Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-08-04 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 10-juil.-06, à 04:58, George Levy a écrit :


 Stephen Paul King wrote:

 little discussion has
 been given to the implications of taking the 1st person aspect as 
 primary or
 fundamental. Could you point me toward any that you have seen?



 Hi Stephen

 Alas, I am a mere engineer, not a philosopher. The only author I can
 point you to is John Locke who I was told had some view similar to the
 ones I expressed. I have formed my opinions  mostly independently in 
 the
 process of writing a book (unpublished :'( )  I think that science is
 moving gradually toward first person - starting with Galileo's
 relativity, then Einstein's relativity and finally with QM (MWI). As
 science had progressed, the observer has acquired a greater and greater
 importance. Extrapolating to the limit, I becomes central and its
 existence anthropically defines (creates) the world where it resides.


I think Stephen Paul king, David Lyman and you are on the same 
heraclitean track.
It is possible to divide the greek 'theologian into the Parmenidians 
and the Heracliteans. Actually the same division appears in the world 
of the physicists and mathematicians. The trifle between Brouwer and 
Cantor is reminiscent of that division. It is the battle between the 
first person and the third person for the supremacy with respect to the 
fundamental questions. The first person want time/consciousness to be 
primary, and is basically Heraclitean. The third person want the 
primitive elements to be sharable so that their fundamental theories 
can be scientific (meaning sharable).
It is a complex matter, and it is, to be sure, still an open question, 
depending on the behavior of some arithmetical interpretation of the 
notion of persons (Plotinus' hypostases). See the recent conversation 
on the FOR list which bears on that question.

Bruno

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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-10 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Would you agree that this imaginary 'substantial
  world' is a figment of our existing (math - comp
  based) logic and with another one it would be 'that
  way', not 'this way'? Inescabapbly!?

 I guess you know that the sum of the 100 first odd numbers is 100^2.
 If you really believe there  is world where such a proposition is
 false, then I would agree that the comp-physics could be different
 there for the machines living in that world.

The world of necessary logical truths is much larger than
the wrord of phsyically possible universes, which is much
larger than the observed world (the only
one that deserves to be written without scare-quotes).

The question is not whether there is a world beyond even
logical possibility, but why the observed world is so much
smaller than the Platonias. Matter answers that easily.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-10 Thread 1Z


George Levy wrote:

 Stephen Paul King wrote:

 little discussion has
 been given to the implications of taking the 1st person aspect as primary or
 fundamental. Could you point me toward any that you have seen?
 
 

 Hi Stephen

 Alas, I am a mere engineer, not a philosopher. The only author I can
 point you to is John Locke who I was told had some view similar to the
 ones I expressed. I have formed my opinions  mostly independently in the
 process of writing a book (unpublished :'( )  I think that science is
 moving gradually toward first person - starting with Galileo's
 relativity, then Einstein's relativity and finally with QM (MWI). As
 science had progressed, the observer has acquired a greater and greater
 importance. Extrapolating to the limit, I becomes central and its
 existence anthropically defines (creates) the world where it resides.

Science may have moved close to making the observer
central epistemically , but it has not room for the idea
that observers are ontologically fundamental.

Observers are people, homo sapiens, the product of millions
of years of evolution. Scientifically speaking.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-10 Thread John M

Peter,

would you consider to identify the 'observer'? 
(Maybe not as an O -moment...)
Many think of The Observer AS me or fellow humans
while there may be a broader view, like e.g. anything
catching info which comes closer to (my) 'conscious'
definition. 
The observer seems so fundamental in the views of this
list (and in wider circles of contemporaryh thinking)
that a more general identification may be in order.
 
To Stephens question: the ongoing paradigmic change in
views include the image of 'observing' (observER) as
well, so I would not rely on older (published?)
authors 
even as reputable as Locke to adjust to recent views. 

John

--- 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 George Levy wrote:
 
  Stephen Paul King wrote:
 
  little discussion has
  been given to the implications of taking the 1st
 person aspect as primary or
  fundamental. Could you point me toward any that
 you have seen?
  
 
  Hi Stephen
 
  Alas, I am a mere engineer, not a philosopher. The
 only author I can
  point you to is John Locke who I was told had some
 view similar to the
  ones I expressed. I have formed my opinions 
 mostly independently in the
  process of writing a book (unpublished :'( )  I
 think that science is
  moving gradually toward first person - starting
 with Galileo's
  relativity, then Einstein's relativity and finally
 with QM (MWI). As
  science had progressed, the observer has acquired
 a greater and greater
  importance. Extrapolating to the limit, I
 becomes central and its
  existence anthropically defines (creates) the
 world where it resides.
 
 Science may have moved close to making the observer
 central epistemically , but it has not room for the
 idea
 that observers are ontologically fundamental.
 
 Observers are people, homo sapiens, the product of
 millions
 of years of evolution. Scientifically speaking.
 

 
 


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-10 Thread 1Z


John M wrote:
 Peter,

 would you consider to identify the 'observer'?
 (Maybe not as an O -moment...)

No, I wouldn't care to. There are theories that talk
about observations, measurement and so on
(that's epistemology), but there aren't any that
tell you what an observer *is* ontologically.
(The observer of relativity could perfectly
well be automated video-cameras for instance).

Which is as it should be. If conscious observers had a special
role in physics,. that would scupper the observation from other
sciences that consciousness is a biological phenomenon,
which has not exsited for most of the universes history.

The no-metaphysical-role for observers rule is one that
maintains the consilience of science.

http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/quantum-quackery.html

 Many think of The Observer AS me or fellow humans
 while there may be a broader view, like e.g. anything
 catching info which comes closer to (my) 'conscious'
 definition.
 The observer seems so fundamental in the views of this
 list (and in wider circles of contemporaryh thinking)
 that a more general identification may be in order.

No, no,nooo!!!

It is far too general already.

The list needs to be a lot more particualr about the
difference between ontology and epistemology, between
to be and to know. Then they would not slide
from X cannot be known without an observer to X cannot exist without
an observer.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 08-juil.-06, à 22:10, 1Z a écrit :



 Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I am just saying that I have faith in the fact that the number 17 is
 prime, independently of me.

 That 17 is prime is true, independent of you?

 Or that 17 exists, independent from you, as a a prime number. ?




A priori the first one:  [17 is prime] is  independent of me. But now 
I accept also the first order predicate rule that if someone prove 17 
is prime, he can infer Ex(x is prime), so that I can take the 
proposition it exists a number which is prime as independent of me 
too.
I don't interpret numbers existence in any substantial way like if 
there was a place and a time where you can observe the number 17 
sitting on some chair ...

Bruno



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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

 A priori the first one:  [17 is prime] is  independent of me. But now
 I accept also the first order predicate rule that if someone prove 17
 is prime, he can infer Ex(x is prime), so that I can take the
 proposition it exists a number which is prime as independent of me
 too.
 I don't interpret numbers existence in any substantial way like if
 there was a place and a time where you can observe the number 17
 sitting on some chair ...

So how do insubstantial numbers generate a substantial world ?


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread John M



--- Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 
 Le 09-juil.-06, � 14:26, 1Z a �crit : 
 
  So how do insubstantial numbers generate a
 substantial world ? 
 
 I guess there is no substantial world and I explain
 in all details here 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ (and on this list)
 why insubstantial 
 numbers generate inescapably, by the mixing of their
 additive and 
 multiplicative structures,  local coherent webs of
 beliefs in 
 substantial worlds, and how the laws of physics must
 emerge (with comp) 
 from those purely mathematical webs ... making
 comp testable in the 
 usual Popperian sense. In that sense comp already
 succeeds some first 
 tests.
 
 
 Bruno
 
Bruno, please forgive my nitpicking:
First: there is no substantial world,  - BUTL
insubstantial 
 numbers generate inescapably, [by the mixing of
their
 additive and multiplicative structures,] local[[?]] 
coherent webs of
 *beliefs* in ((nonexisting)) substantial worlds,
...

Do I see here a world generated by a solipsistic comp?
Would you agree that this imaginary 'substantial
world' is a figment of our existing (math - comp
based) logic and with another one it would be 'that
way', not 'this way'? Inescabapbly!?
Reminds me the joke of the 9 blind scientists who try
to catch in a dark room a cat that does not even
exiost. Are we the cat?
John






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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Le 09-juil.-06, à 14:26, 1Z a écrit :



  So how do insubstantial numbers generate a substantial world ?




 I guess there is no substantial world and I explain in all details here
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ (and on this list) why insubstantial
 numbers generate inescapably, by the mixing of their additive and
 multiplicative structures,  local coherent webs of beliefs in
 substantial worlds, and how the laws of physics must emerge (with comp)
 from those purely mathematical webs ... making comp testable in the
 usual Popperian sense. In that sense comp already succeeds some first
 tests.

Insubstantial numbers can't generate beliefs or appearances unless
they are substantial enough to generate some kind of psyhcological
reality. Standard solipsistic arguments, like the ones you use,
seek to show how the appearance of an objective , physical
world can arise given the *assumption* that there is already
some kind of psychological or subjective reality for appearances
to appear in and beliefs to be believed by.

Standard solipsists do not find that assumption problematic because
they are starting from their experience of the world. If you are
starting from
only the assumption of the existence (in some admitedly insubstantial
sense)
of mathematical objects. you cannot just assume that there are
experienceing
midns. You have to show how experiencing minds emerge from numbers
before you can show ow an apparent physical world arises out of their
experience.

And there is still the problem that your insubstantial mathematical
existence is still too substantial for some tastes. Claiming that
mathematical existence falls short of full physical existence
is not going to satisfy staunch anti-realists about mathematics,
for whom numbers just don't exist at all. And producing
mathematical sentences like there exists a number such...
is hardly likely to convince them that mathematical objects
have any real existnce, after they have spent their lives
inisting that such sentences are mere /facons de parler/.

Mathematical anti-realists might not be correct of course,
but  that they are wrong is and additional assumption above
and beyond COMP. (And of course anti-realists don't think
mathematical realsim is entailed by COMP. They don't think
the fact that humans can calculate means numbers exist,
why should the fact that comuters calculate persuade them that numbers
exist) ?


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread George Levy

Stephen Paul King wrote:

little discussion has 
been given to the implications of taking the 1st person aspect as primary or 
fundamental. Could you point me toward any that you have seen?
  


Hi Stephen

Alas, I am a mere engineer, not a philosopher. The only author I can 
point you to is John Locke who I was told had some view similar to the 
ones I expressed. I have formed my opinions  mostly independently in the 
process of writing a book (unpublished :'( )  I think that science is 
moving gradually toward first person - starting with Galileo's 
relativity, then Einstein's relativity and finally with QM (MWI). As 
science had progressed, the observer has acquired a greater and greater 
importance. Extrapolating to the limit, I becomes central and its 
existence anthropically defines (creates) the world where it resides.

George

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RE: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-09 Thread Stathis Papaioannou


George Levy writes:

 StephenPaulKingwrote:  Iwouldliketopointoutthatyoumayhaveinadvertentlyveeredinto theproblemthatIseeinthe"YesDoctor"belief!Itisentirely unverifiable.  Itisunverifiablefromthe3rdpersonperspective.Fromthefirst personperspectiveitisperfectlyverifiable."I"willnotobserveany changesin"myself"afterthe(brain)substitution.Thisisa fundamentalinvarianceanditisanotherargumentwhythefirstperson perspectiveshouldbetheprimaryoneandthe3rdoneshouldbethe derivedone.Andhereagainspecifyingtheframeofreferenceis importanttoavoidconfusion.
Sort of true. The person with the new brain may believe that heis the same person as the original, but he is in the same position as an outside observer as far as proving this goes. The observer says: "he seems to be the same person as far as I can tell, but it is impossible to know whether he might have completely different mental qualities, or no mental qualities at all". The subject himself says: "Ithink that I am the same person as the original, in that I have what I believe to be his memories and sense of personal identity, but there is no way even in theory for me to know that I am not in fact a completely different person with different mental qualities, or indeed that the person I recall having been was alive or sentient at all." Of course, this is also true with living life normally from moment to moment, soI'm not worried as long as the imagined continuity with a new brain is of roughly the same type. 

I still think it issimpler and and more consistent if we say that 1st person experience can onlybe meaningfulin the present: when we think about other minds, whether that means the minds of strangers, of our duplicates walking out of the teleporter, or of our past selves, then we are making a third person extrapolation of a first person experience.

Stathis PapaioannouBe one of the first to try  Windows Live Mail.
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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-08 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 07-juil.-06, à 18:32, 1Z a écrit :

 Why do you think the Curch thesis needs AR ?


There is a conceptual argument in favor of Church Thesis. It is the 
closure of the (RE) set of partial recursive functions for the 
diagonalization procedure. I will (re)explain in the solution of the 
fourth diagonalization problem. You will see that we need to believe 
that any running turing machine either stop or does not stop, which is 
equivalent to AR. Actually (but technically) I need only a tiny part of 
AR.


 Which misunderstanding are you subsribing to ? [*]

Tell me.

Bruno


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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-08 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi George,
- Original Message - 
From: George Levy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 12:49 AM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?



 Hi Stephen

 Stephen Paul King wrote:

I would like to point out that you may have inadvertently veered into
the problem that I see in the Yes Doctor belief! It is entirely
unverifiable.

