Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-10-01 Thread 1Z


Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:

> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> COL
> >> Yes. Causal chains, no matter how improbable, executed at the tiniest
> of
> >> scales the same ones that make LUCY our literal ancestor. connect
> us.
> >
>
> LZ
> > It depends what you , mean by "connect". I am connected to these things,
> but they can manage without me. It is a one-way
> > kind of connection.
> >
>
> COL
> We are touching on the unidirectionality of time, here. Specifically the
> 2nd law of thermodynamics. Myriad infinitesimal entropy transactions
> resulting in overall increases in disorder but localised increases in
> order (& complexity , russel's playground) where net energy inflow exists
> - such as where we are in the beam of the floodlight called sol.
>
> If you mean the current state is the sum of the transactions of the entire
> history of the transactions comprising you... then yes, your present state
> is connected to all this causal history. The thing is that you literally
> _are_ it.

No, I'm literally *not* it. I am *not*, literally , the state of
the universe at the Big Bang. Even though it caused me,
in a sense. Causes are not the same entities as their effects, in
general.

> You are not like some bulldozed pile of independent stuff. So
> the idea that you and the causality that got you to your current state are
> separate is meaningless. You literally are causality - intrinsically made
> of change, but change that results in persistent structure that is you.
>
> So. yes. The model I am working with is untrinsically unidirectional, I
> suppose - one way in a flow sense and one way in a causal sense that the
> present (current state) did not 'cause' the past (previous states), nor
> can the future cause the present state.
>
> The easiest way to imagine it is to think of it as computation. Go through
> the sequence of operations 2+5=7. The 'present' is the state of the
> computation as is progresses (load, 2, load 5 add, display result, for
> example). The 7 did not cause a 2 and 5 to be added. Similarly 7's
> participation in a future computation cannot be said to have caused the 7.
>
> I know we can _imagine_ realms where bidirectional causality may be so.
> These are best represented in our formal mathemtical depictions of our
> world that have t in them, t for time). What I am saying is that the realm
> we are in is not like them. This is the one _we_ inhabit, with particular
> instances of particular kinds of things going on. Or perhaps a little more
> generally - the one we inhabit is currently in a state where
> unidirectional causality (albeit intrinsically randomised in selecttion of
> particular outcomes) rules. A really good book on this is 'The end of
> certainty' by Prigogine.
>
> COL
> >> identical to other sorts of neuron cohorts nearby. One set delivers
> qualia. The others do not.
>
> LZ
> >
> > How do you know ?
>
>
> COL
> Human verbal reports in a very detailed experimental regime. This was done
> by imaging humans and controlling for various physiological circumstances
> to eliminate the cohorts involved in things like (in the case of thirst)
> the 'mouth-dryness' factor and micturition state. When you control
> everything you end up being able to isolate one specific, unique region
> that is correlated only with the experienced emotion of 'thirst'
> (reasulting in an 'imperious desire' for drinking behaviour). The imaging
> results are in the book.
>
> The interesting thing in the case of these low level emotions is that they
> are all separate cohorts (thirst, hunger, sex drive etc). It's not one
> cohort that changes in subjective quality. There must be an evolutionary
> reason for this... maybe in DNA or maybe the emotions compete for
> behavioural dominance (micturition thwarting, for example, may stop you
> being afraid of something or vice versa)

So science *is* investigating phenomenal consciousness, not ignroaing
it?

> >
> >> So there are 2 parts to an explanation:
> >> a) single neuron properties
> >> b) cohort organisation
> >> Unless thesre is a property of single neurons to use for a cohort to do
> something with, you are attributing 'magical emergence' to a cohort. This
> >> is a logical inevitability.
>
> LZ
> > y-e-e-s. But where are you without emergence? Qualia would
> > then be properties of quarks. Wihich brings on a Grain problem with a
> vengeance.
> >
>
> COL
> There are no gaines to have a problem with. See below.

?


> COL
> >> Magical emergence means attributing some sort of property inherent in
> organisation itself.
>
> LZ
> >
> > The point of emergence is rather that the property is *not* inherent in
> the lower-level parts and relations.
>
> COL
> Yes, but these properties cannot exist without colligative actions of
> _something_. Like I said:


And pheomenal properties at the neuronal level must emerge from
colligative actions of molecules.

> LAKE is to H20
> as
> REDness 

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-29 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

COL
>> Yes. Causal chains, no matter how improbable, executed at the tiniest
of
>> scales the same ones that make LUCY our literal ancestor. connect
us.
>

LZ
> It depends what you , mean by "connect". I am connected to these things,
but they can manage without me. It is a one-way
> kind of connection.
>

COL
We are touching on the unidirectionality of time, here. Specifically the
2nd law of thermodynamics. Myriad infinitesimal entropy transactions
resulting in overall increases in disorder but localised increases in
order (& complexity , russel's playground) where net energy inflow exists
- such as where we are in the beam of the floodlight called sol.

If you mean the current state is the sum of the transactions of the entire
history of the transactions comprising you... then yes, your present state
is connected to all this causal history. The thing is that you literally
_are_ it. You are not like some bulldozed pile of independent stuff. So
the idea that you and the causality that got you to your current state are
separate is meaningless. You literally are causality - intrinsically made
of change, but change that results in persistent structure that is you.

So. yes. The model I am working with is untrinsically unidirectional, I
suppose - one way in a flow sense and one way in a causal sense that the
present (current state) did not 'cause' the past (previous states), nor
can the future cause the present state.

The easiest way to imagine it is to think of it as computation. Go through
the sequence of operations 2+5=7. The 'present' is the state of the
computation as is progresses (load, 2, load 5 add, display result, for
example). The 7 did not cause a 2 and 5 to be added. Similarly 7's
participation in a future computation cannot be said to have caused the 7.

I know we can _imagine_ realms where bidirectional causality may be so.
These are best represented in our formal mathemtical depictions of our
world that have t in them, t for time). What I am saying is that the realm
we are in is not like them. This is the one _we_ inhabit, with particular
instances of particular kinds of things going on. Or perhaps a little more
generally - the one we inhabit is currently in a state where
unidirectional causality (albeit intrinsically randomised in selecttion of
particular outcomes) rules. A really good book on this is 'The end of
certainty' by Prigogine.

COL
>> identical to other sorts of neuron cohorts nearby. One set delivers
qualia. The others do not.

LZ
>
> How do you know ?


COL
Human verbal reports in a very detailed experimental regime. This was done
by imaging humans and controlling for various physiological circumstances
to eliminate the cohorts involved in things like (in the case of thirst)
the 'mouth-dryness' factor and micturition state. When you control
everything you end up being able to isolate one specific, unique region
that is correlated only with the experienced emotion of 'thirst'
(reasulting in an 'imperious desire' for drinking behaviour). The imaging
results are in the book.

The interesting thing in the case of these low level emotions is that they
are all separate cohorts (thirst, hunger, sex drive etc). It's not one
cohort that changes in subjective quality. There must be an evolutionary
reason for this... maybe in DNA or maybe the emotions compete for
behavioural dominance (micturition thwarting, for example, may stop you
being afraid of something or vice versa)

>
>> So there are 2 parts to an explanation:
>> a) single neuron properties
>> b) cohort organisation
>> Unless thesre is a property of single neurons to use for a cohort to do
something with, you are attributing 'magical emergence' to a cohort. This
>> is a logical inevitability.

LZ
> y-e-e-s. But where are you without emergence? Qualia would
> then be properties of quarks. Wihich brings on a Grain problem with a
vengeance.
>

COL
There are no gaines to have a problem with. See below.

COL
>> Magical emergence means attributing some sort of property inherent in
organisation itself.

LZ
>
> The point of emergence is rather that the property is *not* inherent in
the lower-level parts and relations.

COL
Yes, but these properties cannot exist without colligative actions of
_something_. Like I said:

LAKE is to H20
as
REDness is to 'what?'.

That is, what elemental property is dragged along with matter (atoms,
molecules) that can result in it being 'like something' to be those
atoms/molecules? Yes, you can say they are behaving in a specific way
...like neural cells doing the "qualia dance" but you are still stuck
with not knowing the 'what?' shown above. This is only
correlation/description , not causation/explanation. The real question is
to ask yourself what are the innate circumstances in the universe that
would mean doing the neural qualia dance be 'like something'? This
fundamentally questions your view of the unive

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-29 Thread 1Z

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >
> >
> > Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >> >> The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through
> >> being
> >> >> observed with our phenomenal consciousness.
> >> >
> >> > Not "only". Cognition and instrumentation are needed too.
> >>
> >> Yes. But the instruments are observed. All the instruments do is extend
> >> the causal chain between your phenomenality and the observed phenomena.
> >> Provided you can justify the causal source...all is OK... but that's
> >> part
> >> of the critical argument process using existing knowledge. The observer
> >> is
> >> fundamentally in the causal chain from the deepest levels all the way
> >> through all of the instrumentation and into the sensory systems of the
> >> observer. The observer is part of every observation.
> >
> > Hmmm. Are you sure? Is an earthbound astronomer fundamentally
> > part of a supernovca which exploded millionsof years ago ? What
> > do you mean by "fundamentally" ?
> >
> Yes. Causal chains, no matter how improbable, executed at the tiniest of
> scales the same ones that make LUCY our literal ancestor. connect us.

It depends what you , mean by "connect". I am connected to these
things, but they can manage without me. It is a one-way
kind of connection.

> Consider them entropy transactions. When you objectify it, formalise it
> and it looks (is equivalent to) 'light cone' causal proximity, but that's
> only how it appearas.




