relations and set of arithmetical  
relations.





rather than noumenal existential artifacts and why it might
be necessary. I can't really tell what your answer is though.


God create the natural numbers, all the rest is created by the natural  
numbers. Created or subselected by their ancestors in long  
computational histories.

Comp leads to a many-world interpretation of arithmetic.






My focus
is on describing what and who we are in the simplest way. To my mind,
what and who we are cannot be described in purely arithmetic
relations, unless arithmetic relations automatically obscure their
origin and present themselves in all possible universes as color,
sound, taste, feeling, etc.


Nice picture. This is what happens indeed.






No problem. That would mean that the substitution level is low. It
does no change the conclusion: the physical world is a projection of
the mind, and the mind is an inside view of arithmetic (or comp is
false, that is, at all level and you need substantial souls). But we
don't even find a substance for explaining matter, so that seems a
regression to me. Anyway, it is inconsistent with the comp  
assumption.


When you say that the physical world is a projection of the mind, do
you mean that in the sense that it might be possible to stop bullets
directly with our thoughts or in the sense of physicality only seeming
physical because our mind is programmed to read it as such?



It is in between. Because physics is not the projection of the human  
mind, but the projection of all universal (machine (number)) mind. So,  
we can' change the laws of physics by the power of the mind, but we  
can develop degrees of independence. That is why we can fly, and go to  
the moon.






I would
agree that physicality arises only from the body's own physical
composition and our mind's apprehension of the body's awareness of
itself in relation to it's world, but I wouldn't say that physical
matter

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


 Not sure what the cogito has to do with the presumption of the
 necessity of color. Omnipotence solves all problems by definition,
 doesn't it? I'm just using it as an example to show that it's
 ridiculous to think that the idea of color can just happen in a
 physical environment that doesn't already support it a priori. It does
 not evolve as a consequence of natural selection, not only because it
 serves no special function that unconscious detection would not
 accomplish, but because there is no precursor for it to evolve from,
 no mechanism for cells or organs to generate perception of color were
 it not already a built in possibility. I'm saying that color
 perception is more unlikely to exist in a purely physical cosmos than
 time travel or omnipotence as a possible physical adaptation. I'm
 trying to get at Jason's radical underestimation of the gap between
 zoological necessity and the possibility of color's existence.


I think the problem with Chalmer's view, is that by assuming a universe
without qualia (or philosophical zombies) are possible, it inevitably leads
to substance dualism or epiphenominalism.  If zombies are possible, it means
that consciousness is something extra which can be taken away without
affecting anything.  Thus, conscious would have no effects, which I think is
against your view.  Are you familiar with this:
http://www.philforum.org/documents/An%20Unfortunate%20Dualist%20(Raymond%20Smullyan).pdf?
If not, it can give you a feel for why zombies may be logically impossible.
So what is your thought on this subject?  Can a universe exist just like
ours but have different qualia or none at all?

My view is that qualia are necessary and identical anywhere an identical
processing of information, at some substitution level, is performed.  Thus,
if it is done by a computer or a human, or a human in this universe or
another universe, or a computer in this universe or a person in a different
universe, the resulting qualia will be the same, because I believe qualia
are a property of the mind, not a property of the physics on which the mind
is built.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Thanks, I always seem to like Chalmers perspectives. In this case I
think that the hypothesis of physics I'm working from changes how I
see this argument compared to how I would have a couple years ago. My
thought now is that although organizational invariance is valid,
molecular structure is part of the organization. I think that
consciousness is not so much a phenomenon that is produced, but an
essential property that is accessed in different ways through
different organizations.

I'll just throw out some thoughts:

If you take an MRI of a silicon brain, it's going to look nothing like
a human brain. If an MRI can tell the difference, why can't the brain
itself?

Can you make synthetic water? Why not?

If consciousness is purely organizational, shouldn't we see an example
of non-living consciousness in nature? (Maybe we do but why don't we
recognize it as such). At least we should see an example of an
inorganic organism.

My view of awareness is now subtractive and holographic (think pinhole
camera), so that I would read fading qualia in a different way. More
like dementia.. attenuating connectivity between different aspects of
the self, not changing qualia necessarily. The brain might respond to
the implanted chips, even ruling out organic rejection, the native
neurology may strengthen it's remaining connections and attempt to
compensate for the implants with neuroplasticity, routing around the
'damage'. Qualia could also become more intense as the native brain
region gets smaller. Loudness seems to correlate with stupidity rather
than quiet behavior - maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe people
with less integrated neurons live in a coarser, more percussively
energitic version of the universe?

Of course, it's possible that silicon will not present as much of an
organizational incompatibility as I'm guessing, but my hunch is that
even if you could pull it off with chips, you would end up having to
reinvent living cells in semiconductor form before you can get feeling
out of them. I think there is a lot of organic firmware in there that
is not going to be supported on a solid state platform. Life needs
water. Our feelings need cells that need water. I see no reason to
think that water is less of a part of human consciousness than is
logic.


On Jul 12, 2:16 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote:
 Craig, I wonder what you'd think of Chalmers' Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, 
 Dancing Qualia argument athttp://consc.net/papers/qualia.htmlwhich to me 
 makes a strong argument for organizational invariance, which says physical 
 systems organized the same way should produce the same qualia, so for example 
 a computer which simulated each of my neurons and their interactions with 
 sufficient accuracy would give rise to the same qualia as my biological 
 brain. The basic idea of the argument is that if you gradually replaced my 
 brain's neurons with computer chips that simulated the behavior of the 
 removed neurons and had the same input/output relationships, my qualia should 
 not change or fade in any reasonable theory of consciousness (an unreasonable 
 one would be one that had a total disconnect between qualia and behavior, so 
 that for example my qualia could be gradually fading or changing, or even 
 changing on a second-by-second basis, and yet behaviorally I would argue 
 emphatically that they were remaining unchanged)
 Jesse                                    

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RE: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Jesse Mazer

 Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:50:12 -0700
 Subject: Re: Bruno's blasphemy.
 From: whatsons...@gmail.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

 Thanks, I always seem to like Chalmers perspectives. In this case I
 think that the hypothesis of physics I'm working from changes how I
 see this argument compared to how I would have a couple years ago. My
 thought now is that although organizational invariance is valid,
 molecular structure is part of the organization. I think that
 consciousness is not so much a phenomenon that is produced, but an
 essential property that is accessed in different ways through
 different organizations.
But how does this address the thought-experiment? If each neuron were indeed 
replaced one by one by a functionally indistinguishable substitute, do you 
think the qualia would change somehow without the person's behavior changing in 
any way, so they still maintained that they noticed no differences?