 It is unverifiable from the 3rd person perspective. From the first
 person perspective it is perfectly verifiable. I will not observe any
 changes in myself after the (brain) substitution. This is a
 fundamental invariance and it is another argument why the first person
 perspective should be the primary one and the 3rd one should be the
 derived one. And here again specifying the frame of reference is
 important to avoid confusion.

I agree completely! The trouble I have is that little discussion has 
been given to the implications of taking the 1st person aspect as primary or 
fundamental. Could you point me toward any that you have seen?

Onward!

Stephen 

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-08 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 07-juil.-06, à 23:31, John M a écrit :



 Bruno:

 I speculated about my problems why I follow your (and
 others') expressions with difficulty. I was capable to
 understand concepts in diverse sciences and now I have
 to reflect about fitting 'comp', 'UDA', 'YesDoctor',
 even 'arithmetical Plationism' etc. into the flowing
 considerations. Your remark:
 ... arithmetical truth is
 not a personal construction
 made me muse: is it a Ding an sich? a god?

I am just saying that I have faith in the fact that the number 17 is 
prime, independently of me.

 together
 with your absolutistic fundamental 'number' concept it
 echoes in my mind how reasonable I found David Bohm's
 words: there are no numbers in nature, they are human
 inventions with a rebuff at another list:


I agree that there is no number in nature, but then I don't believe in 
nature as something fundamental and primitive. Please accept this as a 
summary of I have an argument that IF comp is true THEN nature emerge 
from the number.




 Are WE
 not parts of nature?

As carbon based organism, yes. Again I don't follow the dogma that 
nature is primitive.



 if numbers exist in our mind, are
 they not IN nature? ...


I don't believe that numbers exists in anything. I just believe that I 
am not so important that would I disappear, suddenly 5 becomes even.


 I found both the con and pro reasonable. To combine it
 with your quoted above statement - which I find no
 less reasonable - I 'tasted' the personal vs. the
 human.
 Add to that your undebatable non-solipsistic as well

Thanks for telling.



 NOBODY constructs 'arithmetical truth' or 'numbers',
 yet both are evolutionary features in recent human
 intellect (2-3millennia).

I do agree with this. But it is a secondary phenomenon, reflecting in 
fact the invariance of the laws of numbers (you know: 1+1=2, etc.)


 To mediate on my dichotomy:
 I may have a mental resistance in the way of absorbing
 comp etc.  because I think (new idea, so far not
 surfaced in my mind) nature (whatever, existence,
 wholeness, everything or else) is analogue and at the
 present evolutionary epistemic level we reached the
 digital logic and thinking, which is a simpler way in
 its abrupt quantization than the all-encompassing
 comparative analoguization.


No problem, I am even interested in any attempt to build other 
varieties of comp.



 I cannot think analogue-ly, such computers are in
 dreamland and we only have vague notions about it, as
 e.g. the famous: qualitative is 'bad' quantitative.
 I like to reverse it: a further evolved less
 quantitative (sort of analogue) will include wider
 aspects than included within the limited quanti models
 and provide more insight in a 'more dimensional' (not
 meant as a coordinating axis) analogue view...

OK.


 Such (subconscious?) inhibitions might have prevented
 me of staying with your iridia (in the English version
 - my 5th language) or in the better explanatory French
 version, which language I follow even much poorer.
 The fact that WE evolved into an understanding in the
 course of human mental development in which things are
 'counted' more than just: 1,2,many - is a beginning.

Yes.



 We (=humanity) absorbed this mentality as we did the
 reductionist ways of thinking, the mystique (nobody
 personally invented the religions) the care for the
 offsprings, or a regular breath-taking. Yet I
 contemplate in my wholistic views a wider horizon way,
 close to what we call analogue today, which the
 digital logic has yet to attain.


Keep attention to what we will discover about the comp 1-person, It has 
many analog aspects.
What you say could fit the comp frame.


 The 'next' level of
 thinking.
 Maybe oriental thinking is closer to the analogue,
 because they learn math 101 not digitally as our kids,


Leibniz attributes the digital to the Chineses.


 but pushing 'groups' of beads on the abacus - giving
 some analogue image of the changing groups to start
 with.

 This is not a criticism of western math skills, not an
 argument against the Plato to Bruno line, it is an
 idea and I don't intend to persuade anybody to
 clomply.
 (Allegedly the early computer-based anti-aircraft gun
 aiming device of the Bofors Swedish product (WWII,
 sold for the Germans) - before Turing got widely known
 - was NOT digitally operated. I don't know about it,
 but I heard that it worked by 'image-patterns' and
 anticipated the moves of the airplane. Somebody may
 know more about it).

 With unlimited analogous regards

Thanks, we will have the opportunity to come back on the analog/digital 
and the conituum/discrete opposition many tiùmes. It does matter at 
some point, but comp shed light of the possible conception of the 
analogous by digital machines.

Bruno



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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary? - Math,Numbers

2006-07-08 Thread John M

Bruno:

#17 IS a prime, not by YOUR decision, within the system of digital 
(number-based) math - invented and developed(!!!)  during a phase in 
humanity's mental evolution.
(and do not forget that 'faith' is the source of evil - ha ha)

And: I may reverse your  statement:
I have an argument that IF comp is true THEN nature emerge from the 
number.
in to:
^I have an argument that IF nature emerge from the number
^THEN comp is true
*
Nature? wrong choice of word for Brent's 'reality' (or: the one of which we 
develop the 'percept of reality'): our wholeness.
Just musing. I object to US (WE) being 'carbon- based organisms: that is 
the body (if true) far from being 'us'. We are a complexity of interrelated 
effects by self-reflective relations in the unlimited environment of an ever 
changing entirety and our epistemic cognitive inventory included the part of 
it which can be assigned to some 'atomic-material' functions (wit parts of 
the ' body' the sum of which is 'less' than the Aris-Total. ).
*
The invariant laws of numbers is only within the scope of numbers and 
their churning around (i.e. math).  Without such 2+2=4 makes no sense and 
the world will still exist.
*
Br: What you say could fit the comp frame.
I did not believe that I am that smart.
 Br: Leibniz attributes the digital to the Chinese.
IMO: analogue is a more advanced level than digital and the simpler can come 
out from the more sophisticated, so there is nothing amazing in Leibnitz's 
idea - however: The Digital concept changed a lot lately and - maybe - 
Leibnitz did not analyze his statement in comparison with the Si-chip 
digital computer science. What he might have referred to - I think - is that 
the numbers arose from the ancient ways of thinking in the oriental 
wisdom. (There is a German proverb: Wirf die Katz... = no matter how you 
throw it,  it (me) comes to the same conclusion G)
*
A final remark: I was hiding the idea that what I 'named' as the 'analogue' 
may be different from the concept we use it for in our present discourse 
(cognitive level). I am not sure we CAN understand it at all today. We have 
a hint, a glimpse - and are SO smart,,, - we talk about it.

Thanks for paying attention to my  blurb and reflect to ideas I was hiding 
within.

John M


- Original Message - 
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

Le 07-juil.-06, à 23:31, John M a écrit :


 Bruno:

 I speculated about my problems why I follow your (and
 others') expressions with difficulty. I was capable to
 understand concepts in diverse sciences and now I have
 to reflect about fitting 'comp', 'UDA', 'YesDoctor',
 even 'arithmetical Plationism' etc. into the flowing
 considerations. Your remark:
 ... arithmetical truth is
 not a personal construction
 made me muse: is it a Ding an sich? a god?

I am just saying that I have faith in the fact that the number 17 is prime, 
independently of me.

 together
 with your absolutistic fundamental 'number' concept it
 echoes in my mind how reasonable I found David Bohm's
 words: there are no numbers in nature, they are human
 inventions with a rebuff at another list:


I agree that there is no number in nature, but then I don't believe in
nature as something fundamental and primitive. Please accept this as a
summary of I have an argument that IF comp is true THEN nature emerge
from the number.




 Are WE
 not parts of nature?

As carbon based organism, yes. Again I don't follow the dogma that
nature is primitive.



 if numbers exist in our mind, are
 they not IN nature? ...


I don't believe that numbers exists in anything. I just believe that I
am not so important that would I disappear, suddenly 5 becomes even.


 I found both the con and pro reasonable. To combine it
 with your quoted above statement - which I find no
 less reasonable - I 'tasted' the personal vs. the
 human.
 Add to that your undebatable non-solipsistic as well

Thanks for telling.



 NOBODY constructs 'arithmetical truth' or 'numbers',
 yet both are evolutionary features in recent human
 intellect (2-3millennia).

I do agree with this. But it is a secondary phenomenon, reflecting in
fact the invariance of the laws of numbers (you know: 1+1=2, etc.)


 To mediate on my dichotomy:
 I may have a mental resistance in the way of absorbing
 comp etc.  because I think (new idea, so far not
 surfaced in my mind) nature (whatever, existence,
 wholeness, everything or else) is analogue and at the
 present evolutionary epistemic level we reached the
 digital logic and thinking, which is a simpler way in
 its abrupt quantization than the all-encompassing
 comparative analoguization.


No problem, I am even interested in any attempt to build other
varieties of comp.



 I cannot think analogue-ly, such computers are in
 dreamland and we only have vague notions about it, as
 e.g. the famous: qualitative is 'bad' quantitative

Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-08 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I am just saying that I have faith in the fact that the number 17 is
 prime, independently of me.

That 17 is prime is true, independent of you?

Or that 17 exists, independent from you, as a a prime number. ?

 I agree that there is no number in nature, but then I don't believe in
 nature as something fundamental and primitive. Please accept this as a
 summary of I have an argument that IF comp is true THEN nature emerge
 from the number.

But whre do numbers come from ? They don't come from comp,
and they don't come from the epistemic version of AR (17 is prime is
true, independent of you)


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:32, 1Z a écrit :



 Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism.

 Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
 the thesis that cognition is computation.

Could you define or explain computation without believing that the 
relations among numbers are independent of you?


 In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and
 (standard) computationalism.

Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit. But as Dennett and 
others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp needs Church thesis 
(if only to be able to take into account negative limitative result), 
and church thesis need AR. I just make this explicit, if only because I 
got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result.

Remember that AR is just the presupposition that arithmetical truth is 
not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR is just the non 
solipsistic view of elementary math.


 You have bundled them together into
 comp.

Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met someone who does 
not believe in AR. (I have met mathematicians who does not believe in 
AR during the week-end, and I have met some philosopher who pretend not 
believing in AR, but who does.

Bruno

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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:56, 1Z a écrit :


 The Yes-Doctor scenario using Bruno-comp should really be
 a case of saying yes to the proposal:

 I'm just going to shoot you. I'm
 not going to make the slightest effort to reconsitute you,
 teleport you, computerise you, or anything else.
 You already exist in Platonia, you always did, and you will continue 
 to




Yes, but (importantly) only with your consent.

And the doctor will do that only with

1) a promise of (local and relative) reconstitution at some level,
2) an admission that he is just betting on that level
3) a promise of an annihilation less chancy than a bullet (I would 
prefer anasthesia followed by molecular desintegration).

With comp remember we are already in Platonia. A bullet in the brain? 
Hardly pleasant, even in Platonia.

Now, what you are saying could be said of any theory, model, religion 
... (whatever) which makes expect you (form of) immortality.

Indeed, you talk like a lawyer who explains how much his 'client' is 
good and scrupulous: true, the guy I am defending is a serial killer. 
But note that he kills only innocent people (children) so as to send 
them directly in paradise. He does not take the risk of sending someone 
in hell (by killing some bad guy for example). Sending someone in 
paradise is good, no? Some says that God does it all the time, and God 
is good, no?. My opinion is that such a layer is  ... wrong.

Bruno

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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 06-juil.-06, à 23:32, 1Z a écrit :

 
 
  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
  Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism.
 
  Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
  the thesis that cognition is computation.

 Could you define or explain computation without believing that the
 relations among numbers are independent of you?

I can believe that relations between numbers are epistemically
independent of me -- I cannot will them to be different -- without
believing they exist ontologically.

Furthermore the /locus classicus/ for computation is Turing's work,
which defines it in terms an idealisation of humans performing
pencil-and-paper procedures.

 
  In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and
  (standard) computationalism.

 Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit. But as Dennett and
 others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp needs Church thesis
 (if only to be able to take into account negative limitative result),
 and church thesis need AR.

Why do you think the Curch thesis needs AR ?
Which misunderstanding are you subsribing to ? [*]


 I just make this explicit, if only because I
 got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result.

 Remember that AR is just the presupposition that arithmetical truth is
 not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR is just the non
 solipsistic view of elementary math.

Well, if it is just an epistemological claim, it is not
going to provide you with a universal dovetailer.

  You have bundled them together into
  comp.

 Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met someone who does
 not believe in AR.

Oh yes you have !

  (I have met mathematicians who does not believe in
 AR during the week-end, and I have met some philosopher who pretend not
 believing in AR, but who does.

 Bruno

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

[*]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/


__

Misunderstandings of the Thesis

A myth seems to have arisen concerning Turing's paper of 1936, namely
that he there gave a treatment of the limits of mechanism and
established a fundamental result to the effect that the universal
Turing machine can simulate the behaviour of any machine. [...]