> Causal chains all the way from the sub-sub-quark level, all the way out of
> the experiment, up through the instruments, across the room, into your
> eye, action potentials along nerves and then the neuron(s) that deliver
> the qualia... observation.
>
> >> Consciousness is not a 'high level' emergent property of massive numbers
> >> of neurons in a cortex context. It is a fundamental property of matter
> >> that single excitable cells make good use of that is automatically
> >> assembled along with assembling cells in certain ways.
> >
> > There are a number of leaps there. from "basal" areas
> > to "single neurons", for instance.
>
> When you look at the imaging it's very small cohorts of neurons. They look
> identical to other sorts of neuron cohorts nearby. One set delivers
> qualia. The others do not.

How do you know ?

> So there are 2 parts to an explanation:
> a) single neuron properties
> b) cohort organisation
>
> Unless thesre is a property of single neurons to use for a cohort to do
> something with, you are attributing 'magical emergence' to a cohort. This
> is a logical inevitability.

y-e-e-s. But where are you without emergence ? Qualia would
then be properties of quarks. Wihich brings on a Grain problem with
a vengeance.

> Magical emergence means attributing some sort of property inherent in
> organisation itself.

The point of emergence is rather that the property is *not* inherent in
the
lower-level parts and realtions.

> This leads to logical nonsense in other
> considerations of organisation (eg sentient plumbing in Beijing).
>
> That leaves us with a property of excitable cells which can
> a) be optionally established by a single cell
> then
> b) be used to collective effect (including cancellation/nullification)

A phenomenal property of a single cell would be emergent relative to
the
molecular/atomic level.

> At this stage I don;t know which option does the priordial emptions. What
> I do know is that without single cell expression of a kind of
> 'elemental-quale' you can't make qualia.
>
> Crick and Koch also attributed qualia to small cohorts or possibly single
> cells (but in cortical material in 2003). No we have moved it out of the
> cortext, the arrow is pointing towards single cells... and what do you
> know? they are all different - 'excitable' = electromagnetic behaviour. We
> have a fairly large pointer which says this is a single cell
> electromagnetic phenomenon as like a pixel in a qualia picture.
> 
> colin hales


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-28 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales

>
>
> Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
>> >> The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through
>> being
>> >> observed with our phenomenal consciousness.
>> >
>> > Not "only". Cognition and instrumentation are needed too.
>>
>> Yes. But the instruments are observed. All the instruments do is extend
>> the causal chain between your phenomenality and the observed phenomena.
>> Provided you can justify the causal source...all is OK... but that's
>> part
>> of the critical argument process using existing knowledge. The observer
>> is
>> fundamentally in the causal chain from the deepest levels all the way
>> through all of the instrumentation and into the sensory systems of the
>> observer. The observer is part of every observation.
>
> Hmmm. Are you sure? Is an earthbound astronomer fundamentally
> part of a supernovca which exploded millionsof years ago ? What
> do you mean by "fundamentally" ?
>
Yes. Causal chains, no matter how improbable, executed at the tiniest of
scales the same ones that make LUCY our literal ancestor. connect us.
Consider them entropy transactions. When you objectify it, formalise it
and it looks (is equivalent to) 'light cone' causal proximity, but that's
only how it appearas.

Causal chains all the way from the sub-sub-quark level, all the way out of
the experiment, up through the instruments, across the room, into your
eye, action potentials along nerves and then the neuron(s) that deliver
the qualia... observation.

>> Consciousness is not a 'high level' emergent property of massive numbers
>> of neurons in a cortex context. It is a fundamental property of matter
>> that single excitable cells make good use of that is automatically
>> assembled along with assembling cells in certain ways.
>
> There are a number of leaps there. from "basal" areas
> to "single neurons", for instance.

When you look at the imaging it's very small cohorts of neurons. They look
identical to other sorts of neuron cohorts nearby. One set delivers
qualia. The others do not.

So there are 2 parts to an explanation:
a) single neuron properties
b) cohort organisation

Unless thesre is a property of single neurons to use for a cohort to do
something with, you are attributing 'magical emergence' to a cohort. This
is a logical inevitability.

Magical emergence means attributing some sort of property inherent in
organisation itself. This leads to logical nonsense in other
considerations of organisation (eg sentient plumbing in Beijing).

That leaves us with a property of excitable cells which can
a) be optionally established by a single cell
then
b) be used to collective effect (including cancellation/nullification)

At this stage I don;t know which option does the priordial emptions. What
I do know is that without single cell expression of a kind of
'elemental-quale' you can't make qualia.

Crick and Koch also attributed qualia to small cohorts or possibly single
cells (but in cortical material in 2003). No we have moved it out of the
cortext, the arrow is pointing towards single cells... and what do you
know? they are all different - 'excitable' = electromagnetic behaviour. We
have a fairly large pointer which says this is a single cell
electromagnetic phenomenon as like a pixel in a qualia picture.

colin hales




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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-28 Thread 1Z


Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >> The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through being
> >> observed with our phenomenal consciousness.
> >
> > Not "only". Cognition and instrumentation are needed too.
>
> Yes. But the instruments are observed. All the instruments do is extend
> the causal chain between your phenomenality and the observed phenomena.
> Provided you can justify the causal source...all is OK... but that's part
> of the critical argument process using existing knowledge. The observer is
> fundamentally in the causal chain from the deepest levels all the way
> through all of the instrumentation and into the sensory systems of the
> observer. The observer is part of every observation.

Hmmm. Are you sure? Is an earthbound astronomer fundamentally
part of a supernovca which exploded millionsof years ago ? What
do you mean by "fundamentally" ?

> > Why not? Cars cannot understand themselves, but they
> > cannot understand anything else. The fact that the brain
> > is being refelexively usd to understand itself is
> > a unique feature of cosnciousness studies,
> > but it is not clear why it make cosnciousness studies flatly
> > impossible.
> > You might expect it to make the study of consiousness
> > easier, in sone respects.
> >
>
> The current literature has traced the conscious processes of primordial
> emotions (those related to the 'appetites'/homeostasis) out of the cortex
> to the basal areas and into the reptilian brain. This has been done
> empirically.
>
> Derek Denton
> The primordial emotions: The dawning of consciousness
>
> Phenomenal consciousness does not need a cortex to exist. It does not need
> an explicit self model or reflexivity/indexicality. The "I" of a lizard
> can be implicit (it hurts 'ME', I am hungry, I need air etc...ergo
> behave).
>
> This means that single neurons and/or small groups of neurons are all that
> is needed for _phenomenal_ consciousness.
>
> 'Consciousness' is therefore at least traced back through the vertebrate
> line of evolution and to the very origins of the basal brain structures.
> This supports the potential for cosnciousness in possibly in invertebrates
> and back to single cell animals...
>
> Consciousness is not a 'high level' emergent property of massive numbers
> of neurons in a cortex context. It is a fundamental property of matter
> that single excitable cells make good use of that is automatically
> assembled along with assembling cells in certain ways.

There are a number of leaps there. from "basal" areas
to "single neurons", for instance.

> cheers
> colin hales


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-28 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales

>> The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through being
>> observed with our phenomenal consciousness.
>
> Not "only". Cognition and instrumentation are needed too.

Yes. But the instruments are observed. All the instruments do is extend
the causal chain between your phenomenality and the observed phenomena.
Provided you can justify the causal source...all is OK... but that's part
of the critical argument process using existing knowledge. The observer is
fundamentally in the causal chain from the deepest levels all the way
through all of the instrumentation and into the sensory systems of the
observer. The observer is part of every observation.

>
>> That process, for the reasons
>> that I have been outlining, can never supply a reason why it shall be
>> necessarily 'like something' to be a cell of a collection of them.
>
> I'm afraid that reason has passed me by

If it occurs to you... let us know... there's a Nobel prize in it.

>
>> That
>> reason is buried deep in the fabric of things. If you understand the
>> underlying structure giving rise to phenomenality then the underlying
>> structure will literally predict the existence, shape, size, behaviour
>> and
>> interconnectivity of neurons and astrocytes _in order_ that you be
>> conscious.
>
> And do you understand the underlying structure ?
>

I have my models. Others have models (see refs in previous post). All
anyone has is models. The point is that it's possible to get an
understanding of it _because_ the underlying structure is as responsible
for phenomenal consciousues as anything else - indeed phenomenal
consciousness is the first place to start because it is the most evidenced
thing. It literally _is_ observation/evidence. It participates (is
mandated by science) in every scientific observation.

>> Our logic is all backwards: We need to have a theory predicting brain
>> material. A theory based on brain material cannot predict brain
>> material,
>
> Why not? Cars cannot understand themselves, but they
> cannot understand anything else. The fact that the brain
> is being refelexively usd to understand itself is
> a unique feature of cosnciousness studies,
> but it is not clear why it make cosnciousness studies flatly
> impossible.
> You might expect it to make the study of consiousness
> easier, in sone respects.
>

The current literature has traced the conscious processes of primordial
emotions (those related to the 'appetites'/homeostasis) out of the cortex
to the basal areas and into the reptilian brain. This has been done
empirically.

Derek Denton
The primordial emotions: The dawning of consciousness

Phenomenal consciousness does not need a cortex to exist. It does not need
an explicit self model or reflexivity/indexicality. The "I" of a lizard
can be implicit (it hurts 'ME', I am hungry, I need air etc...ergo
behave).

This means that single neurons and/or small groups of neurons are all that
is needed for _phenomenal_ consciousness.

'Consciousness' is therefore at least traced back through the vertebrate
line of evolution and to the very origins of the basal brain structures.
This supports the potential for cosnciousness in possibly in invertebrates
and back to single cell animals...