 I'll just throw out some thoughts:

 If you take an MRI of a silicon brain, it's going to look nothing like
 a human brain. If an MRI can tell the difference, why can't the brain
 itself?
Because neurons (including those controlling muscles) don't see each other 
visually, they only sense one another by certain information channels such as 
neurotransmitter molecules which go from one neuron to another at the synaptic 
gap. So if the artificial substitutes gave all the same type of outputs that 
other neurons could sense, like sending neurotransmitter molecules to other 
neurons (and perhaps other influences like creating electromagnetic fields 
which would affect action potentials traveling along nearby neurons), then the 
system as a whole should behave identically in terms of neural outputs to 
muscles (including speech acts reporting inner sensations of color and whether 
or not the qualia are dancing or remaining constant), even if some other 
system that can sense information about neurons that neurons themselves cannot 
(like a brain scan which can show something about the material or even shape of 
neurons) could tell the difference.

 Can you make synthetic water? Why not?
You can simulate the large-scale behavior of water using only the basic quantum 
laws that govern interactions between the charged particles that make up the 
atoms in each water molecule--see 
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/mar/water030207.html for a discussion. If 
you had a robot whose external behavior was somehow determined by the behavior 
of water in an internal hidden tank (say it had some scanners watching the 
motion of water in that tank, and the scanners would send signals to the 
robotic limbs based on what they saw), then the external behavior of the robot 
should be unchanged if you replaced the actual water tank with a sufficiently 
detailed simulation of a water tank of that size.

 If consciousness is purely organizational, shouldn't we see an example
 of non-living consciousness in nature? (Maybe we do but why don't we
 recognize it as such). At least we should see an example of an
 inorganic organism.
I don't see why that follows, we don't see darwinian evolution in non-organic 
systems either but that doesn't prove that darwinian evolution somehow requires 
something more than just a physical system with the right type of organization 
(basically a system that can self-replicate, and which has the right sort of 
stable structure to preserve hereditary information to a high degree but also 
with enough instability for mutations in this information from one generation 
to the next). In fact I think most scientists would agree that intelligent 
purposeful and flexible behavior must have something to do with darwinian or 
quasi-darwinian processes in the brain (quasi-darwinian to cover something like 
the way an ant colony selects the best paths to food, which does involve 
throwing up a lot of variants and then creating new variants closer to 
successful ones, but doesn't really involve anything directly analogous to 
genes or self-replication of scent trails). That said, since I am 
philosophically inclined towards monism I do lean towards the idea that perhaps 
all physical processes might be associated with some very basic form of 
qualia, even if the sort of complex, differentiated and meaningful qualia we 
experience are only possible in adaptive systems like the brain (chalmers 
discusses this sort of panpsychist idea in his book The Conscious Mind, and 
there's also a discussion of naturalistic panpsychism at 
http://www.hedweb.com/lockwood.htm#naturalistic )

 My view of awareness is now subtractive and holographic (think pinhole
 camera), so that I would read fading qualia in a different way. More
 like dementia.. attenuating connectivity between different aspects of
 the self, not changing qualia necessarily. The brain might respond to
 the implanted chips, even ruling out organic rejection, the native
 neurology may strengthen it's remaining connections

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-12 Thread Jason Resch

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 6:10 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

**
On 7/12/2011 2:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

Not sure what the cogito has to do with the presumption of the
necessity of color. Omnipotence solves all problems by definition,
doesn't it? I'm just using it as an example to show that it's
ridiculous to think that the idea of color can just happen in a
physical environment that doesn't already support it a priori. It does
not evolve as a consequence of natural selection, not only because it
serves no special function that unconscious detection would not
accomplish, but because there is no precursor for it to evolve from,
no mechanism for cells or organs to generate perception of color were
it not already a built in possibility. I'm saying that color
perception is more unlikely to exist in a purely physical cosmos than
time travel or omnipotence as a possible physical adaptation. I'm
trying to get at Jason's radical underestimation of the gap between
zoological necessity and the possibility of color's existence.

I think the problem with Chalmer's view, is that by assuming a universe
without qualia (or philosophical zombies) are possible, it inevitably leads
to substance dualism or epiphenominalism. If zombies are possible, it means
that consciousness is something extra which can be taken away without
affecting anything. Thus, conscious would have no effects, which I think is
against your view. Are you familiar with this:
http://www.philforum.org/documents/An%20Unfortunate%20Dualist%20(Raymond%20Smullyan).pdfhttp://www.philforum.org/documents/An%20Unfortunate%20Dualist%20%28Raymond%20Smullyan%29.pdf?
If not, it can give you a feel for why zombies may be logically
impossible. So what is your thought on this subject? Can a universe exist
just like ours but have different qualia or none at all?

I think there are two different questions in play. Usually philosophical
zombies are defined as acting just like us; but it is left open as to
whether their internal information processing is just like ours.

That may be one definition. The way I have heard zombies defined is that
they are in all ways, physically indistinguishable; that there is no
physical test that could ever tell apart a zombie from a non-zombie. I was
using this definition above in my example and reasoning.

Jason

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Oh, yeah I would agree with you if you are talking real world live
healthy human bodies then they are going to have a human experience.
In a hypothetical, you could not know whether a person was a zombie or
not for sure, just because subjectivity is airtight, but mechanically
there is no way to take away a person's soul without changing them
physically.