Turing did not show that his machines can solve any problem that can be
solved by instructions, explicitly stated rules, or procedures, nor
did he prove that the universal Turing machine can compute any
function that any computer, with any architecture, can compute. He
proved that his universal machine can compute any function that any
Turing machine can compute; and he put forward, and advanced
philosophical arguments in support of, the thesis here called Turing's
thesis. But a thesis concerning the extent of effective methods --
which is to say, concerning the extent of procedures of a certain sort
that a human being unaided by machinery is capable of carrying out --
carries no implication concerning the extent of the procedures that
machines are capable of carrying out, even machines acting in
accordance with 'explicitly stated rules'. For among a machine's
repertoire of atomic operations there may be those that no human being
unaided by machinery can perform.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Peter,

- Original Message - 
From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:56 PM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?




 1Z wrote:

  Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism.

 Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
 the thesis that cognition is computation.

 In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and
 (standard) computationalism. You have bundled them together into
 comp.

 The Yes-Doctor scenario using Bruno-comp should really be
 a case of saying yes to the proposal:

 I'm just going to shoot you. I'm
 not going to make the slightest effort to reconsitute you,
 teleport you, computerise you, or anything else.
 You already exist in Platonia, you always did, and you will continue to

[SPK]

I would like to point out that you may have inadvertently veered into 
the problem that I see in the Yes Doctor belief! It is entirely 
unverifiable. Even worse, your statement here points out that we can not 
derive the continuance of a 1st person aspect from the mere existence of a 
number (or class of numbers) that merely exists. We need to have some 
tacit or explicit *implication* of the number.
It is this necessity of implementation of Forms (buying for now into the 
belief system of Platonia) from which the physical aspect obtains.

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread John M


Bruno:

I speculated about my problems why I follow your (and
others') expressions with difficulty. I was capable to
understand concepts in diverse sciences and now I have
to reflect about fitting 'comp', 'UDA', 'YesDoctor',
even 'arithmetical Plationism' etc. into the flowing
considerations. Your remark:
... arithmetical truth is 
 not a personal construction
made me muse: is it a Ding an sich? a god? together
with your absolutistic fundamental 'number' concept it
echoes in my mind how reasonable I found David Bohm's
words: there are no numbers in nature, they are human
inventions with a rebuff at another list: Are WE
not parts of nature? if numbers exist in our mind, are
they not IN nature? ...
I found both the con and pro reasonable. To combine it
with your quoted above statement - which I find no
less reasonable - I 'tasted' the personal vs. the
human.
Add to that your undebatable non-solipsistic as well


NOBODY constructs 'arithmetical truth' or 'numbers', 
yet both are evolutionary features in recent human
intellect (2-3millennia). To mediate on my dichotomy:
I may have a mental resistance in the way of absorbing
comp etc.  because I think (new idea, so far not
surfaced in my mind) nature (whatever, existence,
wholeness, everything or else) is analogue and at the
present evolutionary epistemic level we reached the
digital logic and thinking, which is a simpler way in
its abrupt quantization than the all-encompassing
comparative analoguization. 

I cannot think analogue-ly, such computers are in
dreamland and we only have vague notions about it, as
e.g. the famous: qualitative is 'bad' quantitative. 
I like to reverse it: a further evolved less
quantitative (sort of analogue) will include wider
aspects than included within the limited quanti models
and provide more insight in a 'more dimensional' (not
meant as a coordinating axis) analogue view...

Such (subconscious?) inhibitions might have prevented
me of staying with your iridia (in the English version
- my 5th language) or in the better explanatory French
version, which language I follow even much poorer. 
The fact that WE evolved into an understanding in the
course of human mental development in which things are
'counted' more than just: 1,2,many - is a beginning.  
We (=humanity) absorbed this mentality as we did the
reductionist ways of thinking, the mystique (nobody
personally invented the religions) the care for the
offsprings, or a regular breath-taking. Yet I
contemplate in my wholistic views a wider horizon way,
close to what we call analogue today, which the
digital logic has yet to attain. The 'next' level of
thinking.
Maybe oriental thinking is closer to the analogue,
because they learn math 101 not digitally as our kids,
but pushing 'groups' of beads on the abacus - giving
some analogue image of the changing groups to start
with. 

This is not a criticism of western math skills, not an
argument against the Plato to Bruno line, it is an
idea and I don't intend to persuade anybody to
clomply. 
(Allegedly the early computer-based anti-aircraft gun
aiming device of the Bofors Swedish product (WWII,
sold for the Germans) - before Turing got widely known
- was NOT digitally operated. I don't know about it,
but I heard that it worked by 'image-patterns' and
anticipated the moves of the airplane. Somebody may
know more about it).

With unlimited analogous regards

John Mikes 



--- Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 
 
 Le 06-juil.-06, � 23:32, 1Z a �crit :
 
 
  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
  Remember that comp relies on arithmetical
 platonism.
 
  Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
  the thesis that cognition is computation.
 
 Could you define or explain computation without
 believing that the 
 relations among numbers are independent of you?
 
 
  In other words, your argument really has two
 premises -- AR and
  (standard) computationalism.
 
 Standard comp, indeed, does not make AR explicit.
 But as Dennett and 
 others standard comp cognitivists agree on, comp
 needs Church thesis 
 (if only to be able to take into account negative
 limitative result), 
 and church thesis need AR. I just make this
 explicit, if only because I 
 got a sufficiently counter-intuitive result.
 
 Remember that AR is just the presupposition that
 arithmetical truth is 
 not a personal construction. Put in anoher way, AR
 is just the non 
 solipsistic view of elementary math.
 
 
  You have bundled them together into
  comp.
 
 Just to make some point clearer. I have not yet met
 someone who does 
 not believe in AR. (I have met mathematicians who
 does not believe in 
 AR during the week-end, and I have met some
 philosopher who pretend not 
 believing in AR, but who does.
 
 Bruno
 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
 


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-07 Thread George Levy

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

I would like to point out that you may have inadvertently veered into 
the problem that I see in the Yes Doctor belief! It is entirely 
unverifiable. 

It is unverifiable from the 3rd person perspective. From the first 
person perspective it is perfectly verifiable. I will not observe any 
changes in myself after the (brain) substitution. This is a 
fundamental invariance and it is another argument why the first person 
perspective should be the primary one and the 3rd one should be the 
derived one. And here again specifying the frame of reference is 
important to avoid confusion.

George Levy

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread Tom Caylor

Thanks for the diagonalization solution.  I apologize for the delay.
4th of July holiday, and now I'm busy.  I will try to give my
particular response to the diagonalization solution in the next day or
so.  I hope that my responses are representative of at least some other
people.  I think a few others give their responses, like Quentin, and I
appreciate it because then I know I'm not the only one.  3rd person
plural is better than 3rd person.  ;)

Tom

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 02-juil.-06, à 08:44, Tom Caylor a écrit :

  My point is that of the thread title Only Existence is necessary?
  Not that observers are necessary for existence, but that existence is
  insufficient for meaning.  I'm still holding out for Bruno to work the
  rest of his diagonalization tricks to maybe try to prove otherwise.


 OK, and I'm sorry for the interruption. I am also troubled by Norman's
 post, I am afraid he loses the track just for reason of notation. The
 beauty of recursion theory is that you can arrive quickly, without
 prerequisites, to startling fundamental results.

 Now, as I said recently, it is really the UD Argument (UDA) which makes
 mental and physical existence secondary to arithmetical truth. The diag
 stuff just isolates a more constructive path so as to make comp
 testable.

 Somehow I agree with you: existence (being physical, mental, or
 numerical) is not enough for meaning, but once we assume comp, meaning,
 seen as first person apprehension, is, by definition, related to some
 relative computations.

 Now the main point is perhaps that although existence is not enough, it
 is not necessary either. And that is what really UDA shows, mental and
 physical existence are appearances (locally stable for purely number
 theoretical reasons) emerging from arithmetical truth.

 Comp gives a way to progress without relying on the mystery of first
 person quale (which makes meaning meaning), nor on the mystery of
 quanta existence.

 Our qualitative belief in numbers remains a mystery, like the truly
 qualitative part of qualia.

 Don't expect from the diagonalization posts that I solve *that*
 mystery, although it can be argued, assuming comp and self-referential
 correctness, that the lobian interview gives the closer third person
 explanation of why the first persons cannot escape the percept of many
 non communicable mysteries. I would bet consciousness is one of them,
 but hardly the only one. That consciousness is a mystery would already
 follow if you accept the following weak definition of consciousness.
 Consciousness as a qualitative part of an anticipation of (a) reality.
 
 Bruno
 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread Tom Caylor


Tom Caylor wrote:
 3rd person plural is better than 3rd person.  ;)

 Tom

Or as the wisest person in history wrote in his Ecclesiastes:

Two are better than one...A cord of three strands is not quickly
broken.

I think there is wisdom in looking at what the ancient intellects
wrote, and making connections to our present day perspective.  Even
this process itself is taking advantage of a 3rd person plural
perspective, in order to try to see invariance.  Sort of like
integrating data from telescopes located at different places on the
earth to get a better image, the further apart the better.

Tom


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread 1Z


George Levy wrote:

 Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This
 is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain
 the physics and the objects.

 This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether
 for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry
 their own physical substrate. They can be waves and/or particles.
 Similarly there should be equivalence between information and
 matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within
 itself its own physical substrate.

 Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon)

Inasmuch as it is, it isn't somethign that can be equated
with physical properties. Inasmuch as it is something that can be
equated
with physical properties, it isn't observer-dependent.

 this issue brings us
 back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have
 to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the
 mind-body problem.


 If I say something to you in Sanskrit you will likely not understand it.
 It will carry zero information. However If I say it in English you will
 be much more likely to understand it.

 If I say to you that your name is Lee Corbin, it will not add any
 information to what you already know. Again, it will carry zero
 information.

 This is what Shannon calls Mutual Information. In the first case *you*
 don't have the decoder to translate Sanskrit to English. In the second
 case you have the decoder but for *you*, the information is not new: you
 already know that your name is Lee Corbin. Old information is no
 information at all.

 Received mutual information is dependent on the information that already
 exists in the mind of the receiver (or observer). In this sense
 Shannon's information theory is a relativity theory of information just
 like Galileo's dynamics and Einstein's relativity are relativity
 theories of physics and just like Everett's interpretation is a
 relativity theory of quantum events.


That's mutual information as opposed to other kinds...like
the kind that can be equated with the non-observer-dependent quantity
of entropy.


 George


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread 1Z


Quentin Anciaux wrote:
 Hi Bruno,

 Le jeudi 22 juin 2006 15:59, Bruno Marchal a écrit :
  Dear Stephen,

 Either we have a definition problem or I do not understand. For me relative
 computations in platonia are not instantiated by definition as they are in
 platonia. Being in platonia just means it exists, hence existence is
 sufficient. If not could you please define what you mean by instantiated.

Being one of a number (0 = N = oo) of possible tokens of a type;
existing
in a space-time location, in the case og physical instantiation.

Instantiation is a one-many relationship. One type, many tokens
(instances).

In Platonia, there is exactly one of everything.

There can also be 0 instances -- non-instantiation. Which neatly
solves the Harry Potter/White Rabbuit problem. We do
not see WR/HP universes, because we are instantiated and they
are not.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism.

Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
the thesis that cognition is computation.

In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and
(standard) computationalism. You have bundled them together into
comp.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-06 Thread 1Z


1Z wrote:

  Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism.

 Your version does. Computationalism is standardly
 the thesis that cognition is computation.

 In other words, your argument really has two premises -- AR and
 (standard) computationalism. You have bundled them together into
 comp.

The Yes-Doctor scenario using Bruno-comp should really be
a case of saying yes to the proposal:

I'm just going to shoot you. I'm
not going to make the slightest effort to reconsitute you,
teleport you, computerise you, or anything else.
You already exist in Platonia, you always did, and you will continue to


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-02 Thread Tom Caylor


Lee Corbin wrote:
 Tom writes

  The difference between a quark and a lepton can be described with
  mathematics, even though perhaps it's harder to pin down than the
  difference between 3 and 34.  I think most of us wouldn't have a
  crucial problem with that.  But alas the difference between 3 and 34 is
  in the counting.  Here is the heart of the matter, I believe.  It takes
  an observer to count, since it takes an observer to decide when to
  start counting, or to define a group of things.

 Ah ha!  So what about numbers so high they haven't been counted yet?
 Perhaps 10^10^10^10^10 only came into existence after exponentiation
 had been discovered?

 And I guess that before humans evolved on Earth, the solar system
 did not have 8 or 9 planets; after all, there may have been no one
 in the universe.

 Or would you say that the solar system did not have 8 or 9 planets
 unless some distant intelligence in the universe evolved before we
 did?  In that case, did the existence of *eight*, say, spread
 at the speed of light from the point where someone first thought
 of it?

 Lee

My point is that of the thread title Only Existence is necessary?
Not that observers are necessary for existence, but that existence is
insufficient for meaning.  I'm still holding out for Bruno to work the
rest of his diagonalization tricks to maybe try to prove otherwise.

Tom


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RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-02 Thread Lee Corbin

Stephen writes

  In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a
  first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish
  one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.
 
 [LC]
 I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the
 same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are
 joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3
 without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In
 my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more
 people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there
 was a moon than that they had brains.)
 
 [SPK]
 
 Think of the meaning of what you just wrote if you where to remove all 
 references that implied in one form or another some kind of act of 
 distinguishing I am merely trying to drill down to the source of our 

Okay. Stripped of observers, 34 does not equal 3.  Satisfied?