Consciousness is not a 'high level' emergent property of massive numbers
of neurons in a cortex context. It is a fundamental property of matter
that single excitable cells make good use of that is automatically
assembled along with assembling cells in certain ways.

cheers
colin hales



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-28 Thread 1Z


Colin Hales wrote:
> 1Z
> >
> > Colin Hales wrote:
> > > >
> > > > So I ask again HOW would we act DIFFERENTLY if we acted "as-if" MIND
> > > > EXISTED.  So far
> > > > the only difference I SEE is writing a lot of stuff in CAPS.
> > > >
> > > > Brent Meeker
> > > >
> > >
> > > FIRSTLY
> > > Formally we would investigate new physics of underlying reality such as
> > > this:
> >
> > Why not investigate consciousness at the neuronal level rather than
> > the fundamental-particle level?
> >
> >
>
> The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through being
> observed with our phenomenal consciousness.

Not "only". Cognition and instrumentation are needed too.

> That process, for the reasons
> that I have been outlining, can never supply a reason why it shall be
> necessarily 'like something' to be a cell of a collection of them.

I'm afraid that reason has passed me by

> That
> reason is buried deep in the fabric of things. If you understand the
> underlying structure giving rise to phenomenality then the underlying
> structure will literally predict the existence, shape, size, behaviour and
> interconnectivity of neurons and astrocytes _in order_ that you be
> conscious.

And do you understand the underlying structure ?

> Our logic is all backwards: We need to have a theory predicting brain
> material. A theory based on brain material cannot predict brain material,

Why not? Cars cannot understand themselves, but they
cannot understand anything else. The fact that the brain
is being refelexively usd to understand itself is
a unique feature of cosnciousness studies,
but it is not clear why it make cosnciousness studies flatly
impossible.
You might expect it to make the study of consiousness
easier, in sone respects.

> especially one that has used the property we are trying to find to observe
> the brain material. The whole exploratory loop is screwed up.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Colin Hales


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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-27 Thread Colin Hales

1Z
> 
> Colin Hales wrote:
> > >
> > > So I ask again HOW would we act DIFFERENTLY if we acted "as-if" MIND
> > > EXISTED.  So far
> > > the only difference I SEE is writing a lot of stuff in CAPS.
> > >
> > > Brent Meeker
> > >
> >
> > FIRSTLY
> > Formally we would investigate new physics of underlying reality such as
> > this:
> 
> Why not investigate consciousness at the neuronal level rather than
> the fundamental-particle level?
> 
> 

The problem is that cells are defined and understood only through being
observed with our phenomenal consciousness. That process, for the reasons
that I have been outlining, can never supply a reason why it shall be
necessarily 'like something' to be a cell of a collection of them. That
reason is buried deep in the fabric of things. If you understand the
underlying structure giving rise to phenomenality then the underlying
structure will literally predict the existence, shape, size, behaviour and
interconnectivity of neurons and astrocytes _in order_ that you be
conscious.

Our logic is all backwards: We need to have a theory predicting brain
material. A theory based on brain material cannot predict brain material,
especially one that has used the property we are trying to find to observe
the brain material. The whole exploratory loop is screwed up.

Cheers

Colin Hales



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-27 Thread 1Z


Colin Hales wrote:
> >
> > So I ask again HOW would we act DIFFERENTLY if we acted "as-if" MIND
> > EXISTED.  So far
> > the only difference I SEE is writing a lot of stuff in CAPS.
> >
> > Brent Meeker
> >
>
> FIRSTLY
> Formally we would investigate new physics of underlying reality such as
> this:

Why not investigate consciousness at the neuronal level rather than
the fundamental-particle level?


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-27 Thread 1Z


Colin Hales wrote:
> 1Z
> 
> > Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 3:19 AM
> > > >> > Brent Meeker
> > > >> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
> > > behave exactly as they do behave,
> > > >> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
> > > consideration at all, the rest deciding
> > > >> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
> > > purpose served by worrying about it.
> > > >
> > > > Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> > > > as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> > > > for people who prefer certainty to understanding.
> > > >
> > >
> > > COLIN HALES:
> > > Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!
> > >
> > > The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists.
> >
> > My point was that scientists *do* prefer understanding
> > to certainty, and therefore are *not* solipsists. I can't think of
> > anything I have said, or that you have said, that leads
> > to the conclusion that scientists ingenreal are solpsitsts.
> > (I'm still wiating for an example of an instrumetalist
> > ornithologist...)
> >
>
> I disagree and can show empirical proof that we scientists only THINK we are
> not being solipsistic.
>
> We ARE actually -methodologically- solipsistic because consciousness
> (phenomenal consciousness itself) = [seeing itself] is not accepted as
> evidence of anything. We only accept the 'contents' of phenomenal
> consciousness' = [that which is seen] as scientific evidence.

What's the difference?


> We think that
> predicting 'seeing'

What do you mean by seeing ?

> will come from the act of analysing that which is
> seen... this is logically fallacious. Like observing the behaviour of
> monalisa within the painting and then using that behaviour to divine canvas,
> paint and an artist: silly/illogical.
> This behaviour is 'as-if' we are solipsists - that we do not believe mind
> (other minds) exist. We are being inconsistent in an extremely fundamental
> way. This is a complex and subtle point - a cultural blind of enormous
> implication.
> As for an example of an instrumentalist ornithologists? Hmmm... perhaps ask
> the utilitarianist nominalist paleontologists. They may know! :-)

I have to say, I found your porrf to be pretty incomprehensible.

> >
> > > The only
> > > way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
> > > confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the
> > only
> > > 'real truth'.
> >
> > It isn't a real truth. if it were, it wouldn't matter
> > how they behave.
> >
> > >  There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
> > > duplicitous is OK.
> > >
> > > But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
> > > consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to
> > an
> > > inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
> > > scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by
> > a
> > > belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
> > > accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,
> >
> > What are "we", if we are neither mind nor world ?
>
> Your words assume that mind is not part of/distinct from/intrinsically apart
> from the world. This is a linguistic trap.

So It *is* part of (etc) the world ?

> WE are inside a universe of stuff, WE are made of stuff with
> perceptions(appearances) of stuff constructed by stuff behaviour. When WE
> look as atoms WE are seeing stuff behave atomly. Other stuff in our heads
> paints atoms to look like that. Does that make sense?

Not really.

> There is no objective view in this. Only appearances. We are NOT directly
> accessing the external world. We never have and we never will.

How do you know ?


> > Why should it have a phsyics ? Is there a physics of stock markets
> > ?
> > Surely consicousness is a high-level phenomenon.
> >
>
> [A glass of water] is a high level phenomenon of [water atoms]
> [consciousness] is a high level phenomenon of [what?]

Neurons, presumably.

> You can't have a high level phenomenon of a collection of "something"
> without a "something". This belief is called 'magical emergentism'. In
> consciousness studies you can claim [what?] to be something seen with
> consciousness. The point is that the [what?] above will not be viewable with
> consciousness.
>
> That does not mean we can't be scientific about it. What it means is that
> the permission to examine potential [what?] is a behaviour currently
> prohibited by science because of the virtual solipsism I speak of. To speak
> of the [what?] is to speak of something that creates SEEING but is not SEEN
> directly. The correctly chosen [What?] will enable seeing that makes the
> seen look like it does, so 'seeing' is actually viable indirect evidence.



> If scientists are being virtual-solipsists by failing to accept seeing as
> evide

RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-27 Thread John M



--- Colin Hales <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(among a lot other things, quoted and replied to):

>I disagree and can show empirical proof that we
scientists only THINK we are not being solipsistic.<

I wrote in this sense lately (for the past say 40
years) but now I tend to change my solipsistic mind in
view of your position - maybe the other way around,
but for a mathematician (whay I amnot) a
multiplication with -1 is no big deal. 

As I formulate my new ideas (did not elevate them to
'position') everybody with an active mind (e.g. with a
mentality that generates ideas) is living in a
solipsistic air of his own ideas. This is relevant to
peasants, to religious fanatics, also to scientists
etc. (I don't know which applies to me, I never
proclaimed  myself a 'scientist', am not religious and
have no farm). We may pretend to see 3rd person errors
(sic) but really we live in our 1st person enclave. 
This is OK in my own little nuthouse. I pretended to
be more open and 'think' about a reality I can never
attain, but behind such pretension was my hypocrisy. 

Thanks for adding something (even if considerable as
negative) to my thinking (solipstic as it is - pardon
me the pun, it is a typo).

With best regards (also from me to me, but never mind:
you can accept it)

John Mikes

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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-26 Thread Colin Hales

> 
> So I ask again HOW would we act DIFFERENTLY if we acted "as-if" MIND
> EXISTED.  So far
> the only difference I SEE is writing a lot of stuff in CAPS.
> 
> Brent Meeker
> 

FIRSTLY
Formally we would investigate new physics of underlying reality such as
this:
---
Cahill RT. 2005. Process Physics: From Information Theory to Quantum Space
and Matter: Nova Publishers.
Cahill RT, Klinger CM. 1998. Self-Referential Noise and the Synthesis of
Three-Dimensional Space. General Relativity and Gravitation(32):529.
Cahill RT, Klinger CM. 2000. Self-Referential Noise as a Fundamental Aspect
of Reality. In: Abbott D, L K, editors. Proc 2nd Int Conf on Unsolved
Problems of Noise and Fluctuations (UPoN'99): American Institute of Physics.
p 511:543.
Kitto K. 2002. Dynamical Hierarchies in Fundamental Physics. In: Bilotta E,
editor. Workshop Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the
Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALife VIII): Univ. New South
Wales, Australia. p 55-62.
---
Instead of competing with traditional 'appearances' physics we go straight
to brain material and make it construct atom behaviour, molecule, cell
behaviour...etc and look at what behaviours might correspond to whatever it
is that functions as phenomenal consciousness in brain material.