On Jul 12, 9:57 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 6:10 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
**
On 7/12/2011 2:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Craig Weinberg
whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

I think the problem with Chalmer's view, is that by assuming a universe
without qualia (or philosophical zombies) are possible, it inevitably leads
to substance dualism or epiphenominalism. If zombies are possible, it means
that consciousness is something extra which can be taken away without
affecting anything. Thus, conscious would have no effects, which I think is
against your view. Are you familiar with this:
http://www.philforum.org/documents/An%20Unfortunate%20Dualist%20(Raym...http://www.philforum.org/documents/An%20Unfortunate%20Dualist%20%28Ra...?
If not, it can give you a feel for why zombies may be logically
impossible. So what is your thought on this subject? Can a universe exist
just like ours but have different qualia or none at all?

Jason

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-11 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 10 Jul 2011, at 17:59, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/9/2011 9:58 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Sure, it would be great to have improved synthetic bodies, but I have
no reason to believe that depth and quality of consciousness is
independent from substance. If I have an artificial heart, that
artificiality may not affect me as much as having an artificial leg,
however, an artificial brain means an artificial me, and that's a
completely different story. It's like writing a computer program to
replace computer users. You might find out that digital circuits are
unconscious by definition.

But analog ones are? It is generally thought that any analog
circuit can be reproduced at any give level of precision by a
digital circuit.

You can build analog circuit which are not Turing emulable, but it
depends on your theory of computation on the reals, which lacks the
equivalent of Church thesis, so that there is no unanimity of what
this is, and if that exists in nature. I am agnostic.

Bruno's idea depends on this being true.

Which idea? I just show that comp makes physics necessarily a branch
of math, and precisely a branch of universal machine theology. I am
not saying that comp is true or false. That is the job of philosophers.

It is questionable though because it may be the case that spacetime
is truly a continuum: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128204.200-distant-light-hints-at-size-of-spacetime-grains.html
It's hard to believe though that the continuous nature of spacetime
would effect the function of brains. However, it would prevent the
digital simulation of large regions.

Comp explains that physics is not Turing emulable. Indeed, today,
physics seems still too much Turing emulable compared to what we can
extract intuitively from comp. But comp is not refuted by that fact,
because the real extraction of physics must obeys to the self-
referential constraints, which shows the question being highly non
trivial.

Bruno

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

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-11 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 11 Jul 2011, at 04:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:


All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being Turing
emulable.


Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.


That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you  
believe in substantial infinite souls.





Your computer
can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.


Why?




The problem with
emulating molecules is that we are only emulating the side of the coin
we can see.


That is true.




The other side is blank and that's the side that
interiority and awareness is made of. We can add chips to our brain
though, or build a computer out of cells.


The other side is well explained in the comp theory.







Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.


If you are saying that the machine may already have it's own qualia,
then sure, I agree, I just don't think it will be our qualia. I think
that our experience of yellow, for example, probably comes through
cellular experiences with photosynthesis and probably has not evolved
much since the Pre-Cambrian. Of course that's a guess. It could be a
mammalian thing or a hominid thing that arises out of the experience
of elaborations throughout the cortex. In order for a silicon chip to
generate that experience of yellow, I think it would have to learn to
speak chlorophyll and hemoglobin.


No problem. That would mean that the substitution level is low. It  
does no change the conclusion: the physical world is a projection of  
the mind, and the mind is an inside view of arithmetic (or comp is  
false, that is, at all level and you need substantial souls). But we  
don't even find a substance for explaining matter, so that seems a  
regression to me. Anyway, it is inconsistent with the comp assumption.








I agree. But this is a consequence of comp, and it leads to a
derivation of physics from computer science/machine's theology. No
need to introduce any physics (old or new).


It could be that, but the transparency of comp to physical realities
and semantic consistencies are pretty convincing to me.


It is not.




I would rather
think that I am feeling what my fingers are feeling then imagining
that feeling is just a mathematical illusion. Mathematics seem
abstract and yellow seems concrete.


But computer science explains why and how such feelings occur.






That's certainly *looks* like the arithmetical plotinian physics.
Again, you can extract it (or have to extract it for getting the
correct quanta/qualia) from computer science (actually from just
addition and multiplication and a small amount of logic).



I don't really do that. I don't think that consciousness can be
created or be synthetic. It is not the product of any machine,  
natural

or artificial. Such machines only filter consciousness and select
relative partial realities. My main point is that this is testable.  
It

already explains non locality, indeterminacy, non-cloning of matter,
and some formal aspect of quantum mechanics.


Sorry, not sure what you mean. Probably over my head. What is it that
explains non-cloning of matter? comp? Give me some details and I'll
try to understand.


Read http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

If you get the six or seven first steps, it is an easy exercise to  
show that matter cannot be cloned. Ask if you have any difficulty.






That is too vague. It can make sense in the computationalist theory.
yet the brain itself is a construct of the mind. Not the human mind
but the relative experience of the many universal numbers/
computational histories. This follows from the digital mechanist
hypothesis.


Again, I'm not familiar enough with the theories. It sounds like
you're saying that the brain is made of numbers. Maybe? Not sure it
makes a difference?


The brain is not made of numbers.

The belief in brains (and atoms) entirely results from infinities of  
number relations.


Or comp is false.

My point is just that computer science makes this enough precise so  
that comp can be tested.


Bruno





On Jul 10, 11:32 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


You might find out that molecules in brain are unconscious too.



The fact that consciousness changes predictably when different
molecules are introduced to the brain, and that we are able to  
produce

different molecules by changing the content of our consciousness
subjectively suggests to me that it makes sense to give molecules  
the

benefit of the doubt.


All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

 That's not true.  It's dead precisely because it doesn't have the same
 organization.

No, it's dead because the organization means something specific to the
molecular participants below and the biological community above. If it
were just a matter of organization, then there should be no particular
problem with reviving dead organisms, and we would make no more
distinction between our own life and death and the cold and warm
temperature of an inanimate object. Organization does not explain
subjective entanglement. Desire, terror, rage, hysterical laughter,
etc. Organization, by itself, has no significance.