Actually, it seems to have improved the interest, as well as the
sensibleness of what I wrote  :-)

Lee


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-02 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 02-juil.-06, à 08:44, Tom Caylor a écrit :

 My point is that of the thread title Only Existence is necessary?
 Not that observers are necessary for existence, but that existence is
 insufficient for meaning.  I'm still holding out for Bruno to work the
 rest of his diagonalization tricks to maybe try to prove otherwise.


OK, and I'm sorry for the interruption. I am also troubled by Norman's 
post, I am afraid he loses the track just for reason of notation. The 
beauty of recursion theory is that you can arrive quickly, without 
prerequisites, to startling fundamental results.

Now, as I said recently, it is really the UD Argument (UDA) which makes 
mental and physical existence secondary to arithmetical truth. The diag 
stuff just isolates a more constructive path so as to make comp 
testable.

Somehow I agree with you: existence (being physical, mental, or 
numerical) is not enough for meaning, but once we assume comp, meaning, 
seen as first person apprehension, is, by definition, related to some 
relative computations.

Now the main point is perhaps that although existence is not enough, it 
is not necessary either. And that is what really UDA shows, mental and 
physical existence are appearances (locally stable for purely number 
theoretical reasons) emerging from arithmetical truth.

Comp gives a way to progress without relying on the mystery of first 
person quale (which makes meaning meaning), nor on the mystery of 
quanta existence.

Our qualitative belief in numbers remains a mystery, like the truly 
qualitative part of qualia.

Don't expect from the diagonalization posts that I solve *that* 
mystery, although it can be argued, assuming comp and self-referential 
correctness, that the lobian interview gives the closer third person 
explanation of why the first persons cannot escape the percept of many 
non communicable mysteries. I would bet consciousness is one of them, 
but hardly the only one. That consciousness is a mystery would already 
follow if you accept the following weak definition of consciousness. 
Consciousness as a qualitative part of an anticipation of (a) reality.

Bruno

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


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RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-07-01 Thread Lee Corbin

Tom writes

 The difference between a quark and a lepton can be described with
 mathematics, even though perhaps it's harder to pin down than the
 difference between 3 and 34.  I think most of us wouldn't have a
 crucial problem with that.  But alas the difference between 3 and 34 is
 in the counting.  Here is the heart of the matter, I believe.  It takes
 an observer to count, since it takes an observer to decide when to
 start counting, or to define a group of things. 

Ah ha!  So what about numbers so high they haven't been counted yet?
Perhaps 10^10^10^10^10 only came into existence after exponentiation
had been discovered?

And I guess that before humans evolved on Earth, the solar system
did not have 8 or 9 planets; after all, there may have been no one
in the universe.

Or would you say that the solar system did not have 8 or 9 planets
unless some distant intelligence in the universe evolved before we
did?  In that case, did the existence of *eight*, say, spread
at the speed of light from the point where someone first thought
of it?

Lee

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-28 Thread Tom Caylor


Lee Corbin wrote:
 Stephen writes

  it seems that we have skipped
  past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability
  and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if
  process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!
 
  In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a
  first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish
  one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.

 I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the
 same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are
 joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3
 without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In
 my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more
 people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there
 was a moon than that they had brains.)

  The property of
  individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one thing,
  process, etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient.
  We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the
  same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required
  for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something
  to whom existence means/affects.

 Well, I just disagree. Before there were people or even atoms, quarks
 and leptons were not the same thing. They didn't have to be perceived
 by anyone in order for that to be true. I know that you disagree with
 this: they didn't even have to affect anything in order for that to
 be true. If there had been just one quark and one electron in the whole
 universe, and if they were separately by almost infinitely many light-
 years, then there would still have been one quark and one electron.

 Unfortunately, I probably can be of no more assistence to you on this
 question.

 Lee


Lee, Bruno, Stephen,

I think this is an issue that lies at the heart of the matter.  (I
don't know if it's the same as Smullyan's heart of the matter, but in a
sense it very well could be.)

The difference between a quark and a lepton can be described with
mathematics, even though perhaps it's harder to pin down than the
difference between 3 and 34.  I think most of us wouldn't have a
crucial problem with that.  But alas the difference between 3 and 34 is
in the counting.  Here is the heart of the matter, I believe.  It takes
an observer to count, since it takes an observer to decide when to
start counting, or to define a group of things.  This is where meaning
and affect comes in.  Even numbers require an observer.  Bringing in
prime numbers and multiplication doesn't prove that you don't need an
observer.

(=) Yes, numbers are observer-independent (hence the success of
looking for invariance), but this doesn't necessarily imply that you
don't need an observer in the first place!  (=)

Extra, to Bruno:  In my view, we define numbers with invariance, by
recognizing, when we make sense of what is around us, or even when we
make sense of our own thoughts.  On the TV program Sesame Street they
have small children singing One of these things is not like the
others even before they introduce numbers.  This is what I mean by
looking for invariance.

Tom


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-28 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Lee,

- Original Message - 
From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 1:02 AM
Subject: RE: Only Existence is necessary?



Stephen writes

 it seems that we have skipped
 past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability
 and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if
 process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!

 In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a
 first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish
 one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.

[LC]
I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the
same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are
joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3
without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In
my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more
people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there
was a moon than that they had brains.)

[SPK]

Think of the meaning of what you just wrote if you where to remove all 
references that implied in one form or another some kind of act of 
distinguishing I am merely trying to drill down to the source of our 
notion of the act of distinguishing and to see what remains when we strip 
away all forms of notions of observers.

 The property of
 individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one thing,
 process, etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient.
 We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the
 same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required
 for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something
 to whom existence means/affects.

[LC]
Well, I just disagree. Before there were people or even atoms, quarks
and leptons were not the same thing. They didn't have to be perceived
by anyone in order for that to be true. I know that you disagree with
this: they didn't even have to affect anything in order for that to
be true. If there had been just one quark and one electron in the whole
universe, and if they were separately by almost infinitely many light-
years, then there would still have been one quark and one electron.

[SPK]

Interesting claim, especially if we where to buy into the thinking of 
many prominent physicist today: If we where to go back in time far enough we 
would find that all the particles would indeed be identical to each other! 
But I digress. ;-)
I am not making any claims about whether or not some statement is true, 
I am merely trying to make sense of the metaphysical positions that we are 
taking here on the Everything List. I wish to be sure that we are not 
allowing assumptions to be made about metaphysical primitives that may lead 
us into deep errors. For example, my appearent attack on Platonism is an 
attempt to understand its intricate details and implications, especially 
when they are taken the the wonderful extreems that Bruno is toiling to 
explain to us. ;-)


[LC]
Unfortunately, I probably can be of no more assistence to you on this
question.

[SPK]

Your posts are always valuable and greatly appreciated.

Onward!

Stephen 

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-28 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Tom,

I completely agree with you on this and could only add that it seems 
almost impossible for us to comprehend the seemingly subconscious bias that 
we bring into discussions of the nature of Meaning and Existence. It is as 
if it is impossible to remove all vestiges of the existence of the act of 
observation...

Onward!

Stephen


- Original Message - 
From: Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 12:46 PM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?


snip

 Lee, Bruno, Stephen,

 I think this is an issue that lies at the heart of the matter.  (I
 don't know if it's the same as Smullyan's heart of the matter, but in a
 sense it very well could be.)

 The difference between a quark and a lepton can be described with
 mathematics, even though perhaps it's harder to pin down than the
 difference between 3 and 34.  I think most of us wouldn't have a
 crucial problem with that.  But alas the difference between 3 and 34 is
 in the counting.  Here is the heart of the matter, I believe.  It takes
 an observer to count, since it takes an observer to decide when to
 start counting, or to define a group of things.  This is where meaning
 and affect comes in.  Even numbers require an observer.  Bringing in
 prime numbers and multiplication doesn't prove that you don't need an
 observer.

 (=) Yes, numbers are observer-independent (hence the success of
 looking for invariance), but this doesn't necessarily imply that you
 don't need an observer in the first place!  (=)

 Extra, to Bruno:  In my view, we define numbers with invariance, by
 recognizing, when we make sense of what is around us, or even when we
 make sense of our own thoughts.  On the TV program Sesame Street they
 have small children singing One of these things is not like the
 others even before they introduce numbers.  This is what I mean by
 looking for invariance.

 Tom

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-27 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 26-juin-06, à 23:09, Tom Caylor a écrit :


 I also agree that the subject to which the Forms have meaning cannot
 be a Form itself.  But as my previous post(s) on this thread mentioned,
 I see it as a recognition of what is there.  I like to use the word
 re-cogn-ize (again know).  A year ago in a meeting of fathers and
 sons, the question was asked, What does the word recognize mean?  My
 son, who was 8 years old, said, It's when you know something, and you
 know that you know it.  Jesus said, Unless you become like children,
 you will not enter the kingdom of God.  Bruno, you have brought up
 examples of children being able to see simple truths, like the
 7+7+7+7+7+7 in your fairy-riddle introduction to diagonalization.
 (Along those lines, there's the classic objection to the Penrose
 argument, objecting that it shouldn't require the ability see the truth
 of the Godel statement in order to qualify for having consciousness.  I
 agree, but think the objection portrays a misunderstanding of Penrose's
 argument, even though I don't necessarily agree with all of Penrose's
 conclusions.)

 Anyway, I think this is a pretty good definition of recognize, to know
 something, and to know that you know it.  Now people object that this
 just produces an infinite regression, but this is assuming that we
 never can have any direct contact with truth.  I think Bruno is partly
 right in that the key lies in the infinite.  I think we adults have
 gotten so caught up in building our own empire (science), in a
 computational step-by-step manner, that we often blind ourselves from
 simple truth.



I agree with you. Most theories of knowledge (or knowledgeability) 
accept the axiom named four:

4:  Kp - KKp  (knowable p entails knowable knowable p; or if I can 
cognize the truth of p, then I can (re)cognize that I can cognize 
the truth of p). Of course we will come back on this. the K here will 
be defined through the Theaetetical variant of the Godel beweisbar B, 
which hides many diagonalizations.




 My comment about math being about invariance was not meant to be a
 global definition of math.  Math is about invariance was meant to
 imply math is about looking for invariance.  This is something that
 children understand even more naturally than numbers.


Invariance is for me mainly the subject matter of group theory or 
geometry, and I would argue that numbers are more elementary. I am 
happy because I will have the opportunity this summer to teach math to 
very little children (6 year old), so I will have perhaps a better 
idea. I have not so much experience with so young students except a 
long time ago when I worked with highly mentally disabled one. You 
could be right in some sense. Piaget wrote about this and I should 
perhaps reread it. But then this question is also a little bit out of 
topic given that you seem already agreeing with AR, if only for the 
sake of the comp argumentation.

BTW, I will send asap the solution of the four diagonalization 
questions. Thanks to you and George for your patience,

Bruno


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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-27 Thread Stephen Paul King

Dear Bruno,

I would like to cut to a couple parts of your reply.


- Original Message - 
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 4:29 AM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?


snip
 [SPK]

 Pratt does not seek to reify neither a primary notion of matter or
 time.
 His Dualism becomes a Russellerian neutral Monism in the limit of
 Existence in itself.
  When the notion of distinguishability vanishes, so do all notions
 of Predicates and Properties, all that is left is mere Existence. This is
 why I am pounding hard on the apparent problem that monistic Platonism
 suffers from a severe problem, that it is only a coherent theory if
 and only
 if there is some subject to which the Forms have a meaning and this
 subject can not be a Form!

 [BM]
 I agree one hundred percent!
 With comp this can already be justified in many ways:
 1) The (counter)-intuitive comp level: no 1-soul or first person can
 recognize herself in any third person description done at any level.

[SPK]

This seem to me to accert that no entity has a subset that has a 
complete map of the whole within itself *that can be compared to the whole. 
Here I am considering the ability of self-recognize in terms of the 
existence of a self-referencing map.
Somehow it seems that this is trivially obvious but difficult to 
comprehend...


 The 1-soul has no description, no name, it is indeed not a Form.

[SPK]

Ok, then this implies that Platonia is Incomplete!

 2) The limit of the self-extending self cannot be defined by
 him/her/itself.

[SPK]

Same as 1).

 3) When I interview the lobian machine, I define the first person by
 the knower, and I take the Theaetetical definitions of knowledge, and
 this gives thanks, to incompleteness, a non nameable, by any person,
 person. Technical reasons show how 1 2 and 3 are related. We can come
 back on this when people get some familarization with the
 diagonalization stuff.

[SPK]

I am hoping to comprehend the diagonalization stuff some day, my posts 
are a part of that attempt...


snip

[SPK]
 http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#concur02

 http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech

 http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#P5

 [BM]
 Most of those papers are very interesting. By the way, Stephen, I
 realize you are the only one I thank in my last (Elsevier paper) and
 this indeed for having make me read some of Pratt's papers.
 (The others in the list disappears from the paper when, for reason of
 conciseness I drop the related works section. Sorry).

 But Pratt, and Girard (and Abramsky) react to the failure of Hilbert
 program by mainly weakening logic, at first. I believe that if a
 mathematical theorem, like Godel's incompleteness, forces us to weaken
 (or enriche) the logic, then an analysis of the incompleteness
 phenomenon should help us to chose the exact way of weakening the
 logic. I would only criticize Girard and Pratt for not providing enough
 motivation. I have still some hope to get an arithmetical *linear
 logic* and extract the relevant Chu transforms, in the long run. I
 appreciate very much those papers, but in this list the closer I have
 been to that approach is in the combinator posts (prematurely too much
 technical, I would say now.). But see my Elsevier paper for more on
 this.