Currently this physics (of an underlying structure) is ignored because all
it does is compete with alternate mainstream physics on its own turf.
Instead the physics needs to go to where mainstream physics is voiceless and
impotent by definition - consciousness - and predict brain material
behaviour. This is its validity and its unique entrée into acceptability.
=

SECONDLY
Computationally we would investigate the same systems using cellular
automata:
-
Wolfram S. 2002. A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media. xiv,
1197 p.
-
and ask the one question Wolfram failed to ask: "What is it like to be a
cellular automata" one that makes atoms, space and higher level
structures (like our universe). Also we need to work on CAs of the cell
types based on noise/fluctuation as per Cahill. CAs that construct their own
cells and cell rules at higher and higher levels of complexity - free
running CAs.
==

Currently both these techniques and people are eschewed as invalid for no
reason other than the virtual solipsism I have been talking about. Both of
these folks have viable things to say about consciousness that mainstream
physics can’t. And they don’t realise it and they don’t understand why they
have trouble with acceptance. The reason they are not accepted is that they
are 

a) working on models of an underlying reality 
and
b) do not realise the implications in consciousness studies 
and
c) are competing with traditional explanations when they shouldn’t be

so

The reason they don't get listened to is 
because
  underlying physics is regarded as unscientific
  eschewed as 'mere metaphysics'
because
  they think there's no evidence
because
  they don’t realise the underlying physics is causing mind
..not laws derived using it
because
  They think mind will be explained by models of appearances
Because 
  They haven't realised/accept mind as evidence in its own right

= mind does not exist

= as-if solipsism.

This situation stems form the Kantian era when the noumenon was accepted
(now erroneously) as proven to be scientifically intractable. Modern
neuroscience shows it to be not intractable. We know where 'mind' is. The
underlying reality is not as unknowable the assumption of direct access
(=knowability) is still with us. In summary

KANTIAN VIEW (single aspect, unsituated science)
a) Phenomenon   External reality:   ACCESSED, KNOWABLE
b) Noumenon Underlying reality  INACCESSIBLE, UNKNOWABLE


MODERN VIEW (dual aspect, situated science)
a) Phenomenon   External reality:   ACCESSIBLE, LIMITED KNOWABILITY
b) Noumenon Underlying reality  ACCESSIBLE, LIMITED
KNOWABILITY


Science currently is a 250 year old museum to the Kantian model. The key is
simply that our scientific evidence model needs to be fixed. None of the
existing empirical laws (a) are invalidated by this approach. They all stay
the same. QM, the lot ...Only their explanatory scope is questioned. They
are recognised as fundamentally prevented from dealing with consciousness
because they are derived FROM it. We lose nothing - indeed the existing laws
(a) are valuable constraints in (b) because whatever model for (b) we derive
must simultaneously provide appearances in which all (a) will be observable.
This is a highly constrained simultaneous equation, in effect. Both (a) and
(b) are tied at the hip by phenomenal consciousness. The two descriptive
domains form the basis for what I have called 'dual aspect science'.

That’s exactly what, how, why,

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-26 Thread Brent Meeker

Colin Hales wrote:
> 
> 
> 1Z
> 
> 
>>Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 3:19 AM
>>
>>Brent Meeker
>
>It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
>>>
>>>behave exactly as they do behave,
>>>
>most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
>>>
>>>consideration at all, the rest deciding
>>>
>that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
>>>
>>>purpose served by worrying about it.
>>>
Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
for people who prefer certainty to understanding.

>>>
>>>COLIN HALES:
>>>Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!
>>>
>>>The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists.
>>
>>My point was that scientists *do* prefer understanding
>>to certainty, and therefore are *not* solipsists. I can't think of
>>anything I have said, or that you have said, that leads
>>to the conclusion that scientists ingenreal are solpsitsts.
>>(I'm still wiating for an example of an instrumetalist
>>ornithologist...)
>>
> 
> 
> I disagree and can show empirical proof that we scientists only THINK we are
> not being solipsistic.
> 
> We ARE actually -methodologically- solipsistic because consciousness
> (phenomenal consciousness itself) = [seeing itself] is not accepted as
> evidence of anything. We only accept the 'contents' of phenomenal
> consciousness' = [that which is seen] as scientific evidence. We think that
> predicting 'seeing' will come from the act of analysing that which is
> seen... this is logically fallacious. Like observing the behaviour of
> monalisa within the painting and then using that behaviour to divine canvas,
> paint and an artist: silly/illogical.
> 
> This behaviour is 'as-if' we are solipsists - that we do not believe mind
> (other minds) exist. We are being inconsistent in an extremely fundamental
> way. This is a complex and subtle point - a cultural blind of enormous
> implication.
> 
> As for an example of an instrumentalist ornithologists? Hmmm... perhaps ask
> the utilitarianist nominalist paleontologists. They may know! :-)
> 
> 
>>>The only
>>>way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
>>>confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the
>>
>>only
>>
>>>'real truth'.
>>
>>It isn't a real truth. if it were, it wouldn't matter
>>how they behave.
>>
>>
>>> There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
>>>duplicitous is OK.
>>>
>>>But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
>>>consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to
>>
>>an
>>
>>>inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
>>>scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by
>>
>>a
>>
>>>belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
>>>accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,
>>
>>What are "we", if we are neither mind nor world ?
> 
> 
> Your words assume that mind is not part of/distinct from/intrinsically apart
> from the world. This is a linguistic trap. 
> 
> WE are inside a universe of stuff, WE are made of stuff with
> perceptions(appearances) of stuff constructed by stuff behaviour. When WE
> look as atoms WE are seeing stuff behave atomly. Other stuff in our heads
> paints atoms to look like that. Does that make sense? 
> 
> There is no objective view in this. Only appearances. We are NOT directly
> accessing the external world. We never have and we never will.
> 
> 
>>>which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything and
>>>around we go the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
>>>deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science the
>>>last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
>>>follows:
>>>
>>>where:
>>>CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind
>>
>>as
>>
>>>conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in
>>
>>a
>>
>>>magical fabricator.
>>>
>>>CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
>>>for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a
>>
>>separately
>>
>>>described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
>>>traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.
>>
>>Or we are just conscious OF things ,and they are NOT "within"
>>consciousness.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>"If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
>>>magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life 'as-if' there is a
>>
>>real
>>
>>>external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
>>>thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
>>>around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
>>>actually live in is world (a). This evidence 

RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-26 Thread Colin Hales



1Z

> Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 3:19 AM
> > >> > Brent Meeker
> > >> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
> > behave exactly as they do behave,
> > >> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
> > consideration at all, the rest deciding
> > >> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
> > purpose served by worrying about it.
> > >
> > > Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> > > as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> > > for people who prefer certainty to understanding.
> > >
> >
> > COLIN HALES:
> > Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!
> >
> > The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists.
> 
> My point was that scientists *do* prefer understanding
> to certainty, and therefore are *not* solipsists. I can't think of
> anything I have said, or that you have said, that leads
> to the conclusion that scientists ingenreal are solpsitsts.
> (I'm still wiating for an example of an instrumetalist
> ornithologist...)
> 

I disagree and can show empirical proof that we scientists only THINK we are
not being solipsistic.

We ARE actually -methodologically- solipsistic because consciousness
(phenomenal consciousness itself) = [seeing itself] is not accepted as
evidence of anything. We only accept the 'contents' of phenomenal
consciousness' = [that which is seen] as scientific evidence. We think that
predicting 'seeing' will come from the act of analysing that which is
seen... this is logically fallacious. Like observing the behaviour of
monalisa within the painting and then using that behaviour to divine canvas,
paint and an artist: silly/illogical.

This behaviour is 'as-if' we are solipsists - that we do not believe mind
(other minds) exist. We are being inconsistent in an extremely fundamental
way. This is a complex and subtle point - a cultural blind of enormous
implication.

As for an example of an instrumentalist ornithologists? Hmmm... perhaps ask
the utilitarianist nominalist paleontologists. They may know! :-)

> 
> > The only
> > way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
> > confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the
> only
> > 'real truth'.
> 
> It isn't a real truth. if it were, it wouldn't matter
> how they behave.
> 
> >  There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
> > duplicitous is OK.
> >
> > But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
> > consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to
> an
> > inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
> > scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by
> a
> > belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
> > accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,
> 
> What are "we", if we are neither mind nor world ?

Your words assume that mind is not part of/distinct from/intrinsically apart
from the world. This is a linguistic trap. 

WE are inside a universe of stuff, WE are made of stuff with
perceptions(appearances) of stuff constructed by stuff behaviour. When WE
look as atoms WE are seeing stuff behave atomly. Other stuff in our heads
paints atoms to look like that. Does that make sense? 

There is no objective view in this. Only appearances. We are NOT directly
accessing the external world. We never have and we never will.

> 
> > which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything and
> > around we go the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
> > deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science the
> > last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
> > follows:
> >
> > where:
> > CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind
> as
> > conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in
> a
> > magical fabricator.
> >
> > CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
> > for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a
> separately
> > described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
> > traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.
> 
> Or we are just conscious OF things ,and they are NOT "within"
> consciousness.
> 
> > 
> > "If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
> > magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life 'as-if' there is a
> real
> > external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
> > thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
> > around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
> > actually live in is world (a). This evidence acts in support of my
> > solipsism. No scientist anywhere has, for any reason other than
> > accidentally, ever looked at 

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 12:11:54PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In my narrative for a substitute Big Bang I called the originating
> zero-info-'object' Plenitude, as I realize from your words (thank you) it is
> close to the Old Greek Chaos. In that narrative Universes occur by
> 'differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing"
> (RSt). Information, observables. I had to give in to critics about the 'zero
> information' because it was said that "having no information emanating from
> it" IS information. Also my claims on infinite symmetry - dynamic invariance
> and what you say 'the set of all strings' (I called it an unlimited content
> of everything) was deemed 'information'. I defended my position by saying
> that I want to state as little about this unattainable 'object' as possible,
> it is only a starting point with more common sense relevance than the
> quantum science related expressionS applied in the narratives of the
> physical cosmology.