On Jul 10, 3:05 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/9/2011 5:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  A living cell is more than the sum of it's parts. A dead cell is made
  of the same materials with the same organization as a living cell,

 That's not true.  It's dead precisely because it doesn't have the same
 organization.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-11 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


...



Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out
of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units
are vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself?
Does the ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions
as yellow or does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else.
At what point does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were
there other options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What
is the minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience
yellow?


Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.



Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about that 
statement? (But please not in French)


Best wishes,

Evgenii
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-11 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 11 Jul 2011, at 14:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


...



Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out
of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units
are vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself?
Does the ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions
as yellow or does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else.
At what point does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were
there other options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What
is the minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience
yellow?


Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.



Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about  
that statement? (But please not in French)


I am afraid the only text which explains this in simple way is my  
sane04 paper(*). It is in the second part (the interview of the  
machine), and it uses Smullyan popular explanation of the logic of  
self-reference (G) from his Forever Undecided popular book.


Popular attempts to explain Gödel's theorem are often incorrect, and  
the whole matter is very delicate. Philosophers, like Lucas, or  
physicists, like Penrose, illustrate that it is hard to explain  
Gödel's result to non logicians. I'm afraid the time has not yet come  
for popular explanation of machine's theology.


Let me try a short attempt. By Gödel's theorem we know that for any  
machine, the set of true propositions about the machine is bigger than  
the set of the propositions provable by the machine. Now, Gödel  
already knew that a machine can prove that very fact about herself,  
and so can be aware of its own limitations. Such a machine is forced  
to discover a vast range of true proposition about her that she cannot  
prove, and such a machine can study the logic to which such  
propositions are obeying.


Then, it is a technical fact that such logics (of the non provable,  
yet discoverable propositions) obeys some theories of qualia which  
have been proposed in the literature (by J.L. Bell, for example).


So the machine which introspects itself (the mystical machine) is  
bounded to discover the gap between the provable and truth (the G-G*  
gap), but also the difference between all the points of view (third  
person = provable, first person = provable-and-true, observable with  
probability 1 = provable-and-consistent, feelable =  provable-and- 
consistent-and-true, etc.).


When the machine studies the logic of those propositions, she  
rediscovers more or less a picture of reality akin to the mystical  
rationalists (like Plato, Plotinus, but also Nagasena, and many others).


If you are familiar with the logic G, I might be able to explain more.  
If not, read Smullyan's book, perhaps.
All this is new material, and, premature popular version can be  
misleading. Elementary logic is just not yet well enough known.


In fact, the UDA *is* the human-popular version of all this. The AUDA  
is the proper machine's technical version.


If you read the sane04(*) paper, feel free to ask for any precisions.

Best,

Bruno

(*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

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



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Maybe I should try to condense this a bit. The primary disagreement we
have is rooted in how we view the relation between feeling, awareness,
qualia, and meaning, calculation, and complexity. I know from having
gone through dozens of these conversations that you are likely to
adhere to your position, which I would characterize as one which
treats subjective qualities as trivial, automatic consequences which
arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
computations.

My view is that your position adheres to a very useful and widely held
model the universe, and which is critically important for specialized
tasks of an engineering nature, but that it wildly undervalues the
chasm separating ordinary human experience from neurology. Further I
think that this philosophy is rooted in Enlightenment Era assumptions
which, although spectacularly successful during the 17th-20th
centuries, are no longer fully adequate to explain the realities of
the relation between psyche and cosmos.

What I'm giving you is a model which picks up where your model leaves
off. I'm very familiar with all of the examples you are working with -
color perception, etc. I have thought about all of these issues for
many years, so unless you are presenting something which is from a
source that is truly obscure, you can assume that I already have
considered it.

I disagree with this.  Do you have an argument to help convince me to change
my opinion?

You have to give me reasons why you disagree with it.

There is no change in the wiring (hardware) of the computer, only a software
change has occurred.

Right, that's what I'm saying. From the perspective of the wiring/
hardware/brain, there is no difference between consciousness and
unconsciousness. What you aren't seeing is that the unassailable fact
of our own consciousness is all the evidence that is required to
qualify it as a legitimate, causally efficacious phenomenology in the
cosmos rather than an epiphenomenology which magically appears
whenever it is convenient for physical mechanics. This is what I am
saying must be present as a potential within or through matter from
the beginning or not at all.

The next think you would need to realize is that software is in the
eye of the beholder. Wires don't read books. They don't see colors. A
quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
feel pain. They're just wires. I can make a YouTube of myself sitting
still and smiling, and I can do a live video Skype and sit there and
so the same thing and it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

It's not the computer that creates meaning, it's the person who is
using the computer. Not a cat, not a plant, not another computer, but
a person. If a cat could make a computer, we probably could not use it
either, although we might have a better shot at figuring it out.

would it concern you if you learned you had been reconstructed by the medical
device's own internal store of matter, rather than use your original atoms?

No, no, you don't understand who you're talking to. I'm not some bio-
sentimentalist. If I thought that I could be uploaded into a billion
tongued omnipotent robot I would be more than happy to shed this
crappy monkey body. I'm all over that. I want that. I'm just saying
that we're not going to get there by imitating the logic of out higher
cortical functions in silicon. It doesn't work that way. Thought is an
elaboration of emotion, emotion of feeling, feeling of sense, and
sense of detection. Electronically stimulated silicon never gets
beyond detection, so ontologically it's like one big molecule in the
sense that it can make. It can act as a vessel for us to push human
sense patterns through serially as long as you've got a conscious
human receiver, but the conduit itself has no taste for human sense
patterns, it just knows thermodynamic electromotive sense. Human
experience is not that. A YouTube of a person is not a person.