[SPK]

Could you post a link to the Elsevier paper?


[SPK]
 Bodies are the sets (as point and their interactions = Physics!)
 and
 Minds are the Boolean algebras (information structures and their
 implications = Computations!). Is this so hard to swallow?

 [BM]
 I totally agree and swallow this with pleasure :-) (although this is a
 very abstract immaterial view of bodies)
 More can be said: the quantum appears through parallelizing the boolean
 algebras, and generates the many locally classical bodies. No problem.

[SPK]

I disagree! QM does not follow merely from linear superposition, there 
is also (at least) the non-commutativity of observables...
Pratt et al seems to believe that this latter aspect shows up when we 
consider the concurrency problem

http://www-i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Forschung/MCS/Mailing_List_archive/con_hyperarchive_1988-1990/0075.html
http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ql
http://www.di.ens.fr/~goubault/link002.html

[BM]
 Pratt would be more convincing about those mind/body issue if he could
 apply it to the mind/body issues explicitly addressed by the mind/body
 researchers, also, I think.

[SPK]

Pratt is dealing with a deeper aspect of the mind/body problem than most 
reseachers consider, with the notable exeption of David Chalmers and Stuart 
Hameroff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/Fundamentality.html


snip

[SPK]
 All we are asked to do here is do stop trying to make up a static
 Universe!

 [BM]
 If you talk about the mental or physical Universes, I agree with you.
 Now

RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-27 Thread Lee Corbin

Stephen writes

 it seems that we have skipped 
 past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability 
 and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if 
 process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!
 
 In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a 
 first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish 
 one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.

I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the
same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are
joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3
without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In
my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more
people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there
was a moon than that they had brains.)

 The property of 
 individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one thing, 
 process, etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient.
 We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the 
 same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required 
 for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something 
 to whom existence means/affects.

Well, I just disagree. Before there were people or even atoms, quarks
and leptons were not the same thing. They didn't have to be perceived
by anyone in order for that to be true. I know that you disagree with
this: they didn't even have to affect anything in order for that to
be true. If there had been just one quark and one electron in the whole
universe, and if they were separately by almost infinitely many light-
years, then there would still have been one quark and one electron.

Unfortunately, I probably can be of no more assistence to you on this
question.

Lee

 We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or 
 whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source of 
 individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere...


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-26 Thread Bruno Marchal

Dear Stephen,

snip



 Comp, I am claiming requires more than just the mere a priori 
 existence
 of AR (Platonic theory of Numbers), it requires a means to relate them 
 to
 one another.


Numbers are related by addition and multiplication. With Church thesis 
(+ Godel or Matiyasevich) that is enough. The observer says more and 
relates infinities of numbers through induction.
Of course comp is more than just AR, you need Church Thesis and, in 
practice, the yes doctor faith.




 This latter requirement seems to require both a means to relate
 and distinguish Numbers from each other.


Only the observer or the intellect will do that, although only the soul 
will appreciate.
(Technical note: Observer, intellect and the soul are given by 
intensional (modal) variants of the Godel provability predicate; this 
gives the notions of person or the arithmetical interpretation of 
Plotinus hypostases.)




 This is more than a linear
 superposition! We need a means to explain the appearance of 
 Interaction: I
 read recently that some prominent scientist said something like that 
 the
 physical realm is the means by which Numbers interact, I agree but go
 further to claim, with Pratt, that if we are required to have even some
 appearance of a physical realm, why not go all the way and put it on 
 equal
 footing with the Ideals? (Symmetry anyone?!)

 Pratt solves the problem of dualism! Why do we still demand an
 incomplete and asymmetric Monism?


I am not sure comp leads to asymmetric monism. But if you accept AR, 
third person incompleteness is not a matter of choice. We have to take 
it into account. The collection of everything computable is not 
itself computable.






 As to the notion of personal, it seems to me that what we mean 
 by such
 is some means of self-referencing that is capable of updating, this 
 brings
 in the notion of memory... I still do not see how any form of
 diagonalization obtains self-referencing absent some means that allows 
 the
 entries in the columns and rows to both be themselves and relate to 
 each
 other.


It depends only of you. Normally the diagonalization post will go 
through that problem. Just be patient.



 Goedelization works because we have the tacit idea that we can 
 write a
 representation of a number as a symbol of something physical,


Here I disagree. Frankly. Godelization works for purely number 
theoretical reasons.



 giving it a
 persistence


With AR (Arithmetical realism) numbers and their relation persists per 
se, or better does not need to persist at all, because persistence is 
only relative to change and numbers are beyond time and space, and 
change (assuming AR).




 Where is the Platonic paper tape?


In Platonia. And if a platonic universal machine lacks platonic tape, 
she will continue her computations on platonics walls :-)






 ***
 [BM]
 Concerning Pratt's dualism, it seems to me it is a purely mathematical
 dualism a priori coherent with number platonism, although further
 studies could refute this. Open problem. I don't see Pratt reifying
 either primary matter or primary time, it seems to me.

 [SPK]



 Pratt does not seek to reify neither a primary notion of matter or 
 time.
 His Dualism becomes a Russellerian neutral Monism in the limit of 
 Existence
 in itself. When the notion of distinguishability vanishes, so do all 
 notions
 of Predicates and Properties, all that is left is mere Existence. This 
 is
 why I am pounding hard on the apparent problem that monistic Platonism
 suffers from a severe problem, that it is only a coherent theory if 
 and only
 if there is some subject to which the Forms have a meaning and this
 subject can not be a Form!


I agree one hundred percent!
With comp this can already be justified in many ways:
1) The (counter)-intuitive comp level: no 1-soul or first person can 
recognize herself in any third person description done at any level. 
The 1-soul has no description, no name, it is indeed not a Form.
2) The limit of the self-extending self cannot be defined by 
him/her/itself.
3) When I interview the lobian machine, I define the first person by 
the knower, and I take the Theaetetical definitions of knowledge, and 
this gives thanks, to incompleteness, a non nameable, by any person, 
person. Technical reasons show how 1 2 and 3 are related. We can come 
back on this when people get some familarization with the 
diagonalization stuff.





 Any form of Monism will have this severe incompleteness that has 
 been
 heretofore overlooked because of the continued use of the tacit 
 assumption
 of a 3rd person Point of View.


? It is not tacit. Science prose have to be third person 
communicable.As Judson Webb argues the severe incompleteness is a 
lucky event for mechanist. First it makes Church thesis consistent. 
Indeed Church thesis entails incompleteness, so without incompleteness 
Church Thesis would be refutable (on this normally we will arrive 
soon).




 Strip 

Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-26 Thread Tom Caylor


Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Dear Stephen,

 snip


 
  Comp, I am claiming requires more than just the mere a priori
  existence
  of AR (Platonic theory of Numbers), it requires a means to relate them
  to
  one another.


 Numbers are related by addition and multiplication. With Church thesis
 (+ Godel or Matiyasevich) that is enough. The observer says more and
 relates infinities of numbers through induction.
 Of course comp is more than just AR, you need Church Thesis and, in
 practice, the yes doctor faith.




  This latter requirement seems to require both a means to relate
  and distinguish Numbers from each other.


 Only the observer or the intellect will do that, although only the soul
 will appreciate.
 (Technical note: Observer, intellect and the soul are given by
 intensional (modal) variants of the Godel provability predicate; this
 gives the notions of person or the arithmetical interpretation of
 Plotinus hypostases.)




  This is more than a linear
  superposition! We need a means to explain the appearance of
  Interaction: I
  read recently that some prominent scientist said something like that
  the
  physical realm is the means by which Numbers interact, I agree but go
  further to claim, with Pratt, that if we are required to have even some
  appearance of a physical realm, why not go all the way and put it on
  equal
  footing with the Ideals? (Symmetry anyone?!)
 
  Pratt solves the problem of dualism! Why do we still demand an
  incomplete and asymmetric Monism?


 I am not sure comp leads to asymmetric monism. But if you accept AR,
 third person incompleteness is not a matter of choice. We have to take
 it into account. The collection of everything computable is not
 itself computable.



 
 
 
  As to the notion of personal, it seems to me that what we mean
  by such
  is some means of self-referencing that is capable of updating, this
  brings
  in the notion of memory... I still do not see how any form of
  diagonalization obtains self-referencing absent some means that allows
  the
  entries in the columns and rows to both be themselves and relate to
  each
  other.


 It depends only of you. Normally the diagonalization post will go
 through that problem. Just be patient.


 
  Goedelization works because we have the tacit idea that we can
  write a
  representation of a number as a symbol of something physical,


 Here I disagree. Frankly. Godelization works for purely number
 theoretical reasons.



  giving it a
  persistence


 With AR (Arithmetical realism) numbers and their relation persists per
 se, or better does not need to persist at all, because persistence is
 only relative to change and numbers are beyond time and space, and
 change (assuming AR).




  Where is the Platonic paper tape?


 In Platonia. And if a platonic universal machine lacks platonic tape,
 she will continue her computations on platonics walls :-)




 
 
  ***
  [BM]
  Concerning Pratt's dualism, it seems to me it is a purely mathematical
  dualism a priori coherent with number platonism, although further
  studies could refute this. Open problem. I don't see Pratt reifying
  either primary matter or primary time, it seems to me.
 
  [SPK]
 
 
 
  Pratt does not seek to reify neither a primary notion of matter or
  time.
  His Dualism becomes a Russellerian neutral Monism in the limit of
  Existence
  in itself. When the notion of distinguishability vanishes, so do all
  notions
  of Predicates and Properties, all that is left is mere Existence. This
  is
  why I am pounding hard on the apparent problem that monistic Platonism
  suffers from a severe problem, that it is only a coherent theory if
  and only
  if there is some subject to which the Forms have a meaning and this
  subject can not be a Form!


 I agree one hundred percent!
 With comp this can already be justified in many ways:
 1) The (counter)-intuitive comp level: no 1-soul or first person can
 recognize herself in any third person description done at any level.
 The 1-soul has no description, no name, it is indeed not a Form.
 2) The limit of the self-extending self cannot be defined by
 him/her/itself.
 3) When I interview the lobian machine, I define the first person by
 the knower, and I take the Theaetetical definitions of knowledge, and
 this gives thanks, to incompleteness, a non nameable, by any person,
 person. Technical reasons show how 1 2 and 3 are related. We can come
 back on this when people get some familarization with the
 diagonalization stuff.



I also agree that the subject to which the Forms have meaning cannot
be a Form itself.  But as my previous post(s) on this thread mentioned,
I see it as a recognition of what is there.  I like to use the word
re-cogn-ize (again know).  A year ago in a meeting of fathers and
sons, the question was asked, What does the word recognize mean?  My
son, who was 8 years old, said, It's when you know something, and you
know that you know it.  Jesus said, 

Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-24 Thread Bruno Marchal


Dear Stephen,


  We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or
 whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source 
 of
 individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere...


The source of individuation could be personal memory I think. Like a 
sequence of W and M appears in the diary of someone subjected to an 
iterated WM-self-multiplication experiment. Memory is rather easy to 
define once we assume comp. The main difficulty here is to get an idea 
of what personal means, and for this we need a theory of 
self-reference, ... and that is what the diagonalization posts are all 
about.


***


Concerning Pratt's dualism, it seems to me it is a purely mathematical 
dualism a priori coherent with number platonism, although further 
studies could refute this. Open problem. I don't see Pratt reifying 
either primary matter or primary time, it seems to me.

I think a similar dualism appears in Plotinus cosmogony where 
(simplifying a lot!) *from outside* the Good transforms itself 
degenerating eventually into Evil (also called Matter by the 
(neo)platonist!) and by doing so makes the soul falling inexorably in 
that matter) and *from inside* all souls extract themselves from that 
matter and are inexorably attracted by the Good and converge toward it. 
Arrows are reversed. And with comp it can be argued that the choice of 
the Categories of sets and its dual (which funnily enough gives the 
category of boolean algebras) is a genuine one, although some 
quasi-constructive alpha-categories could fit in a still more better 
way (I think). But I have neither the time nor the competence to really 
develop such approaches. Also, finding good notion of coherence here 
seems to me to be a little bit ad hoc so that I refer to you the the 
comp derivation path of those coherence conditions.


Bruno


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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-24 Thread Stephen Paul King

Dear Bruno,



Thank you for this wonderful post! Interleaving...



- Original Message - 

From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 1:43 PM

Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?





 Dear Stephen,


  We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or
 whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source
 of
 individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere...

 [BM]
 The source of individuation could be personal memory I think. Like a
 sequence of W and M appears in the diary of someone subjected to an
 iterated WM-self-multiplication experiment. Memory is rather easy to
 define once we assume comp. The main difficulty here is to get an idea
 of what personal means, and for this we need a theory of
 self-reference, ... and that is what the diagonalization posts are all
 about.

[SPK]



Does not the notion of memory carry with it some requirement of 
persistence under changes/transformations. It seems to be a lot 
like”invariance, 
but one that can be read and written. Pratt's restatement of Descartes 
dictum: I think, therefore I was can be easily seem to be equivalent to: 
I am what I remember (active reading of memory) myself to be.