Then I would say those critics do not understand information
theory. Actually, it is possible, of course, that it is I who
misunderstand information theory, but at the risk of seeming arrogant
"know it all", I would bet on it being the critics, as I've seen a
huge amount of confusion on this subject in the literature.

> 
> A silly question:
> you wrote: >Any person's experience is
> >obtained by differentiating - selecting
> >something from that "nothing".
> What makes 'that nothing' available to "persons"? is it not also available
> to a computer? in which case computers may have unlimited consciousness
> (whatever we call under that name).
> 
> 
> John M
> 

Just because computers, or thermometers, or any measure device really
can differentiate between outcomes does not make them conscious. The
argument flows the other way - being conscious necessarily means one
can differentiate outcomes, whatever else consciousness may be about.

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 03:23:44PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 23-sept.-06, ˆ 07:01, Russell Standish a Žcrit :
> 
> 
> > Anything provable by a finite set of axioms is necessarily a finite 
> > string of
> > symbols, and can be found as a subset of my Nothing.
> 
> 
> You told us that your Nothing contains all strings. So it contains all 
> formula as "theorems". But a theory which contains all formulas as 
> theorems is inconsistent.
> I am afraid you confuse some object level (the strings) and 
> theory-level (the theorems about the strings).

Actually, I was wondering if you were making this confusion, owing to
the ontological status you give mathematical statements. The
Nothing, if interpreted in its entirety, must be inconsistent, of course. Our
reasoning about it need not be, and certainly I would be grateful for
anyone pointing out inconsistencies in my writing.

> 
> Perhaps the exchange is unfair because I react as a "professional 
> logician", and you try to convey something informally. But I think that 
> at some point, in our difficult subject, we need to be entirely clear 
> on what we assume or not especially if you are using formal objects, 
> like strings.
> 

I'm not that informal. What I talk about are mathematical objects, and
one can use mathematical reasoning. However, the objects are more
familiar (to a mathematics student) than the ones you discuss (its
just standard sets, standard numbers and so on), so I suspect you read
too many nuances that aren't there...


> 
> 
> > I should note that the PROJECTION postulate is implicit in your UDA
> > when you come to speak of the 1-3 distinction. I don't think it can be
> > derived explicitly from the three "legs" of COMP.
> 
> 
> I'm afraid your are confusing the UDA, which is an informal (but 
> rigorous) argument showing that IF I am "digitalisable" machine, then 
> physics  or the "laws of Nature" emerge and are derivable from number 
> theory, and the translation of UDA in arithmetic, alias the interview 
> of a universal chatty machine. The UDA is a "reductio ad absurdo".  It 
> assumes explicitly consciousness (or folk psychology or grandma 
> psychology as I use those terms in the SANE paper) and a primitive 
> physical universe. With this, the 1-3 distinction follows from the fact 
> that if am copied at the correct level, the two copies cannot know the 
> existence of each other and their personal discourse will 
> differentiate. This is an "illusion" of projection like the wave packet 
> *reduction* is an "illusion" in Everett theory. 

Fair enough, the "Yes Doctor" is sufficiently informal that perhaps it
contains the seeds of the PROJECTION postulate. When we come to the
discussion of the W-M experiment, there are 3 possible outcomes:

1) We no longer experience anything after annihilation at Brussels
   (contradicts YD)
2) We experience being both in Moscow and Washington simulteously
   (kinda weird, and we dismiss as a reductio, but could also be seen
   as contradicting PROJECTION)
3) We experience being in one of Moscow or Washington, but not both,
   and cannot predict which.

I've noticed a few people on this list arguing that 2) is a possible outcome -
probably as devil's advocates. That would certainly be eliminated by
something like the PROJECTION postulate.

> The UDA reasoning is 
> simple and the conclusion is that there is no primitive physical 
> universe or comp is false. Physics emerges then intuitively from just 
> "immaterial dreams" with subtle overlappings. The UDA does not need to 
> be formalized to become rigorous. But having that UDA-result, we have a 
> thoroughly precise way to extract physics (and all the other 
> hypostases) from the universal interview. For *this* we need to be 
> entirely specific and formal. That is why in *all* my papers (on this 
> subject) I never separate UDA from the lobian interview. This is hard: 
> I would not have succeed without Godel, Lob and other incompleteness 
> theorems.
> I have a problem with your way of talking because you are mixing 
> informal talk with formal object (like the strings). Like when you 
> write:
> 
> 
> > The Nothing itself does not have any properties in itself to speak
> > of. Rather it is the PROJECTION postulate that means we can treat it
> > as the set of all strings, from which any conscious viewpoint must
> > correspond to a subset of strings.
> 
> 
> It looks like a mixing of UDA and the lobian UDA. It is too much fuzzy 
> for me.
> 

I'm sure you know about mathematical modelling right? Consider
modelling populations of rabbits and foxes with Lotka-Volterra
equations. The real system differs from the equations in a myriad of
ways - there are many effects like drought, the fact that these
animals breed sexually etc. that aren't represented in the
equations. Nevertheless, the two systems, formal LV equations, and
informal real fox/rabbit system will behave concordantly provided the
systems stay within certain limits.

In this

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 08:05:14AM -0700, 1Z wrote:
> 
> Russell Standish wrote:
> 
> > The Nothing itself does not have any properties in itself to speak
> > of. Rather it is the PROJECTION postulate that means we can treat it
> > as the set of all strings, from which any conscious viewpoint must
> > correspond to a subset of strings.
> 
> That sounds rather like the Somethingist principle that only certain
> possibilites
> are selected for the Privilege of Actuallity.
> 

Not at all. You are fundamentally misinterpreting my comments. I won't
try to explain here, but ask you to reread the relevant parts of "Why
Occam's razor", or of my book.

Cheers

-- 
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread 1Z


Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >> Brent meeker writes:
> >> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >> > > John,
> >> > >
> >> > > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all
> >> under the impression that everything is a
> >> > > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in
> >> order to indulge in fiction or computer
> >> > > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the
> >> greatest and most perfect of games. I
> >> > > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start
> to
> >> believe that the game is reality.
> >> >
> >> > And that would make a difference how?
> >> >
> >> > Brent Meeker
> >> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
> behave exactly as they do behave,
> >> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
> consideration at all, the rest deciding
> >> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
> purpose served by worrying about it.
> >
> > Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> > as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> > for people who prefer certainty to understanding.
> >
>
> COLIN HALES:
> Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!
>
> The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists.

My point was that scientists *do* prefer understanding
to certainty, and therefore are *not* solipsists. I can't think of
anything I have said, or that you have said, that leads
to the conclusion that scientists ingenreal are solpsitsts.
(I'm still wiating for an example of an instrumetalist
ornithologist...)


> The only
> way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
> confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the only
> 'real truth'.

It isn't a real truth. if it were, it wouldn't matter
how they behave.

>  There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
> duplicitous is OK.
>
> But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
> consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to an
> inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
> scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by a
> belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
> accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,

What are "we", if we are neither mind nor world ?

> which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything and
> around we go the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
> deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science the
> last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
> follows:
>
> where:
> CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind as
> conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in a
> magical fabricator.
>
> CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
> for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a separately
> described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
> traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.

Or we are just conscious OF things ,and they are NOT "within"
consciousness.

> 
> "If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
> magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life 'as-if' there is a real
> external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
> thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
> around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
> actually live in is world (a). This evidence acts in support of my
> solipsism. No scientist anywhere has, for any reason other than
> accidentally, ever looked at systems producing worlds with scientists in
> them complete with minds inside it, built of it. The world I actually live
> in is the world of the 'as-if' ficticious objective view where scientist
> believe without justification that they are literally describing the
> natural world, and not how it appears to them. Indeed when someone tries
> to describe an underlying world they the scientific world snaps back,
> declares the attempt irrelevant, empirically unsupportable and therefore
> unscientific metaphysicsconsistent with an implicit outward
> methodological denial of mind.
>
> But if I am wrong to be a solipsist, then the evidence paints a very odd
> picture of science. In this bizarre world, 'objective' scientists
> outwardly all act 'as-if' an external world exists yet scientists are
> actually virtual solipsists outwardly acting 'as-if' there is no such
> thing as mind whilst being totally reliant on their mind to do science and
> also unaware that is the case. And, like me, being in methodological
> denial of their own mind, are tacitly a

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread jamikes


- Original Message -
From: "Russell Standish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 2:16 AM
Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test


> (upon Bruno's question)...
>To be more precise, I identify Nothing with
> undifferentiated form, a bit like the Chaos of the ancient Greeks. > To be
even more precise, I identify it with the zero information >object, or the
set of all strings. Any person's experience is >obtained by
differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing".
>
> The relationship between this zero information object, and
> arithmetical platonia is a bit unclear, but I would say that anything
> constructible (Sigma_1) must be extractable from the zero >information
object.

In my narrative for a substitute Big Bang I called the originating
zero-info-'object' Plenitude, as I realize from your words (thank you) it is
close to the Old Greek Chaos. In that narrative Universes occur by
'differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing"
(RSt). Information, observables. I had to give in to critics about the 'zero
information' because it was said that "having no information emanating from
it" IS information. Also my claims on infinite symmetry - dynamic invariance
and what you say 'the set of all strings' (I called it an unlimited content
of everything) was deemed 'information'. I defended my position by saying
that I want to state as little about this unattainable 'object' as possible,
it is only a starting point with more common sense relevance than the
quantum science related expressionS applied in the narratives of the
physical cosmology.

A silly question:
you wrote: >Any person's experience is
>obtained by differentiating - selecting
>something from that "nothing".
What makes 'that nothing' available to "persons"? is it not also available
to a computer? in which case computers may have unlimited consciousness
(whatever we call under that name).