Color is how nerve impulses from the optive nerve feel to us.
Why doesn't it just feel like a nerve impulse? Why invent a
phenomenology of color out of whole cloth to intervene upon one group
of nerve cells and another? Color doesn't have to exist. It provides
no functional advantage over detection of light wavelengths through a
linear continuum. Your eyes could work just like your gall bladder,
detecting conditions and responding to them without invoking any
holographic layer of gorgeous 3D technicolor perception. One computer
doesn't need to use a keyboard and screen to talk to another, so it
would make absolutely no sense for such a thing to need to exist for
the brain to understand something that way, unless such qualities were
already part of what the brain is made of. It's not nerve impulses we
are feeling, we are nerves and we are the impulses of the nerves.
Impulses are nerve cells feeling, seeing, tasting, choosing. They just
look like nerve cells from the

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 Maybe I should try to condense this a bit. The primary disagreement we
 have is rooted in how we view the relation between feeling, awareness,
 qualia, and meaning, calculation, and complexity. I know from having
 gone through dozens of these conversations that you are likely to
 adhere to your position, which I would characterize as one which
 treats subjective qualities as trivial,


They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
of neurons and quadrillions of connections.


 automatic consequences which
 arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
 computations.


Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.



 My view is that your position adheres to a very useful and widely held
 model the universe, and which is critically important for specialized
 tasks of an engineering nature, but that it wildly undervalues the
 chasm separating ordinary human experience from neurology. Further I
 think that this philosophy is rooted in Enlightenment Era assumptions
 which, although spectacularly successful during the 17th-20th
 centuries, are no longer fully adequate to explain the realities of
 the relation between psyche and cosmos.

 What I'm giving you is a model which picks up where your model leaves
 off. I'm very familiar with all of the examples you are working with -
 color perception, etc. I have thought about all of these issues for
 many years, so unless you are presenting something which is from a
 source that is truly obscure, you can assume that I already have
 considered it.

 I disagree with this.  Do you have an argument to help convince me to
 change
 my opinion?

 You have to give me reasons why you disagree with it.

 There is no change in the wiring (hardware) of the computer, only a
 software
 change has occurred.

 Right, that's what I'm saying. From the perspective of the wiring/
 hardware/brain, there is no difference between consciousness and
 unconsciousness. What you aren't seeing is that the unassailable fact
 of our own consciousness is all the evidence that is required to
 qualify it as a legitimate, causally efficacious phenomenology in the
 cosmos rather than an epiphenomenology which magically appears
 whenever it is convenient for physical mechanics. This is what I am
 saying must be present as a potential within or through matter from
 the beginning or not at all.


I agree consciousness has effects, and is not an epiphenomenon.



 The next think you would need to realize is that software is in the
 eye of the beholder. Wires don't read books. They don't see colors. A
 quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
 feel pain.


I think they can.


 They're just wires. I can make a YouTube of myself sitting
 still and smiling, and I can do a live video Skype and sit there and
 so the same thing and it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
 just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.


There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a description
of a computation, and the computation itself.



 It's not the computer that creates meaning, it's the person who is
 using the computer. Not a cat, not a plant, not another computer, but
 a person. If a cat could make a computer, we probably could not use it
 either, although we might have a better shot at figuring it out.

 would it concern you if you learned you had been reconstructed by the
 medical
 device's own internal store of matter, rather than use your original
 atoms?

 No, no, you don't understand who you're talking to. I'm not some bio-
 sentimentalist. If I thought that I could be uploaded into a billion
 tongued omnipotent robot I would be more than happy to shed this
 crappy monkey body. I'm all over that. I want that. I'm just saying
 that we're not going to get there by imitating the logic of out higher
 cortical functions in silicon. It doesn't work that way. Thought is an
 elaboration of emotion, emotion of feeling, feeling of sense, and
 sense of detection. Electronically stimulated silicon never gets
 beyond detection, so ontologically it's like one big molecule in the
 sense that it can make. It can act as a vessel for us to push human
 sense patterns through serially as long as you've got a conscious
 human receiver, but the conduit itself has no taste for human sense
 patterns, it just knows thermodynamic electromotive sense. Human
 experience is not that. A YouTube of a person is not a person.


Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
appropriate processing system can perceive.



 Color is how nerve impulses from the optive nerve feel to us.
 Why doesn't it just feel like a nerve impulse? Why invent a
 phenomenology of color out of whole cloth to intervene upon one group
 of nerve cells and another? Color doesn't have to exist. It provides
 no functional advantage over detection of light

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

What in the brain would be not Turing emulable
 

Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out of
ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units are
vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself? Does the
ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or
does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point
does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the minimum
mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

   


When the aforesaid ping pong ball brain can cause the word yellow to 
be enunciated and/or written on all and only occasions that normal 
English speakers do.  When it anticipates traffic signal lights turning 
red.  When it identifies sour fruit.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
of neurons and quadrillions of connections.

Trivial in the technical sense of not being as real as the objective
mechanics which are associated with them. You are saying that it's
only the high quantity of neurons and connections between them that
makes them real rather than the other way around. To say that
subjective qualities are non-trivial would mean acknowledging that it
is the subjective qualities themselves which are driving cells,
neurons, organisms, and cultures rather than just mechanism. You are
saying that hydrogen is non-trivial but yellow is one of an infinite
number of possible colors. I'm saying that the visible spectrum is as
fundamental and irreducible as the periodic table, even though it may
require a more complex organic arrangement to realize subjectively.

Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.
Processing isn't an independent thing, it's what things do. In the
context of inputprocessingoutput, then processing stands for
everything in between input and output: processing by whatever
phenomenon is the processor.

 quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
 feel pain.

I think they can

Based upon what? Can cartoons see feel pain? Why not?

it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
 just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a description
of a computation, and the computation itself.

Yellow is not a computation. Discerning whether something is a
different frequency of luminosity than another is a computation,
correlating that to a sensory experience is a computation, but the
experience itself is not a computation. I can give you coordinates for
a polygon and you can draw it on paper or in your mind but giving you
the wavelength for a shade of X-Ray will not help you see it's color
or create a color. It doesn't matter how complex my formula is. Color
cannot be described quantitatively. It's not a matter of waiting for
technology to get better, it's a matter of understanding the
limitations of the exterior topology of our universe.

Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
appropriate processing system can perceive.