Comp, I am claiming requires more than just the mere a priori existence 
of AR (Platonic theory of Numbers), it requires a means to relate them to 
one another. This latter requirement seems to require both a means to relate 
and distinguish Numbers from each other. This is more than a linear 
superposition! We need a means to explain the appearance of Interaction: I 
read recently that some prominent scientist said something like that the 
physical realm is the means by which Numbers interact, I agree but go 
further to claim, with Pratt, that if we are required to have even some 
appearance of a physical realm, why not go all the way and put it on equal 
footing with the Ideals? (Symmetry anyone?!)

Pratt solves the problem of dualism! Why do we still demand an 
incomplete and asymmetric Monism?



As to the notion of personal, it seems to me that what we mean by such 
is some means of self-referencing that is capable of updating, this brings 
in the notion of memory... I still do not see how any form of 
diagonalization obtains self-referencing absent some means that allows the 
entries in the columns and rows to both be themselves and relate to each 
other.

Goedelization works because we have the tacit idea that we can write a 
representation of a number as a symbol of something physical, giving it a 
persistence Where is the Platonic paper tape?


 ***
 [BM]
 Concerning Pratt's dualism, it seems to me it is a purely mathematical
 dualism a priori coherent with number platonism, although further
 studies could refute this. Open problem. I don't see Pratt reifying
 either primary matter or primary time, it seems to me.

[SPK]



Pratt does not seek to reify neither a primary notion of matter or time. 
His Dualism becomes a Russellerian neutral Monism in the limit of Existence 
in itself. When the notion of distinguishability vanishes, so do all notions 
of Predicates and Properties, all that is left is mere Existence. This is 
why I am pounding hard on the apparent problem that monistic Platonism 
suffers from a severe problem, that it is only a coherent theory if and only 
if there is some subject to which the Forms have a meaning and this 
subject can not be a Form!

Any form of Monism will have this severe incompleteness that has been 
heretofore overlooked because of the continued use of the tacit assumption 
of a 3rd person Point of View. Strip away the distinguishability that the 
3rd person entails and Forms become exactly isomorphic to each other.

Pratt shows how the arrow of Time has a dual aspect, the arrow of 
logical implication and from this a very elegant explanation of 
interactions and causality follows, among other things... ;-) 
(Unfortunately, most readers of his papers do not seem to get past the 
abstract...)



http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#concur02

http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech

http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#P5









 [BM]
 I think a similar dualism appears in Plotinus cosmogony where
 (simplifying a lot!) *from outside* the Good transforms itself
 degenerating eventually into Evil (also called Matter by the
 (neo)platonist!) and by doing so makes the soul falling inexorably in
 that matter) and *from inside* all souls extract themselves from that
 matter and are inexorably attracted by the Good and converge toward it.
 Arrows are reversed. And with comp it can be argued that the choice of
 the Categories of sets and its dual (which funnily enough gives the
 category of boolean algebras) is a genuine one, although some
 quasi-constructive alpha-categories could fit in a still more better
 way (I think). But I have neither the time nor the competence

Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-23 Thread marc . geddes


Ah, waht is mathematics?

I suspect humans could spend their life-times pondering this profound
question and never fully understand.

I'm a mathematical realist in the sense that I think mathematical
entities are real objective properties of reality and not just human
inventions, but I've come to seriously doubt the Platonist idea that
mathematics is static and timeless.  Rather I now favor the idea that
mathematical truth can evolve with time.  See Greg Chaitin for some
ideas about this.

As some of you may, know, I've suggested some radical ideas about time
on this list: namely the idea that there may be more than one time
dimension, in the sense that there may be more than one valid way to
define cause and effect relations.

My big big idea is that mathematics could be a sort of 'higher order
causality' ,or, if you like a 'higher dimensional time'.  This is
possible if some mathematical truths are not static, but can evolve
with time.

Suppose that causality itself had a two-level structure, with
'mathematical time' on the top level, and what we think of as physical
time on the bottom level.  This two level time structure is compatible
with David Bohm's interpretation of QM where reality indeed has a
two-level structure - both the wave function and the particle are
equally real but correspond to different levels of reality.

The two-level time structure could also explain the difference between
the 1st person and 3rd person perspectives and resolve the puzzle of
flowing time versus platonic timelessness.


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-23 Thread jamikes

Marc:
your considerations are enlightening. I am no mathematician so I try to
evaluate your (and others') remarks in a broader sense - and get diverse
thoughts.
Your question is more and more relevant and less and less explained by those
who live in math. Tom wrote: math is invariant, but is it still? The world
is NOT invariant, it is a ceaseless process of change and we take snapshots.
Math puts explanatory logic on such snapshots, so far (?) invariance-wise,
staying within.
(Goedel stepped further and I suspect: Bruno as well).
So I had to conclude: mathematicians are conservative, not advancing with
the trend of a dynamic view of 'everything' - unless my above hint to newer
math holds. I could not explain (1st person) (to myself) WHAT such math
could be.
Or: what the 'new' sense of NUMBER may be, everything is no answer. Then I
do not need a new statement. Then I have an old  noumenon: with a new word.
I would leave that to the dictionary-writers.

About your time-dimension(S): in THIS UNIVERSE  a time-concept arose by the
inside view according to the restricted qualia forming our world. Not
differently from space and the combination of these: movement, referring in
abstraction: to change. So we have the 'right' to formulate multiple
concepts for them.
Mathematics, the invention of the human mind (after Bohm) is a stage in our
epistemic enlightenment and is the product of restriction since we (humans)
use a materially (figment!) limited tool: the human brain, for thinking. It
is not restrictive to the ...(?) existence? nature? everything? even:
reality? beyond us.
I leave it open that 'other' universes, composed by other qualia, may have
'other' concepts than ours. Time etc. Logic etc. Math on 'variant' units,
unrestricted variables and dimensions (whatever these are)

I use 'timelessness' as a variation: thought is atemporal, aspatial. We CAN
think in those restrictions, but also transcending them. So several
time-dimensions are not so 'radical' for me. I may not be able to
'concretize' them, but not excludable.

Your use of causality is also universe-bound. In a total interconnectedness
I figure a continuous change of everything with influence of everything on
everything (is it culminating in Hal R's nothingness?) so all changes are
deterministic even if we cannot follow all angles. Change comes from change,
influence changes influence.
We pick causes in our limited model-view, looking for influences and
origins 'within' our (boundary-enclosed) topical? model we can think in.
Then we find a most likely cause, just disregarding the 'rest of the
world' with its combined entailment, outside our observational limitations.

I do not base my speculations on ideas of (maybe ingenious) earlier thinkers
too much (how much? good question) because the epistemic cognitive inventory
at their time was meager, humanity is continuously increasing the 'stuff'
we can think in, with, about, for, by etc. and do not restrict myself by
'accepted' limiting rules - maxims? like e.g.. the 'expanding universe' and
its consequences all the way to e.g. the Everett to Tegmar type multiverse
or even the Flat Earth as center of the universe (according to Einstein it
may (or may not) well be it, since movements are relative, no matter how
complicated it may be), adding to that the limited model view of our
physicists (including Q-science).
The figment of our traditionally built edifice of a physical world and its
'rules' is very impressive and practically exploitable, including 'math' (in
which I, too, do differentiate  between the 'ideal' (pure?) 'Math' and the
applied 'math' (using
(Robert Rosen's capitalization) applying the former's results to the latter,
with limited model-quantities derived from the (scientific?) physical view.

Thank you for triggering the formulation of these thoughts of mine by your
post.
I am not ready with my speculations to discuss them with people well versed
in worldviews based on foundation of different knowledge-base 'sciences'.

John Mikes





- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 5:56 AM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?




 Ah, waht is mathematics?

 I suspect humans could spend their life-times pondering this profound
 question and never fully understand.

 I'm a mathematical realist in the sense that I think mathematical
 entities are real objective properties of reality and not just human
 inventions, but I've come to seriously doubt the Platonist idea that
 mathematics is static and timeless.  Rather I now favor the idea that
 mathematical truth can evolve with time.  See Greg Chaitin for some
 ideas about this.

 As some of you may, know, I've suggested some radical ideas about time
 on this list: namely the idea that there may be more than one time
 dimension, in the sense that there may be more than one valid way to
 define cause and effect relations.

 My big big idea

Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-23 Thread Tom Caylor

Marc and John,

Interesting ideas.  Don't have time to comment appropriately.  But I
want to say one thing about my previous thought.  Note that I said that
mathematics is *about* invariance; I didn't say that mathematics *is*
necessarily invariant.  There's a big difference.

Tom


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-23 Thread jamikes

Tom,
my English may be feeble and artificial (as the 5th), but I see not too much
difference IN ESSENCE whether math is dealing with (about!) invariance, or
the idea of math is itself (about?) invariance.
Invariance is the state itself I like to disregard.

John
- Original Message -
From: Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?



 Marc and John,

 Interesting ideas.  Don't have time to comment appropriately.  But I
 want to say one thing about my previous thought.  Note that I said that
 mathematics is *about* invariance; I didn't say that mathematics *is*
 necessarily invariant.  There's a big difference.

 Tom


 


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-23 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Lee,

I have no qualms with your point here, but it seems that we have skipped 
past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability 
and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if 
process is merely a relation between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!

In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a 
first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish 
one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another. The property of 
individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one thing, 
process, etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient.
We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the 
same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required 
for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something 
to whom existence means/affects.

We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or 
whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source of 
individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere...

Onward!

Stephen

- Original Message - 
From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 11:14 PM
Subject: RE: Only Existence is necessary?



Stephen writes

  What properties do you have in mind that pure platonic algorithms
  seem to lack?  Anything, that is, besides *time* itself?

 How about an explanation as to how an illusion of time obtains
 (assuming the theory of Platonic forms if correct)?

I can't speak for advocates of a timeless Platonia, because I am
not one.  I have not yet been reconciled to timelessness.

But here is what I think they would say (at least a simplified
version of what they'd perhaps say):

Future states contain some information about past states in an
unambiguous way that past states do not contain about future states.
For example, a future version of a photographic plate contains
information about the incidence of a particle upon it.

In the same way, photons moving outward from a source collectively
contain information about their source, but not about their
destination. By gradually going to more advance versions of
photographic plates and carbon chemistry, it is seen that
evolution allows for amoebas and other creatures who contain
information about their past chemical environments.

Now taking an amoeba for example, all the possible states of
it exist in Platonia. 10^10^45 or so of them, if we are to
believe Bekenstein.  But if you observe the 10^10^45 carefully,
you will find a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny
set of them somewhere that seem to tell a story.

The story thus told is the life-history of the amoeba,
including every possible thing that can happen to it.

(Now I myself have some objections to this account---though
I reckon it can all be fixed up by a UD, that it by focusing
instead on programs that themselves produce sequences of states
---but I have the same sort of objection that I've always had
to Hilary Putnam's claims about all computations (within certain
huge bounds) taking place in a single rock.)

Lee 

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

 
Hal,

Do you have a reference for Moravec's examination of this idea?

Stathis Papaioannou

  Now, if any
  computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical
  process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop
  at this point, although it is tempting to speculate that if all it takes
  for every computation to be implemented is a single physical process -
  a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an
  otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the
  physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented
  by virtue of their existence as platonic objects.
 
 Yes, I think this is close to Moravec's view.  He believes in the platonic
 existence of all conscious experiences, and sees the role of physical
 implementation as just to allow us to interact with those other entities
 who are instantiated in our universe.
 
 Hal Finney

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Bruno Marchal

Dear Stephen,

What makes you think someone (who) asserted (where) that existence is a 
predicate. I agree with you: existence is not a predicate.
Now implementation is a *process*. Again I agree. But this could be 
just a relative computations (as those living in Platonia.

Bruno

Le 22-juin-06, à 00:50, Stephen Paul King a écrit :


 Dear Quentin et al,

 I keep reading this claim that only the existence of the algorithm
 itself is necessary and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned 
 for
 mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an 
 implementation
 in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of 
 that can
 be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.

 AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any
 property, including properties that involve some notion of chance. 
 First of
 all *existence* is *not* a property of, or a predicate associable 
 with, an
 object as Kant, Frege and Russell, et all argued well.

 http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Existence


 Per the Wiki article, Miller argued that existence is indeed a 
 predicate
 since it individuates its subject by being its bounds [from the 
 above web
 reference] but it seems that Miller's claim disallows any kind of
 relationship between such things (using that word loosely) as 
 algorithms and
 thus denies us a mean to distinguish one algorithm from another. If
 Existence individuates an entity by being its bounds then it seems to
 follow that any other entity does not *exist* to it and thus no 
 relationship
 between entities can obtain.
 I admit that I have not read enough of Miller's work to see if he 
 deals
 with this problem that I see in his reasoning (as applied here), but
 nevertheless the basic proposal that existence is sufficient to obtain
 anything that is even close to a notion of implementation.

 also see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/

 Implementation is a *process*, and as such we have to deal with the
 properties that are brought into our thinking on this.

 Onward!

 Stephen

 BTW, Plato never gave an explanation that I have seen of how the Forms 
 cast
 imperfect shadows or even why such shadow casting was necessary...