John M

>
>...
> Cheers
>
> >
> >
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
> --
--
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australia
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
> International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
> --
--
>
>
> >
>
>
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread 1Z

Russell Standish wrote:

> The Nothing itself does not have any properties in itself to speak
> of. Rather it is the PROJECTION postulate that means we can treat it
> as the set of all strings, from which any conscious viewpoint must
> correspond to a subset of strings.

That sounds rather like the Somethingist principle that only certain
possibilites
are selected for the Privilege of Actuallity.


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread jamikes

Colin G. Hales:

so we are all liars.

As a matter of fact I never agreed to be a 'scientist' (and listmembers may
approve that), and I try to do science (my term) on science (their term). I
am still struggling with the identification of my term. "Their" term is: a
wrong model view.
But we all pretend to be smart liars.
*
Your last paragraph paved my way to the nuthouse.
Thanks

John M
- Original Message -
From: "Colin Geoffrey Hales" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2006 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test


...preliminaries deleted...

COLIN HALES:
Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!

The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists. The only
way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the only
'real truth'. There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
duplicitous is OK.

But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to an
inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by a
belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,
which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything and
around we go the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science the
last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
follows:

where:
CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind as
conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in a
magical fabricator.

CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a separately
described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.


"If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life ‘as-if’ there is a real
external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
actually live in is world (a). This evidence acts in support of my
solipsism. No scientist anywhere has, for any reason other than
accidentally, ever looked at systems producing worlds with scientists in
them complete with minds inside it, built of it. The world I actually live
in is the world of the 'as-if' ficticious objective view where scientist
believe without justification that they are literally describing the
natural world, and not how it appears to them. Indeed when someone tries
to describe an underlying world they the scientific world snaps back,
declares the attempt irrelevant, empirically unsupportable and therefore
unscientific metaphysicsconsistent with an implicit outward
methodological denial of mind.

But if I am wrong to be a solipsist, then the evidence paints a very odd
picture of science. In this bizarre world, ‘objective’ scientists
outwardly all act ‘as-if’ an external world exists yet scientists are
actually virtual solipsists outwardly acting ‘as-if’ there is no such
thing as mind whilst being totally reliant on their mind to do science and
also unaware that is the case. And, like me, being in methodological
denial of their own mind, are tacitly affirming belief in a magical
fabricator through a cultural omission of paying due attention to
reviewing their own scientific evidence system. Scientists in this world
will go on forever correlating appearances within their denied phenomenal
mirrors and never get to do science on phenomenal mirrors. Which one to
choose? Perhaps I’ll stay where the fictitious money is… in the land of
the virtual magical fabricator…and keep quiet."
==

I'm done with yet another paper.
This ..place... I have reached in depicting science I have reached from so
many different perspectives now it's almost mundane
... So many I don't know where to submit them any more!...
.each different approach results in the same basic conclusion
science is structurally flawed and never questions itself - there's never
any science done on science - since when did we earn the right to be one
corner of the natural world immune from scientific method? Is this a club or
a professional discipline? The current state of science - complete failure
to solve the physics of phenomenal consciousness - is a scientific
prediction of 

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 23-sept.-06, ˆ 07:01, Russell Standish a Žcrit :


> Anything provable by a finite set of axioms is necessarily a finite 
> string of
> symbols, and can be found as a subset of my Nothing.


You told us that your Nothing contains all strings. So it contains all 
formula as "theorems". But a theory which contains all formulas as 
theorems is inconsistent.
I am afraid you confuse some object level (the strings) and 
theory-level (the theorems about the strings).

Perhaps the exchange is unfair because I react as a "professional 
logician", and you try to convey something informally. But I think that 
at some point, in our difficult subject, we need to be entirely clear 
on what we assume or not especially if you are using formal objects, 
like strings.



> I should note that the PROJECTION postulate is implicit in your UDA
> when you come to speak of the 1-3 distinction. I don't think it can be
> derived explicitly from the three "legs" of COMP.


I'm afraid your are confusing the UDA, which is an informal (but 
rigorous) argument showing that IF I am "digitalisable" machine, then 
physics  or the "laws of Nature" emerge and are derivable from number 
theory, and the translation of UDA in arithmetic, alias the interview 
of a universal chatty machine. The UDA is a "reductio ad absurdo".  It 
assumes explicitly consciousness (or folk psychology or grandma 
psychology as I use those terms in the SANE paper) and a primitive 
physical universe. With this, the 1-3 distinction follows from the fact 
that if am copied at the correct level, the two copies cannot know the 
existence of each other and their personal discourse will 
differentiate. This is an "illusion" of projection like the wave packet 
*reduction* is an "illusion" in Everett theory. The UDA reasoning is 
simple and the conclusion is that there is no primitive physical 
universe or comp is false. Physics emerges then intuitively from just 
"immaterial dreams" with subtle overlappings. The UDA does not need to 
be formalized to become rigorous. But having that UDA-result, we have a 
thoroughly precise way to extract physics (and all the other 
hypostases) from the universal interview. For *this* we need to be 
entirely specific and formal. That is why in *all* my papers (on this 
subject) I never separate UDA from the lobian interview. This is hard: 
I would not have succeed without Godel, Lob and other incompleteness 
theorems.
I have a problem with your way of talking because you are mixing 
informal talk with formal object (like the strings). Like when you 
write:


> The Nothing itself does not have any properties in itself to speak
> of. Rather it is the PROJECTION postulate that means we can treat it
> as the set of all strings, from which any conscious viewpoint must
> correspond to a subset of strings.


It looks like a mixing of UDA and the lobian UDA. It is too much fuzzy 
for me.


>
>> But it is neither "nothing". It is the natural numbers without 
>> addition
>> and multiplication, the countable order, + non standard models.
>
> I disagree - it is more like the real numbers without order, addition
> and multiplication group structures, but perhaps with the standard
> topology, since I want to derive a measure.


Are you saying that your Nothing is the topological line? Again it is 
not nothing (or it is very confusing to call it nothing), and what you 
intend will depend on your axiomatization of it. If you stay in first 
order logic, this will give an even weaker theory than the theory of 
finite strings: you will no more be able to prove the existence of any 
integer, or if you take a second order logic presentation of it, then 
your "nothing" will contain much more than what the ontic comp toes 
needs, and this is still much more than "nothing". To be franc I am 
astonished you want already infinite objects at the ontological level. 
If *all* infinite strings are in the ontology, that could be a 
departure from comp (and that would be interesting because, by UDA, 
that would make your theory predicting a different physics and then we 
could test it (at least in principle), and only when your theory will 
be precise enough.


> I don't know what Q1, Q2 and Q3
> are.


Robinson Arithmetic is formalized by the following set of axioms 
(written in first order language and in "french"):

Q1)   Ax0 ­ s(x)[0 is not a successor]
Q2)   AxAyx ­ y -> s(x) ­ s(y)  [different numbers have different 
successors]
Q3)   Ax(x ­ 0  ->  Ey(x = s(y))[all numbers are successor, 
except 0]

Together with the definition of addition:

Q4)   Axx + 0  =  x [adding 0 to a number doesn't change it]
Q5)   AxAy   x + s(y)  =  s(x + y)  {adding some number x with a 
successor of some number y gives the successor of the addition of x and 
y]

and the definition of multiplication:

Q6)   Ax x * 0  =  0 [multiplying a number by 0 gives 0]
Q7)   AxAyx * s(y) = (x * y) + x  [if someone asks I will put this 
one in engl

RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Peter Jones writes:

> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > Brent meeker writes:
> >
> > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > > > John,
> > > >
> > > > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under 
> > > > the impression that everything is a
> > > > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in 
> > > > order to indulge in fiction or computer
> > > > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the 
> > > > greatest and most perfect of games. I
> > > > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to 
> > > > believe that the game is reality.
> > >
> > > And that would make a difference how?
> > >
> > > Brent Meeker
> >
> > It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would 
> > behave exactly as they do behave,
> > most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any 
> > consideration at all, the rest deciding
> > that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical 
> > purpose served by worrying about it.
> 
> Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> for people who prefer certainty to understanding.

And we can't have certainty, right? The only empirical fact I know for certain 
is that I am having a conscious 
experience *now*; everything else is extrapolation and tentative assumption. 
Given two explanations for why 
things are as they seem, the correct one X and the simplest that is consistent 
with the facts Y, we have to choose 
Y. If we choose X because we like the sound of it or something we are lost as 
far as discovering truth about the 
world goes - even though X happens to be correct in this case.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Sat, Sep 23, 2006 at 03:26:21PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> Please allows me at this stage to be the most precise as possible. From 
> a logical point of view, your theory of Nothing is equivalent to
> Q1 + Q2 + Q3. It is a very weaker subtheory of RA. It is not sigma1 
> complete, you don't get the the UTM, nor all partial recursive 
> functions FI or all r.e. set Wi. Actually you cannot recover addition 
> and multiplication.

I'm not sure this is right, although I don't know what Q1, Q2 and Q3
are.

The Nothing itself does not have any properties in itself to speak
of. Rather it is the PROJECTION postulate that means we can treat it
as the set of all strings, from which any conscious viewpoint must
correspond to a subset of strings.

I should note that the PROJECTION postulate is implicit in your UDA
when you come to speak of the 1-3 distinction. I don't think it can be
derived explicitly from the three "legs" of COMP.

> But it is neither "nothing". It is the natural numbers without addition 
> and multiplication, the countable order, + non standard models.

I disagree - it is more like the real numbers without order, addition
and multiplication group structures, but perhaps with the standard
topology, since I want to derive a measure.

But don't forget - this rich ontology is entirely due to the
PROJECTION postulate, not inherent to the Nothing.

> Or you have an implicit second order axiom in mind perhaps, but then 
> you need to express it; and then you have a much richer ontology than 
> the one expressed through RA.
> 

Theres no implicit axioms in my mind, but it is always possible I have
unconsciously assumed something...