I think that anything can perceive, whether it's a processing system
or not. Not human perception, but if it's matter, then it has
electromagnetic properties and corresponding sensorimotor coherence.
All matter makes sense. It's just that the sense the brain makes
recapitulates a specific layer cake of organic molecular, cellular
biochemical, somatic zoological, neuro anthropological, and
psychological semiotic protocols which are not separate from what they
physically are. You can't export the canon of microbiological wisdom
into a stone unless you make the stone live as a creature. It's not
third party translatable. If it were, then every rock and tree would
by now have learned to speak Portuguese and cook up a mean linguine
with clams.

If red did not look very different from green, to you would fail to pick out
the berries in the bush.

That's a fallacy. First you're reducing red or green to a mechanical
function of visual differentiation. Such a definition of color does
not require conscious experience or vision at all. The bush and the
berries could just look like what they taste like. Why create a
separate perceptual ontology? You're also reverse engineering color to
match the contemporary assumptions of evolutionary biology. We have no
reason to suspect that selection pressure would or could conjure a
color palette out of thin air. A longer beak, yes. Prehensile tail,
sure. You've already got the physical structure, it just gets
exaggerated through heredity. Where is the ancestor of red though?

Yes information must be interpreted by a processing system to become
meaningful, but it doesn't have to be a biological organism.

Systems don't interpret information, they just present it in different
ways. It makes no difference to a computer whether a text is stored as
natural language, hexadecimal bytes, or semiconductor states. There is
no signifying coherence on the computer level, it's just an array of
low level phenomena being used to simulate and reflect high level
organic sense. You might be able to build chemo-electronic inorganism
which feels and has meaning, but my sense is that it would end up
being no more controllable than biological entities. What we want out
of a processing system - reliability, obedience, precision, etc, is
precisely what is lost when we want to traffic in meaning beyond
digital certainties.

 Constructed out of what?

Information and the processing thereof.

You cannot construct a color out of information, any more than you can
construct dinner out of information. Color is concrete sensory
experience - ineffable, idiopathic, self-revealing. There is no
information there, no recipe, it's an ontological

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

But it could do those things without ever experiencing yellow. A
traffic signal could look like the smell of burnt toast and achieve
the exact same functionality.Yellow isn't just some variable used as a
placeholder. It has a specific character than must be seen first hand
to have any understanding of. Without that subjective experience of
what yellow looks like, you're just simulating behaviors of yellow-
sightedness.

On Jul 11, 1:49 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/10/2011 6:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  What in the brain would be not Turing emulable

  Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out of
  ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
  perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
  automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units are
  vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself? Does the
  ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or
  does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point
  does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
  options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the minimum
  mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

 When the aforesaid ping pong ball brain can cause the word yellow to
 be enunciated and/or written on all and only occasions that normal
 English speakers do.  When it anticipates traffic signal lights turning
 red.  When it identifies sour fruit.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I do think that we can say, with the same certainty that we cannot
create a square circle, that it would not be possible at any level of
complexity. It's not that they can't create novelty or surprise, it's
that they can't feel or care about their own survival. I'm saying that
the potential for awareness must be built in to matter at the lowest
level or not at all.


At the lowest level ping pong balls and brains are mde of the same stuff 
(quarks, electrons, photons,).  So the potential for awareness is 
built in to quarks, electrons, photons, etc.  Your position seems 
incoherent.  You're saying brains are made of special stuff that can be 
conscious.  But on the other hand you say that if any stuff is special 
all stuff must be special (which kind of robs special of its usual 
meaning).  But then you say that even if all stuff is special you can't 
make a conscious brain out of just any stuff, you have to make it out of 
special stuff.  ???


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Yeah I like that demo. It's not a new primary color though, that's
just contradictory mixing of familiar colors.


Primary colors aren't even a mental construct.  They're a language 
choice.  Orange is new primary color (according to you), as is cyan and 
magenta and brown and white and black.  Some languages have dozens of 
colors some have only a few.  Which are called primary is purely a 
language convention.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Qualia aren't directly connected to sensory measurements from the 
environment though.  If I swapped all the red-preferring cones in your 
eyes with the blue-preferring cones, then shone blue-colored light at 
your eyes, you would report it as red.


For about a week.  And then he'd report it as blue.  At least that's 
what I'd predict based on people wearing glasses that invert everything 
or swap right and left.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


Why can't we mentally construct new colors
ourselves?


We have little control over the number of cone cells we are born 
with.  (But this may change soon, using gene therapy).  If we had full 
control to rewire our brain in any way we wanted, we could perceive 
entirely novel, never before seen colors.


Supposedly people who receive artificial lenses in their eyes can see a 
little into the ultra-violet part of the spectrum.  I don't suppose this 
gives them the sensation of a previously unseen color though since the 
eye doesn't have any cones with specific pigment for UV (at least my 
mother says she doesn't notice any new colors).


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying.

 Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.

That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you
believe in substantial infinite souls.

Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
differently than a biological plant. A computer chip behaves
differently than a neuron. Why assume that a computer chip can feel
what a living cell can feel?

 Your computer
 can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.

Why?

I'm talking about your actual computer that you are reading this on.
Are you asking me why it can't commit suicide or spontaneously develop
a hankering for ammonia?

The other side is well explained in the comp theory.

I'm giving it a good try reading your SANE2004 pdf but I think I'm
hovering at around 4% comprehension. If you want me to be able to
consider your hypothesis I think that you will have to radically
simplify it's insights to concrete examples which are not dependent
upon references to anyone else's work, logical/mathematical/or
philosophical notation, teleportation, or Turing anything.

As near as I can tell, it seems like you are looking at the hows and
whys of sensation - how physics and sensation are both logical
relations rather than noumenal existential artifacts and why it might
be necessary. I can't really tell what your answer is though. My focus
is on describing what and who we are in the simplest way. To my mind,
what and who we are cannot be described in purely arithmetic
relations, unless arithmetic relations automatically obscure their
origin and present themselves in all possible universes as color,
sound, taste, feeling, etc.

No problem. That would mean that the substitution level is low. It
does no change the conclusion: the physical world is a projection of
the mind, and the mind is an inside view of arithmetic (or comp is
false, that is, at all level and you need substantial souls). But we
don't even find a substance for explaining matter, so that seems a
regression to me. Anyway, it is inconsistent with the comp assumption.