 - Original Message -
 From: Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:06 PM
 Subject: Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA



 Hi Hal,

 Le Mercredi 21 Juin 2006 19:31, Hal Finney a écrit :
 What, after all, do these principles mean?  They say that the
 implementation substrate doesn't matter.  You can implement a person
 using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same.  But if there is no 
 way
 in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this
 philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning.
 The MWI doesn't change that.

 That's exactly the point of Bruno I think... What you've shown is that
 physicalism is not compatible with computationalism. In the UD vision, 
 there
 is no real instantiation even the UD itself does not need to be
 instantiated, only the existence of the algorithm itself is necessary.

 Quentin

 

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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 22-juin-06, à 03:55, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit (in a reply to Stephen):

x-tad-bigger I am reminded of David Chalmer's paper recently mentioned by Hal Finney, Does a Rock Implement Every Finite State Automaton?, which looks at the idea that any physical state such as the vibration of atoms in a rock can be mapped onto any computation, if you look at it the right way. Usually when this idea is brought up (Hilary Putnam, John Searle, the aforementioned Chalmers paper) it is taken as self-evidently wrong. However, I have not seen any argument to convince me that this is so; it just seems people think it *ought* to be so, then look around for a justification having already made up their minds. Now, if any computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop at this point, although it is tempting to speculate that if all it takes for every computation to be implemented is a single physical process - a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented by virtue of their existence as platonic objects.
/x-tad-bigger

Nice point!  At least those platonic computations are well-defined as such including the counterfactuals. Now, a real rock implements plausibly a particular (not universal) quantum computation, and as such some finite state automaton, but not a universal computation, still less a DU.

Bruno


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


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Quentin Anciaux

Hi Bruno,

Le jeudi 22 juin 2006 15:59, Bruno Marchal a écrit :
 Dear Stephen,

 What makes you think someone (who) asserted (where) that existence is a
 predicate. I agree with you: existence is not a predicate.
 Now implementation is a *process*. Again I agree. But this could be
 just a relative computations (as those living in Platonia.

Either we have a definition problem or I do not understand. For me relative 
computations in platonia are not instantiated by definition as they are in 
platonia. Being in platonia just means it exists, hence existence is 
sufficient. If not could you please define what you mean by instantiated.

Thanks,
Quentin

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Tom Caylor


Quentin Anciaux wrote:
 Hi Bruno,

 Le jeudi 22 juin 2006 15:59, Bruno Marchal a écrit :
  Dear Stephen,
 
  What makes you think someone (who) asserted (where) that existence is a
  predicate. I agree with you: existence is not a predicate.
  Now implementation is a *process*. Again I agree. But this could be
  just a relative computations (as those living in Platonia.

 Either we have a definition problem or I do not understand. For me relative
 computations in platonia are not instantiated by definition as they are in
 platonia. Being in platonia just means it exists, hence existence is
 sufficient. If not could you please define what you mean by instantiated.

 Thanks,
 Quentin

I've been thinking about Platonia lately.  I've just finished reading
John Barrow's Pi in the Sky book, and he seems to have gotten wrapped
around the axle in regard to mathematics and Platonia.  I think that
mathematics is not primarily about numbers.  Mathematics is about
invariance.  Invariance is not about any *thing* (existence)
specifically.  Perhaps this thought can shed light on this somehow?

Tom


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Bruno Marchal

Hi Quentin,

Le 22-juin-06, à 16:16, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :


 Hi Bruno,

 Le jeudi 22 juin 2006 15:59, Bruno Marchal a écrit :
 Dear Stephen,

 What makes you think someone (who) asserted (where) that existence is 
 a
 predicate. I agree with you: existence is not a predicate.
 Now implementation is a *process*. Again I agree. But this could be
 just a relative computations (as those living in Platonia.

 Either we have a definition problem or I do not understand. For me 
 relative
 computations in platonia are not instantiated by definition as they 
 are in
 platonia. Being in platonia just means it exists, hence existence is
 sufficient. If not could you please define what you mean by 
 instantiated.



Remember that comp relies on arithmetical platonism. Numbers and their 
additive structure, and their multiplicative structure and the whole 
mess you get with both of them at once, making *all* theories 
(generable set of sentences) incomplete with respect to number 
theoretical truth. The UD lives there under the form of all true 
arithmetical (Sigma1) sentences, which, and this is eventually 
justified from the first person point of view, codes the universal 
dovetailing. So *all* computations, the finite and the infinite one, 
with their weighting redundancies, exist or better are instantiated 
under the form of an infinity of (purely) number theoretical relations. 
By comp, those many computations instantiate, well, wanting to be short 
I will just say all possible number's or machine's dreams.
Those machine's dream obeys to the law of computer science, they 
differentiates, they overlaps, they get entangled rising parallelism, 
etc. They get rise to many internal interpretations.
Computer Science, is in many different and interesting sense a branch 
of number theory.
To sum up: the dreams are instantiated in the DU-computations, 
themselves instantiated by the (platonic) number theoretical relations. 
The invariant and the symmetry (and geometry, and physics) should 
emerge from them from inside (assuming comp).

(I'm afraid Tom just did say sort of opposite. No offense Tom ;-)

Bruno


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


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Re: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stephen Paul King



Hi Stathis,

 The paper is found 
here:

http://consc.net/papers/rock.html



  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Stathis Papaioannou 
  To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
  
  Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:55 
  PM
  Subject: RE: Re: Only Existence is 
  necessary?
  
  Stephen,I am reminded ofDavid Chalmer'spaper 
  recentlymentioned by Hal Finney, "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite 
  State Automaton?", which looks at the idea that any physical state such as the 
  vibration of atoms in a rock can be mapped onto any computation, if you look 
  at it the right way.Usually whenthis idea is brought up (Hilary 
  Putnam, John Searle, the aforementioned Chalmers paper) it is taken as 
  self-evidently wrong. However, I have not seen any argument to convince me 
  that this is so; it just seems people think it *ought* to be so, then look 
  around for a justification having already made up their minds. Now, if any 
  computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical 
  process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop at 
  this point, althoughit istempting to speculate that if all it 
  takes forevery computation to be implemented is a single physical 
  process - a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an 
  otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the 
  physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented by 
  virtue of their existence as platonic 
  objects.StathisPapaioannou
  
 Ok, if I am following 
your argument here, it seems that we are required to have a 
non-circularexplanation for the existence of a *single* physical process, 
not an excuse to ignore the explanatory gap between this requirement and the 
claim that none exist. Again, How is an implementation, which is an obvios 
process, considered to be identical to theexistence of a Platonic object? 


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

 Frankly, I am 
wondering why we have such unquestioned faith in the entire theory of Platonic 
Forms given the plethora of unanswered questions that it leads one 
to!

Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Bruno,

Ok, but my question is: How is the set of relations between the 
computations embedded/encoded in Platonia such that a comparison *between* 
them is possible? We seem to be tacitly reintroducing a distinguisher that 
is somehow *outside* of Platonia... This is a familiar notion that I thought 
we are trying to banish!
If all that there *is* (Exists) is Platonia, there is no place for a 
means or mechanism or process that distinguishes one computation from 
another to exist! Thus if such can not exist, then it inevitably follows 
that any notion that requires the act of distinguishing one Platonic 
object from another is logically inconsistent and thus needs to be 
relegated to the scrap heap of absurd notions.


Onward!

Stephen


- Original Message - 
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?



Dear Stephen,

What makes you think someone (who) asserted (where) that existence is a
predicate. I agree with you: existence is not a predicate.
Now implementation is a *process*. Again I agree. But this could be
just a relative computations (as those living in Platonia.

Bruno


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Tom,

I think that you are bring up a good point but I must ask about the 
nature of invariance! The notion of invariance involves a subject to which 
the invariance obtains. If there is no such an subject, what meaning does 
the notion of a invariance have?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_%28mathematics%29


Onward!

Stephen

- Original Message - 
From: Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?


snip

I've been thinking about Platonia lately.  I've just finished reading
John Barrow's Pi in the Sky book, and he seems to have gotten wrapped
around the axle in regard to mathematics and Platonia.  I think that
mathematics is not primarily about numbers.  Mathematics is about
invariance.  Invariance is not about any *thing* (existence)
specifically.  Perhaps this thought can shed light on this somehow?

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Re: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stephen Paul King

Hi Hal,
- Original Message - 
From: Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 10:55 PM
Subject: RE: Re: Only Existence is necessary?



 Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
snip
 Now, if any
 computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical
 process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop
 at this point, although it is tempting to speculate that if all it takes
 for every computation to be implemented is a single physical process -
 a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an
 otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the
 physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented
 by virtue of their existence as platonic objects.

 Yes, I think this is close to Moravec's view.  He believes in the platonic
 existence of all conscious experiences, and sees the role of physical
 implementation as just to allow us to interact with those other entities
 who are instantiated in our universe.

[SPK]

Ok, I am happy to see Moravec idea here, as it is similar to my own, but 
does it not seem strange that interactions between entities leads to the 
existence of a structure that we somehow are perpetually lead to believe 
somehow exists independent of the interactions themselves?

Onward!

Stephen 

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread George Levy




Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

  
Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the
mind-body problem.

  
  
[SPK]

I agree! What is an Observer?
  


If we are to use an axiomatic formulation of a TOE then the observer
should be an axiom or even "The Axiom": ala Descartes "I think" and
possibly more precisely and reflexively "I think what I think" 
with all the implied logical meaning and/or axiomatic system:  This
should cut through the Gordian Knot of the mind-body problem. We'll
have to refer to Bruno's work to flesh out this idea in a formal
fashion.

George

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Tom Caylor

Then we, who are in his image, can recognize that There is  The
purest form of this recognition, I believe, is mathematics.  Of course
I'm a mathematician, so I'm biased.  :)

Tom

Tom Caylor wrote:
 Stephen,

 I wrote the following before you wrote this post, but I think it
 addresses it somewhat.

 My two cents is again to say that mathematics is about invariance.
 Platonia is about invariance.  Invariance is even more fundamental than
 number.  Numbers are defined by invariance.  The number 3 is the
 invariant attribute of all sets of 3.

 I take it that Bruno's existence is just the interference pattern of
 computations, as I think he sometimes puts it.  According to him, I
 think the ether that we swim in (exist in) is computations, an ether of
 consistency.  John Barrow in his book Pi in the Sky brought up
 the possibility that we are part of Platonia, but he concluded that
 this didn't make sense.  My opinion is that it doesn't make sense
 if Platonia is only numbers, i.e. computation.  This is for the very
 reason you bring up, Stephen.  An interference pattern requires a
 particular point of view.  But if all points of view are equally
 unspecial (modulo consistency), then we are back to the why
 something instead of nothing? problem (why this particular point
 of view that I am experiencing, rather than another point of view?).
  Something has to break the symmetry of the zero information pool.
 Interference patterns are not sufficient to break the symmetry.
 (Along the same line of reasoning, even an anthropic principle is not
 sufficient.)  Summing the interference patterns over all points-of-view
 results in zero.  I've taken my answer to this from somewhere outside
 myself.  There has to be someone with universal power to say Let
 there be

 Tom

 Stephen Paul King wrote:
  Hi Tom,
 
  I think that you are bring up a good point but I must ask about the
  nature of invariance! The notion of invariance involves a subject to which
  the invariance obtains. If there is no such an subject, what meaning does
  the notion of a invariance have?
 
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_%28mathematics%29
 
 
  Onward!
 
  Stephen
 
  - Original Message -
  From: Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
  Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:13 PM
  Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary?
 
 
  snip
 
  I've been thinking about Platonia lately.  I've just finished reading
  John Barrow's Pi in the Sky book, and he seems to have gotten wrapped
  around the axle in regard to mathematics and Platonia.  I think that
  mathematics is not primarily about numbers.  Mathematics is about
  invariance.  Invariance is not about any *thing* (existence)
  specifically.  Perhaps this thought can shed light on this somehow?


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Stathis Papaioannou






Tom Caylor writes:

 I'vebeenthinkingaboutPlatonialately.I'vejustfinishedreading JohnBarrow's"PiintheSky"book,andheseemstohavegottenwrapped aroundtheaxleinregardtomathematicsandPlatonia.Ithinkthat mathematicsisnotprimarilyaboutnumbers.Mathematicsisabout invariance.Invarianceisnotaboutany*thing*(existence) specifically.Perhapsthisthoughtcanshedlightonthissomehow?
What do you mean, "mathematics is about invariance"?

Stathis PapaioannouWith MSN Spaces email straight to your blog. Upload jokes, photos and more. It's free!
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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Tom Caylor

Stathis,

I tried to expand on that a little in my last two posts (to Stephen) on
this thread, which somehow got disconnected.  Here it is again:

Stephen,

I wrote the following before you wrote this post, but I think it
addresses it somewhat.