> 
> 
> 
> >
> > One simply cannot observe this zero information object, one can only
> > observe somethings, descriptions in my terminology. Anything in
> > Sigma_1 is such a something.
> 
> Sigma_1 is far richer. There are many sigma_1 true arithmetical 
> sentences (provable by RA, PA, ZF, ...) not provable in your system.
> 

Please send their proofs to me. In doing so you disprove your statement.

Anything provable by a finite set of axioms is necessarily a finite string of
symbols, and can be found as a subset of my Nothing.



> 
> > Anything you can possibly to convey to me about
> > any mathematical object must also be extractable.
> 
> Again, strictly speaking this is not true. (Unless your implicit axioms 
> obviously ...)
> 

How do you intend to convey the information to me, if not by some
finite string of symbols?

> 
> > However, there are
> > possibly mathematical things not within the zero information objects,
> > but they are inherently noncommunicable (shades of you G*\G perhaps?).
> 
> You are very well below. You cannot even prove the existence of a prime 
> number in your theory.
> 
> 
> >
> > I think all that I say is that external reality is Nothing.
> 
> No. Even your very weak theory as infinite models, and models of all 
> cardinality. But it has no finite models, still less the empty model 
> (which logicians avoid).
> 

Why is the empty model "Nothing"? I don't think it is. Just as I don't
think the empty set is "Nothing". However, the empty string happens to
be identical to Nothing.

But it does have finite things, which curiously correspond to infinite
subsets (via duality).


-- 
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A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales


>
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>> Brent meeker writes:
>> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>> > > John,
>> > >
>> > > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all
>> under the impression that everything is a
>> > > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in
>> order to indulge in fiction or computer
>> > > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the
>> greatest and most perfect of games. I
>> > > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start
to
>> believe that the game is reality.
>> >
>> > And that would make a difference how?
>> >
>> > Brent Meeker
>> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
behave exactly as they do behave,
>> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
consideration at all, the rest deciding
>> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
purpose served by worrying about it.
>
> Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> for people who prefer certainty to understanding.
>

COLIN HALES:
Yay! someone 'got' my little dialogue!

The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists. The only
way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the only
'real truth'. There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
duplicitous is OK.

But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to an
inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by a
belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,
which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything and
around we go the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science the
last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
follows:

where:
CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind as
conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in a
magical fabricator.

CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a separately
described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.


"If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life ‘as-if’ there is a real
external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
actually live in is world (a). This evidence acts in support of my
solipsism. No scientist anywhere has, for any reason other than
accidentally, ever looked at systems producing worlds with scientists in
them complete with minds inside it, built of it. The world I actually live
in is the world of the 'as-if' ficticious objective view where scientist
believe without justification that they are literally describing the
natural world, and not how it appears to them. Indeed when someone tries
to describe an underlying world they the scientific world snaps back,
declares the attempt irrelevant, empirically unsupportable and therefore
unscientific metaphysicsconsistent with an implicit outward
methodological denial of mind.

But if I am wrong to be a solipsist, then the evidence paints a very odd
picture of science. In this bizarre world, ‘objective’ scientists
outwardly all act ‘as-if’ an external world exists yet scientists are
actually virtual solipsists outwardly acting ‘as-if’ there is no such
thing as mind whilst being totally reliant on their mind to do science and
also unaware that is the case. And, like me, being in methodological
denial of their own mind, are tacitly affirming belief in a magical
fabricator through a cultural omission of paying due attention to
reviewing their own scientific evidence system. Scientists in this world
will go on forever correlating appearances within their denied phenomenal
mirrors and never get to do science on phenomenal mirrors. Which one to
choose? Perhaps I’ll stay where the fictitious money is… in the land of
the virtual magical fabricator…and keep quiet."
==

I'm done with yet another paper. This ..place... I have reached in
depicting science I have reached from so many different perspectives now
it's almost mundane... So many I don't know where to submit them any more!
.each different approach results in the

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread 1Z


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Brent meeker writes:
>
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > > John,
> > >
> > > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under 
> > > the impression that everything is a
> > > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order 
> > > to indulge in fiction or computer
> > > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the 
> > > greatest and most perfect of games. I
> > > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to 
> > > believe that the game is reality.
> >
> > And that would make a difference how?
> >
> > Brent Meeker
>
> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would behave 
> exactly as they do behave,
> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any 
> consideration at all, the rest deciding
> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical purpose 
> served by worrying about it.

Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
for people who prefer certainty to understanding.


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 22-sept.-06, à 19:18, Russell Standish a écrit :

>
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 12:18:37PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>
>> It is really the key to understand that if my 3-person I is a machine,
>> then the I, (the 1-person I) is not! This can be used to explain why
>> the 1-person is solipsist, although the 1-person does not need to be
>> doctrinaire about that (fortunately enough).
>>
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>
> I think this comment is most interesting, and perhaps you are finally
> laying to rest my confusion. By 3-person, we really mean my extended
> brain, which is quantum mechanically dstributed across the Multiverse
> (see previous comments to Stathis et al.)


Now I am completely confused. here you seem to assume the quantum 
multiverse like if you were abandoning your own theory.
You are free to redefine the term I am using, but I thought have making 
clear that the 3-person is just the finite code the doctor is using to 
build a copy of yourself like in the duplication WM. The 3-person 
description is just a finite natural number, the one which at least you 
can already prove the existence in your theory (which I identify to Q1 
Q2 Q3).

I recall for this other in "french": Q1 says that zero is not a 
successor of any number = for all x NOT(0 = s(x)). Q2 says that the 
successor operation is injective, i.e. if for all x and y, if x is 
equal to y, then s(x) = s(y). Q3 says that all numbers are successor, 
except 0, i.e. for all x, if x is different from zero then there is a y 
such x = s(y).

The intended (standard) model is the mathematical structure N = {0, 
s(0), s(s(0)), s(s(s(0))), ...} = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ...}, but without 
means for adding and multiplying the numbers.



> By 1-person, we mean the
> projection of ourselves that we are (self-) aware of. This includes
> that lump of grey porridge we call a brain.

This would be the first person plural (intelligible matter).


>
> The 3 person could be something relatively complex like a computer,
> but it could just as easily be Stathis's rock actually. What matters
> is the 1-person, which is inherently non-computable.

... from its own point of view! Also I think all hypostases matters

>
> If I can just see why the anthropic principle follows in an obvious way
> from this, I'll be even happier!

It seems to me that comp assumes at the start a form of "turing-tropic" 
or "universal-tropic" (with Church Thesis) principle.
 From it we can derive all hypostases (n-person point of view, 
terrestrial (G viewed) or divine (G* viewed)) including the fourth one 
which should give physics, making comp testable.

Bruno

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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 22-sept.-06, à 19:10, Russell Standish a écrit :

>
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 02:59:09PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> Any person's experience is obtained by
>>> differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing".
>>>
>>> The relationship between this zero information object, and
>>> arithmetical platonia is a bit unclear, but I would say that anything
>>> constructible (Sigma_1) must be extractable from the zero information
>>> object.
>>
>> OK then. But this means you are an arithmetical realist, and that an
>> external "reality" exist, for example your strings, or your set of
>> strings, and I am still more confused by your saying there is not even
>> an immaterial external reality, which would be solipsism with a
>> revenge.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>
> The set of all strings is the same object, regardless of
> interpretation, regardless of alphabet, and is the only object to have
> zero information. It is a good candidate for the Everything, but
> curiously it has the properties of Nothing.


Please allows me at this stage to be the most precise as possible. From 
a logical point of view, your theory of Nothing is equivalent to
Q1 + Q2 + Q3. It is a very weaker subtheory of RA. It is not sigma1 
complete, you don't get the the UTM, nor all partial recursive 
functions FI or all r.e. set Wi. Actually you cannot recover addition 
and multiplication.
But it is neither "nothing". It is the natural numbers without addition 
and multiplication, the countable order, + non standard models.
Or you have an implicit second order axiom in mind perhaps, but then 
you need to express it; and then you have a much richer ontology than 
the one expressed through RA.




>
> One simply cannot observe this zero information object, one can only
> observe somethings, descriptions in my terminology. Anything in
> Sigma_1 is such a something.

Sigma_1 is far richer. There are many sigma_1 true arithmetical 
sentences (provable by RA, PA, ZF, ...) not provable in your system.


> Anything you can possibly to convey to me about
> any mathematical object must also be extractable.

Again, strictly speaking this is not true. (Unless your implicit axioms 
obviously ...)


> However, there are
> possibly mathematical things not within the zero information objects,
> but they are inherently noncommunicable (shades of you G*\G perhaps?).

You are very well below. You cannot even prove the existence of a prime 
number in your theory.


>
> I think all that I say is that external reality is Nothing.

No. Even your very weak theory as infinite models, and models of all 
cardinality. But it has no finite models, still less the empty model 
(which logicians avoid).



> It is not
> quite the same as saying there is no external reality, but not far
> off.

This is too ambiguous. And too much sounding solipsistic.



>
> But solipsism is really about other minds, in any case, so its hardly
> solipsism.

Which again show the external reality is very rich, but your ontic 
theory cannot prove the most elementary thing about it.
I guess you are using some implicit supplementary axiom.

Bruno


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


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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Stathis Papaioannou


But a solipsist would appear mad in his self-generated world at the very point 
where he sees through his delusion. The tragedy is that he could never prove 
solipsism true even if it were true, and it would be "irrational" to believe it 
true 
even if it were true.