When you say that the physical world is a projection of the mind, do
you mean that in the sense that it might be possible to stop bullets
directly with our thoughts or in the sense of physicality only seeming
physical because our mind is programmed to read it as such? I would
agree that physicality arises only from the body's own physical
composition and our mind's apprehension of the body's awareness of
itself in relation to it's world, but I wouldn't say that physical
matter is a mental phenomenon. By definition, mental phenomena are
exempt from physical constraints, such as gravity, thermodynamics,
etc.

I don't know about the mind being an inside view of arithmetic. I
would say that arithmetic is only one category of sense and see no
reason to privilege it above aesthetic sense or anthropomorphic sense.
Sense is the elemental level to me. Pattern and pattern detection.
Counting is just another pattern. Not all patterns can be reduced to
something that can be counted. Some things have to be named. Still
others cannot be named or numbered.

But computer science explains why and how such feelings occur.

Computer science explains why pain exists?

If you get the six or seven first steps, it is an easy exercise to
show that matter cannot be cloned. Ask if you have any difficulty.

Unfortunately I can't really get any of the steps.


On Jul 11, 4:26 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 11 Jul 2011, at 04:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
  computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being Turing
  emulable.

  Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.

 That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you  
 believe in substantial infinite souls.

  Your computer
  can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.

 Why?

  The problem with
  emulating molecules is that we are only emulating the side of the coin
  we can see.

 That is true.

  The other side is blank and that's the side that
  interiority and awareness is made of. We can add chips to our brain
  though, or build a computer out of cells.

 The other side is well explained in the comp theory.



  Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
  machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
  third person point of view and first person points of view. The
  machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
  qualia and quanta seems different.

  If you are saying that the machine may already have it's own qualia,
  then sure, I agree, I just don't think it will be our qualia. I think
  that our experience of yellow, for example, probably comes through
  cellular experiences with photosynthesis and probably has not evolved
  much since the Pre-Cambrian. Of course that's a guess. It could be a
  mammalian thing or a

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Jul 11, 2011, at 4:47 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Why can't we mentally construct new colors
ourselves?

We have little control over the number of cone cells we are born
with. (But this may change soon, using gene therapy). If we had
full control to rewire our brain in any way we wanted, we could
perceive entirely novel, never before seen colors.

Supposedly people who receive artificial lenses in their eyes can
see a little into the ultra-violet part of the spectrum. I don't
suppose this gives them the sensation of a previously unseen color
though since the eye doesn't have any cones with specific pigment
for UV (at least my mother says she doesn't notice any new colors).

Brent

What I've heard is that those people report uv light as purpleish
white. It is because uv light stimulates all three types of cones,
but affects the short wavelength preferring cone somehat more strongly.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

I'm not talking about acutal ping pong balls, I'm talking about ideal
ping pong balls which are not made of any subordinate units. Just
white spheres which serve as placeholders for atoms, digital vectors,
whatever. Just the principle of basic things having only physical
qualities to demonstrate how it doesn't follow that arrangement in and
of itself can cause anything live or feel.

Instead, I propose that real atoms have real properties which we
cannot observe unless they are in a complex arrangement which is
similar enough to our own that we can relate to it as a whole. All
stuff is special, but the quality that makes it special is the ability
to feel more and more special through combining in groups, meta
groups, meta meta groups, etc. Externally, it's expressed over space
as increasingly elaborate nested groupings or inertial frames of
objects and movements governed by electomagnetic relativity, but
internally it's expressed as a coherence of sensorimotive perceptual
frames. Instead of more equaling literally more cells or synapses,
more equals better, greater, richer. Not merely larger, faster,
denser, closer, but more important, more powerful, more satisfying.

To say that something is conscious just means that it 'acts like us'.
The less we can relate to any particular thing, the more we fail to
perceive it as employing awareness. Instead we see it as automatic
'nature', probability, etc. That's just what it looks like from the
outside, out of focus as it were, on different scales and in non-human
contexts. The universe is all one thing but it's a zillion different
private interior universes also depending on what you are, how you
participate in it.

Primary colors aren't even a mental construct.  They're a language
choice.  Orange is new primary color (according to you), as is cyan and
magenta and brown and white and black.  Some languages have dozens of
colors some have only a few.  Which are called primary is purely a
language convention.

I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
reflected light. Cultures may not distinguish green from blue as far
as referring to it by name, but they can see that green and green plus
cannot be made by combining any other colors if it were demonstrated
to them.



On Jul 11, 5:33 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  I do think that we can say, with the same certainty that we cannot
  create a square circle, that it would not be possible at any level of
  complexity. It's not that they can't create novelty or surprise, it's
  that they can't feel or care about their own survival. I'm saying that
  the potential for awareness must be built in to matter at the lowest
  level or not at all.

 At the lowest level ping pong balls and brains are mde of the same stuff
 (quarks, electrons, photons,).  So the potential for awareness is
 built in to quarks, electrons, photons, etc.  Your position seems
 incoherent.  You're saying brains are made of special stuff that can be
 conscious.  But on the other hand you say that if any stuff is special
 all stuff must be special (which kind of robs special of its usual
 meaning).  But then you say that even if all stuff is special you can't
 make a conscious brain out of just any stuff, you have to make it out of
 special stuff.  ???

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/11/2011 3:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
reflected light.


It's not the case that all colors can be reproduced by combinations of a 
fixed choice of red, green, and blue.  I refer you to pg 818 of Sears 
and Zemansky - my freshman physics text.  In any case, the fact that one 
can approximately match a color with an RGB mixture is a consequence of 
the human eye having three pigments in the color receptors.  If it had 
four, then you'd need another primary color.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
 distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
 to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
 hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
 reflected light. Cultures may not distinguish green from blue as far
 as referring to it by name, but they can see that green and green plus
 cannot be made by combining any other colors if it were demonstrated
 to them.