My two cents is again to say that mathematics is about invariance.
Platonia is about invariance.  Invariance is even more fundamental than

number.  Numbers are defined by invariance.  The number 3 is the
invariant attribute of all sets of 3.
I take it that Bruno's existence is just the interference pattern of
computations, as I think he sometimes puts it.  According to him, I
think the ether that we swim in (exist in) is computations, an ether of

consistency.  John Barrow in his book Pi in the Sky brought up
the possibility that we are part of Platonia, but he concluded that
this didn't make sense.  My opinion is that it doesn't make sense
if Platonia is only numbers, i.e. computation.  This is for the very
reason you bring up, Stephen.  An interference pattern requires a
particular point of view.  But if all points of view are equally
unspecial (modulo consistency), then we are back to the why
something instead of nothing? problem (why this particular point
of view that I am experiencing, rather than another point of view?).
 Something has to break the symmetry of the zero information pool.
Interference patterns are not sufficient to break the symmetry.
(Along the same line of reasoning, even an anthropic principle is not
sufficient.)  Summing the interference patterns over all points-of-view

results in zero.  I've taken my answer to this from somewhere outside
myself.  There has to be someone with universal power to say Let
there be

Then we, who are in his image, can recognize that There is  The
purest form of this recognition, I believe, is mathematics.  Of course
I'm a mathematician, so I'm biased.  :)

Tom

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 Tom Caylor writes:

  I've been thinking about Platonia lately.  I've just finished reading John 
  Barrow's Pi in the Sky book, and he seems to have gotten wrapped around 
  the axle in regard to mathematics and Platonia.  I think that mathematics 
  is not primarily about numbers.  Mathematics is about invariance.  
  Invariance is not about any *thing* (existence) specifically.  Perhaps 
  this thought can shed light on this somehow?
 What do you mean, mathematics is about invariance?
  
 Stathis Papaioannou


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RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-22 Thread Lee Corbin

Stephen writes

  What properties do you have in mind that pure platonic algorithms
  seem to lack?  Anything, that is, besides *time* itself?
 
 How about an explanation as to how an illusion of time obtains 
 (assuming the theory of Platonic forms if correct)?

I can't speak for advocates of a timeless Platonia, because I am
not one.  I have not yet been reconciled to timelessness.

But here is what I think they would say (at least a simplified
version of what they'd perhaps say):

Future states contain some information about past states in an
unambiguous way that past states do not contain about future states. 
For example, a future version of a photographic plate contains
information about the incidence of a particle upon it.

In the same way, photons moving outward from a source collectively
contain information about their source, but not about their
destination. By gradually going to more advance versions of
photographic plates and carbon chemistry, it is seen that
evolution allows for amoebas and other creatures who contain
information about their past chemical environments.

Now taking an amoeba for example, all the possible states of
it exist in Platonia. 10^10^45 or so of them, if we are to
believe Bekenstein.  But if you observe the 10^10^45 carefully,
you will find a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny
set of them somewhere that seem to tell a story.

The story thus told is the life-history of the amoeba,
including every possible thing that can happen to it.

(Now I myself have some objections to this account---though
I reckon it can all be fixed up by a UD, that it by focusing
instead on programs that themselves produce sequences of states
---but I have the same sort of objection that I've always had
to Hilary Putnam's claims about all computations (within certain
huge bounds) taking place in a single rock.)

Lee


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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread Stephen Paul King

Dear Quentin et al,

I keep reading this claim that only the existence of the algorithm 
itself is necessary and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for 
mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation 
in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that can 
be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.

AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any 
property, including properties that involve some notion of chance. First of 
all *existence* is *not* a property of, or a predicate associable with, an 
object as Kant, Frege and Russell, et all argued well.

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Existence


Per the Wiki article, Miller argued that existence is indeed a predicate 
since it individuates its subject by being its bounds [from the above web 
reference] but it seems that Miller's claim disallows any kind of 
relationship between such things (using that word loosely) as algorithms and 
thus denies us a mean to distinguish one algorithm from another. If 
Existence individuates an entity by being its bounds then it seems to 
follow that any other entity does not *exist* to it and thus no relationship 
between entities can obtain.
I admit that I have not read enough of Miller's work to see if he deals 
with this problem that I see in his reasoning (as applied here), but 
nevertheless the basic proposal that existence is sufficient to obtain 
anything that is even close to a notion of implementation.

also see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/

Implementation is a *process*, and as such we have to deal with the 
properties that are brought into our thinking on this.

Onward!

Stephen

BTW, Plato never gave an explanation that I have seen of how the Forms cast 
imperfect shadows or even why such shadow casting was necessary...

- Original Message - 
From: Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA



Hi Hal,

Le Mercredi 21 Juin 2006 19:31, Hal Finney a écrit :
 What, after all, do these principles mean?  They say that the
 implementation substrate doesn't matter.  You can implement a person
 using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same.  But if there is no way
 in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this
 philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning.
 The MWI doesn't change that.

That's exactly the point of Bruno I think... What you've shown is that
physicalism is not compatible with computationalism. In the UD vision, there
is no real instantiation even the UD itself does not need to be
instantiated, only the existence of the algorithm itself is necessary.

Quentin 

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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread George Levy

Hi Stephen

Stephen Paul King wrote:

Dear Quentin et al,

I keep reading this claim that only the existence of the algorithm 
itself is necessary and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for 
mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation 
in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that can 
be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
  


Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This 
is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain 
the physics and the objects.

This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether 
for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry 
their own physical substrate. They can be waves and/or particles. 
Similarly there should be equivalence between information and 
matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within 
itself its own physical substrate.

Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us 
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have 
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the 
mind-body problem.

George

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RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread Lee Corbin

Stephen writes (BTW, thanks for using plain text  :-)

 I keep reading this claim that only the existence of the algorithm 
 itself is necessary and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for 
 mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation 
 in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that can 
 be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
 
 AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any 
 property, including properties that involve some notion of chance.

What properties do you have in mind that pure platonic algorithms seem to
lack?  Anything, that is, besides *time* itself?

Thanks,
Lee

P.S. I am not up to speed on this thread at all.



 That's exactly the point of Bruno I think... What you've shown is that
 physicalism is not compatible with computationalism. In the UD vision,
 there is no real instantiation even the UD itself does not need to be
 instantiated, only the existence of the algorithm itself is necessary.
 
 Quentin 


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RE: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread Lee Corbin

George writes

 Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This 
 is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain 
 the physics and the objects.
 
 This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether 
 for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry 
 their own physical substrate. They can be waves and/or particles. 
 Similarly there should be equivalence between information and 
 matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within 
 itself its own physical substrate.

Well, that sounds good to me, but what do I know.

 Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us 
 back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have 
 to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the 
 mind-body problem.

But why can't photographic apparatuses, or amoeba, count as observers?
(They don't have minds, right, or, uh, do they?)

I really confess to not understanding the claim that information is
observer dependent; if a region contained one of thirty-two possible
binary bit strings of length 5, it seems to me that it would contain
five bits, even if no light from it ever reached other parts of the
universe.

Lee


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RE: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread Stathis Papaioannou


Stephen,

I am reminded ofDavid Chalmer'spaper recentlymentioned by Hal Finney, "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite State Automaton?", which looks at the idea that any physical state such as the vibration of atoms in a rock can be mapped onto any computation, if you look at it the right way.Usually whenthis idea is brought up (Hilary Putnam, John Searle, the aforementioned Chalmers paper) it is taken as self-evidently wrong. However, I have not seen any argument to convince me that this is so; it just seems people think it *ought* to be so, then look around for a justification having already made up their minds. Now, if any computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop at this point, althoughit istempting to speculate that if all it takes forevery computation to be implemented is a single physical process - a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented by virtue of their existence as platonic objects.

StathisPapaioannou

 DearQuentinetal,  Ikeepreadingthisclaimthat"onlytheexistenceofthealgorithm itselfisnecessary"andIamstillmystifiedastohowitisreasonedfor mereexistenceofarepresentationofaprocess,suchasanimplementation intermsofsomePlatonicNumber,issufficienttogiveamodelofthatcan beusedtoderiveanythingliketheworldofappearencesthatwehave.  AFAIK,thisclaimisthatmereexistencenecessarilyentailsany property,includingpropertiesthatinvolvesomenotionofchance.Firstof all*existence*is*not*apropertyof,orapredicateassociablewith,an objectasKant,FregeandRussell,etallarguedwell.  http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Existence   PertheWikiarticle,Millerarguedthatexistenceisindeedapredicate "sinceitindividuatesitssubjectbybeingitsbounds"[fromtheaboveweb reference]butitseemsthatMiller'sclaimdisallowsanykindof relationshipbetweensuchthings(usingthatwordloosely)asalgorithmsand thusdeniesusameantodistinguishonealgorithmfromanother.If Existenceindividuatesanentityby"beingitsbounds"thenitseemsto followthatanyotherentitydoesnot*exist*toitandthusnorelationship betweenentitiescanobtain. IadmitthatIhavenotreadenoughofMiller'sworktoseeifhedeals withthisproblemthatIseeinhisreasoning(asappliedhere),but neverthelessthebasicproposalthatexistenceissufficienttoobtain anythingthatisevenclosetoanotionofimplementation.  alsosee:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/  Implementationisa*process*,andassuchwehavetodealwiththe propertiesthatarebroughtintoourthinkingonthis.  Onward!  Stephen  BTW,PlatonevergaveanexplanationthatIhaveseenofhowtheForms"cast imperfectshadows"orevenwhysuch"shadowcasting"wasnecessary...  -OriginalMessage- From:"QuentinAnciaux"quentin.[EMAIL PROTECTED] To:everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent:Wednesday,June21,20064:06PM Subject:Re:TeleportationthoughtexperimentandUD+ASSAHiHal,  LeMercredi21Juin200619:31,HalFinneyaécrit: What,afterall,dotheseprinciplesmean?Theysaythatthe implementationsubstratedoesn'tmatter.Youcanimplementaperson usingneuronsortinkertoys,it'sallthesame.Butifthereisnoway inprincipletotellwhetherasystemimplementsaperson,thenthis philosophyismeaninglesssinceitsbasicassumptionhasnomeaning. TheMWIdoesn'tchangethat.  That'sexactlythepointofBrunoIthink...Whatyou'veshownisthat physicalismisnotcompatiblewithcomputationalism.IntheUDvision,there isnoreal"instantiation"eventheUDitselfdoesnotneedtobe instantiated,onlytheexistenceofthealgorithmitselfisnecessary.  Quentin  
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Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread George Levy




Hi Lee,

Lee Corbin wrote:

  George writes

  
  
Is the world fundamentally physical or can it be reduced to ideas? This 
is an interesting issue. If a TOE exists then it would have to explain 
the physics and the objects.

This reminds me of the Ether controversy. Is there a need for the Ether 
for waves to propagate? The most up-to-date answer is that  waves carry 
their own "physical substrate." They can be waves and/or particles. 
Similarly there should be equivalence between information and 
matter/energy. Thus a process or algorithm should have inherently within 
itself its own physical substrate.

  
  
Well, that sounds good to me, but what do I know.

  
  
Since information is observer-dependent (Shannon) this issue brings us 
back to the observer. I think that eventually all observables will have 
to be traced back to the observer who is in fact at the nexus of the 
mind-body problem.

  
  
But why can't photographic apparatuses, or amoeba, count as observers?
(They don't have minds, right, or, uh, do they?)

I really confess to not understanding the claim that information is
observer dependent; if a region contained one of thirty-two possible
binary bit strings of length 5, it seems to me that it would contain
five bits, even if no light from it ever reached other parts of the
universe.

Lee

  

If I say something to you in Sanskrit you will likely not understand
it. It will carry zero information. However If I say it in English you
will be much more likely to understand it. 

If I say to you that your name is Lee Corbin, it will not add any
information to what you already know. Again, it will carry zero
information. 

This is what Shannon calls Mutual Information. In the first
case *you* don't have the decoder to translate Sanskrit to
English. In the second case you have the decoder but for *you*,
the information is not new: you already know that your name is
Lee Corbin. Old information is no information at all.
 
Received mutual information is dependent on the information that
already exists in the mind of the receiver (or observer). In this sense
Shannon's information theory is a relativity theory of information just
like Galileo's dynamics and Einstein's relativity are relativity
theories of physics and just like Everett's interpretation is a
relativity theory of quantum events.  

This is the reason I believe that the observer is at the nexus of the
mind-body problem and that eventually we'll find that the "mind" and
the "body" are two aspects of the same thing. Bruno seems to be in the
right track in developing a calculus of the soul (or consciousness).

George


  



  



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RE: Re: Only Existence is necessary?

2006-06-21 Thread Hal Finney

Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 I am reminded of David Chalmer's paper recently mentioned by Hal Finney,
 Does a Rock Implement Every Finite State Automaton?, which looks at
 the idea that any physical state such as the vibration of atoms in a
 rock can be mapped onto any computation, if you look at it the right
 way. Usually when this idea is brought up (Hilary Putnam, John Searle,
 the aforementioned Chalmers paper) it is taken as self-evidently
 wrong. However, I have not seen any argument to convince me that this
 is so; it just seems people think it *ought* to be so, then look around
 for a justification having already made up their minds.

I tend to agree.  People find the conclusion unpalatable and then they
try to come up with some justification for why it is not true.  As I
mentioned, at least some people like, I think, Hans Moravec, accept the
basic conclusion.

 Now, if any
 computation is implemented by any physical process, then if one physical
 process exists, then all possible computations are implemented. I'll stop
 at this point, although it is tempting to speculate that if all it takes
 for every computation to be implemented is a single physical process -
 a rock, a single subatomic particle, the idle passage of time in an
 otherwise empty universe - perhaps this is not far from saying that the
 physical process is superfluous, and all computations are implemented
 by virtue of their existence as platonic objects.

Yes, I think this is close to Moravec's view.  He believes in the platonic
existence of all conscious experiences, and sees the role of physical
implementation as just to allow us to interact with those other entities
who are instantiated in our universe.

Hal Finney

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