Craig,

Do you believe there is something physically special about red green and
blue compared to other wavelengths of light?  Do you think other animals
that see colors can only see combinations of red, green and blue, regardless
of the number of types of color receptive cells are in their retina?

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

There are humans who have four pigments in their color receptors but
they do not perceive a fourth primary color.
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf

They just have increased distinction between the primary colors we
perceive. I take that to mean that they cannot point to anything in
nature as having a bright color that ordinary trichromats have never
seen.

Yeah I don't know the technical descriptions of what constitutes
primacy in hues, but it's not important to what I'm trying to get at.
The important thing is that the range and variety of colors we can see
or imagine is not explainable in purely quantitative or physical
terms, neither is it metaphysical, random, made up, or arbitrary. It
constitutes a visual semantic firmament, similar to the periodic
table. The differences between the color wheel and the periodic table
is that since experiences and feelings are phenomena that are
ontologically perpendicular to their external mechanics, they are not
strictly definable through literal observation and measurement, but
through first hand encounters which address the subject directly in a
more uncertain, figurative way. Colors look different depending on
what colors they are adjacent to, what mood we are in, our gender,
etc. unlike iron and magnesium which remain the same if placed next to
each other.


On Jul 11, 7:12 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/11/2011 3:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
  distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
  to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
  hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
  reflected light.

 It's not the case that all colors can be reproduced by combinations of a
 fixed choice of red, green, and blue.  I refer you to pg 818 of Sears
 and Zemansky - my freshman physics text.  In any case, the fact that one
 can approximately match a color with an RGB mixture is a consequence of
 the human eye having three pigments in the color receptors.  If it had
 four, then you'd need another primary color.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
 of neurons and quadrillions of connections.

 Trivial in the technical sense of not being as real as the objective
 mechanics which are associated with them. You are saying that it's
 only the high quantity of neurons and connections between them that
 makes them real rather than the other way around.


Not just their quantity, but the relationships of their connections to each
other.


 To say that
 subjective qualities are non-trivial would mean acknowledging that it
 is the subjective qualities themselves which are driving cells,
 neurons, organisms, and cultures rather than just mechanism. You are
 saying that hydrogen is non-trivial but yellow is one of an infinite
 number of possible colors. I'm saying that the visible spectrum is as
 fundamental and irreducible as the periodic table, even though it may
 require a more complex organic arrangement to realize subjectively.

 Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.
 Processing isn't an independent thing, it's what things do.


This is functionalism, it is what things do that matters, not what they are
made of.


 In the
 context of inputprocessingoutput, then processing stands for
 everything in between input and output: processing by whatever
 phenomenon is the processor.



You are defining the process as everything that happens in the middle, but
how much of that everything is relevant to the outcome?  If a neuron
releases 278,231,782,956 ions instead of 278,231,782,957 is that going to
be relevant to how the mind evolves over time, or what qualia are
experienced?  What about neutrinos passing through the head of the person,
are those important to the model of the brain?  I think you would find that
a lot of the processes going on within a person's head is irrelevant to the
production of consciousness.  In an earlier post you mentioned hemoglobin
playing a role, but if we could substitute a persons blood with some other
oxygen rich solution which was just as capable of supporting the normal
metabolism of cells, then why should the brain behave any differently, and
if it does not behave differently how could the perception of yellow be said
to be different?  The mind experiencing the sensation of yellow isn't going
to say or do anything different if its outputs are the same.  The two minds
would contain the same information, and thus there is nothing to inform the
mind of any difference in perception.



  quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
  feel pain.

 I think they can

 Based upon what?


My belief that dualism, and mind-brain identity theory are false, and the
success of multiple realizability, functionalism, and computationalism in
resolving various paradoxes in the philosophy of mind.


 Can cartoons see feel pain? Why not?


Cartoons aren't systems that receive and update their state and disposition
based upon the reception and processing of that information.


 it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
  just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

 There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a
 description
 of a computation, and the computation itself.

 Yellow is not a computation. Discerning whether something is a
 different frequency of luminosity than another is a computation,
 correlating that to a sensory experience is a computation, but the
 experience itself is not a computation. I can give you coordinates for
 a polygon and you can draw it on paper or in your mind but giving you
 the wavelength for a shade of X-Ray will not help you see it's color
 or create a color. It doesn't matter how complex my formula is. Color
 cannot be described quantitatively.


It is more than a one dimensional quantity, I agree.  It is a value of
rather high complexity and dimensionality existing in the context of your
neural network.  Since your neural network is highly complex, the effects
the perception has (what it takes to define it) is likewise highly complex.
 I think the primary reason you have come to your conclusions, while I have
come to mine, is that you think qualia such as yellow are simple, while I
think the opposite is true.  If visual sensations were so simple, why would
30% of your cortex be devoted to its processing?  This is a huge number of
neurons, for handling at most maybe a million or so pixels.  How many
neurons do you think are needed to sense each pixel of yellow?


 It's not a matter of waiting for
 technology to get better, it's a matter of understanding the
 limitations of the exterior topology of our universe.

 Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
 appropriate processing system can perceive.

 I think that anything can perceive, whether it's a processing system
 or not. Not human perception, but if it's matter, then it has
 electromagnetic properties and

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On Jul 11, 7:13 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 Craig,

 Do you believe there is something physically special about red green and
 blue compared to other wavelengths of light?  Do you think other animals
 that see colors can only see combinations of red, green and blue, regardless
 of the number of types of color receptive cells are in their retina?

 Jason

No, electromagnetic wavelengths do not define colors. Wavelengths just
correspond to cellular sensitivities of cells in the retina, but not
necessarily the brain. The visual cortex is not displaying an
illuminated image inside of the brain's tissue.

I don't know what other animals see. What about insects or plants?
Chlorophyll responds to visible light...perhaps color reception is the
subjective purpose of chloroplasts.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/11/2011 11:35 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

But it could do those things without ever experiencing yellow.


So you say.  But it's just an unsupported assertion on your part.  If 
the ping-pong intelligence could do those things without experiencing 
yellow then maybe you could too.  I would I know?


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.