Stathis Papaioannou

> True, I may go a step further:
> In those terms as I defined an 'earlier solipsism' in another post, there is
> NO "real solipsist".
> Maybe in the nuthouse. Or on his way to one.
> 
> Game-playing is human and many fall into substituting their game for the
> real world. From Hitler to a nun.
> I was not thinking on the "intermittent solips" as pointed to by some
> (reasonable) list-colleagues.
> John
> - Original Message -
> From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 10:59 PM
> Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> 
> 
> 
> John,
> 
> Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under the
> impression that everything is a
> construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order to
> indulge in fiction or computer
> games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the greatest
> and most perfect of games. I
> think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to believe
> that the game is reality. Maybe
> that's why there aren't that many of them around.
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou
> 
> ----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> > Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> > Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:51:28 -0400
> >
> >
> > Stathis:
> > wouod a "real" solipsist even talk to you?
> > John M
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: "Bruno Marchal" 
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:21 PM
> > Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> >
> >
> >
> > Bruno Marchal writes:
> >
> > > About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> > > to me nobody defend it in the list.
> >
> > Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a
> > real solipsist?
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
> >
> >
> > >
> 
> _
> Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
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> 
> 
> 
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> > 

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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Brent meeker writes:

> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > John,
> > 
> > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under the 
> > impression that everything is a 
> > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order 
> > to indulge in fiction or computer 
> > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the greatest 
> > and most perfect of games. I 
> > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to 
> > believe that the game is reality. 
> 
> And that would make a difference how?
> 
> Brent Meeker

It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would behave 
exactly as they do behave, 
most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any 
consideration at all, the rest deciding 
that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical purpose 
served by worrying about it. Perhaps 
"mad" is not the right word, implying as it does dysfunction, although 
sometimes we use the term "happily mad".

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread jamikes

True, I may go a step further:
In those terms as I defined an 'earlier solipsism' in another post, there is
NO "real solipsist".
Maybe in the nuthouse. Or on his way to one.

Game-playing is human and many fall into substituting their game for the
real world. From Hitler to a nun.
I was not thinking on the "intermittent solips" as pointed to by some
(reasonable) list-colleagues.
John
- Original Message -
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 10:59 PM
Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test



John,

Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under the
impression that everything is a
construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order to
indulge in fiction or computer
games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the greatest
and most perfect of games. I
think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to believe
that the game is reality. Maybe
that's why there aren't that many of them around.

Stathis Papaioannou


> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:51:28 -0400
>
>
> Stathis:
> wouod a "real" solipsist even talk to you?
> John M
> - Original Message -
> From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Bruno Marchal" 
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:21 PM
> Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal writes:
>
> > About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> > to me nobody defend it in the list.
>
> Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a
> real solipsist?
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
> >

_
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 12:18:37PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:

...

> 
> It is really the key to understand that if my 3-person I is a machine, 
> then the I, (the 1-person I) is not! This can be used to explain why 
> the 1-person is solipsist, although the 1-person does not need to be 
> doctrinaire about that (fortunately enough).
> 
> 
> Bruno
> 
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> 

I think this comment is most interesting, and perhaps you are finally
laying to rest my confusion. By 3-person, we really mean my extended
brain, which is quantum mechanically dstributed across the Multiverse
(see previous comments to Stathis et al.) By 1-person, we mean the
projection of ourselves that we are (self-) aware of. This includes
that lump of grey porridge we call a brain.

The 3 person could be something relatively complex like a computer,
but it could just as easily be Stathis's rock actually. What matters
is the 1-person, which is inherently non-computable.

If I can just see why the anthropic principle follows in an obvious way
from this, I'll be even happier!

Cheers

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-23 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 02:59:09PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> > Any person's experience is obtained by
> > differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing".
> >
> > The relationship between this zero information object, and
> > arithmetical platonia is a bit unclear, but I would say that anything
> > constructible (Sigma_1) must be extractable from the zero information
> > object.
> 
> OK then. But this means you are an arithmetical realist, and that an 
> external "reality" exist, for example your strings, or your set of 
> strings, and I am still more confused by your saying there is not even 
> an immaterial external reality, which would be solipsism with a 
> revenge.
> 
> Bruno
> 

The set of all strings is the same object, regardless of
interpretation, regardless of alphabet, and is the only object to have
zero information. It is a good candidate for the Everything, but
curiously it has the properties of Nothing.

One simply cannot observe this zero information object, one can only
observe somethings, descriptions in my terminology. Anything in
Sigma_1 is such a something. Anything you can possibly to convey to me about
any mathematical object must also be extractable. However, there are
possibly mathematical things not within the zero information objects,
but they are inherently noncommunicable (shades of you G*\G perhaps?).

I think all that I say is that external reality is Nothing. It is not
quite the same as saying there is no external reality, but not far
off.

But solipsism is really about other minds, in any case, so its hardly
solipsism.

Cheers

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-22 Thread Brent Meeker

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> John,
> 
> Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under the 
> impression that everything is a 
> construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order to 
> indulge in fiction or computer 
> games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the greatest 
> and most perfect of games. I 
> think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to believe 
> that the game is reality. 

And that would make a difference how?

Brent Meeker


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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-22 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

John,

Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all under the 
impression that everything is a 
construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in order to 
indulge in fiction or computer 
games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the greatest and 
most perfect of games. I 
think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start to believe 
that the game is reality. Maybe 
that's why there aren't that many of them around.

Stathis Papaioannou


> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:51:28 -0400
> 
> 
> Stathis:
> wouod a "real" solipsist even talk to you?
> John M
> - Original Message - 
> From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Bruno Marchal" 
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:21 PM
> Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> 
> 
> 
> Bruno Marchal writes:
> 
> > About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems 
> > to me nobody defend it in the list.
> 
> Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a 
> real solipsist?
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou
> 
> 
> > 

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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-22 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 22-sept.-06, à 08:16, Russell Standish a écrit :

>
> On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:16:53PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Russell, when you say "nothing external exist", do you mean "nothing
>> primitively material" exist, or do you mean there is no independent
>> reality at all, not even an immaterial one?  (I ordered your book but 
>> I
>> am still waiting :)
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>
> The latter.


I am not sure this makes sense for me.



> To be more precise, I identify Nothing with
> undifferentiated form, a bit like the Chaos of the ancient Greeks.

OK but that is a big "Nothing".


> To
> be even more precise, I identify it with the zero information object, 
> or
> the set of all strings.


That is bigger and bigger. This confirms my feeling that we should use 
the axiomatic method, because terminology is confusing.



> Any person's experience is obtained by
> differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing".
>
> The relationship between this zero information object, and
> arithmetical platonia is a bit unclear, but I would say that anything
> constructible (Sigma_1) must be extractable from the zero information
> object.

OK then. But this means you are an arithmetical realist, and that an 
external "reality" exist, for example your strings, or your set of 
strings, and I am still more confused by your saying there is not even 
an immaterial external reality, which would be solipsism with a 
revenge.

Bruno



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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-22 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 20-sept.-06, à 21:06, Brent Meeker a écrit :

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :
>>
>>
>>> This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
>>> matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
>>> while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of 
>>> comp,
>>> it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.
>>
>>
>> If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if 
>> there
>> is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then 
>> that
>> piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it
>> would lead to a zombie.
>
> I don't understand that.  Computations are Turing emulable - not 
> material objects.


Only if you *assume* primary matter. But the uda shows you can't do 
that unless you postulate NOT-COMP.



>
>> OK then.
>> But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive
>> matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without 
>> using
>> actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.
>> Again, from a strictly logical point of view you are correct, but then
>> we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something
>> describable by physics,
>
> I don't see that point either.  Perhaps you only mean that the 
> mathematical
> descriptions used by physics would not *completely* constitute matter?


No. I am just asking to Peter what is primary matter.




>
>> and it is above anything imaginable to link
>> that stuff to consciousness.
>> Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am 
>> afraid
>> we will not make progress.
>
> That seems backwards.  Physics works with matter which is defined 
> ostensively and by
> operational definitions.


About matter yes, but you can't define primary matter in any ostensive 
or operational definition.
Aristotelian reification of primary matter has led to some 
"methodological materialism" which has eased the mind for physicists 
for some time, but which does no more work for the quantum, and is 
epistemologically contradictory with comp.


> To insist on an axiomatization seems to me to beg the
> question of whether reality is a purely mathematical object.

I ask for this to Peter because I try to understand what he means by 
his notion of primary matter. That's all.

Now with comp, reality cannot be defined by a mathematical object. 
More: it cannot be defined by any "object". This has been understood by 
Plato, Plotinus, and all the neoplatonist. It is the root of my (old) 
critics of Tegmark: if I am mathematical (which is the case with comp 
and I = the 3 person I) then the 1-person I and the whole relaity are 
not mathematical. I am just taking into account the moadl nuancce 
introduced by the incompleteness phenomenon.



>  It is only descriptions
>   that can be axiomatized.

Sure.

BTW, I know you know a bit of logic. Have you understand the nuance 
between Bp and Bp & p ? (where B is the godel provability predicate, 
and p is any arithmetical sentence)?

It is really the key to understand that if my 3-person I is a machine, 
then the I, (the 1-person I) is not! This can be used to explain why 
the 1-person is solipsist, although the 1-person does not need to be 
doctrinaire about that (fortunately enough).


Bruno

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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread Russell Standish

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:16:53PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> Russell, when you say "nothing external exist", do you mean "nothing 
> primitively material" exist, or do you mean there is no independent 
> reality at all, not even an immaterial one?  (I ordered your book but I 
> am still waiting :)
> 
> Bruno
> 
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> 

The latter. To be more precise, I identify Nothing with
undifferentiated form, a bit like the Chaos of the ancient Greeks. To
be even more precise, I identify it with the zero information object, or
the set of all strings. Any person's experience is obtained by
differentiating - selecting something from that "nothing".

The relationship between this zero information object, and
arithmetical platonia is a bit unclear, but I would say that anything
constructible (Sigma_1) must be extractable from the zero information
object.

How long have you been waiting for the book? Booksurge seem to have
restructured a bit recently, perhaps that's affected their production
line.

Cheers

> 
> 
-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.


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Mathematics  
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread David Nyman

Russell Standish wrote:

> It makes absolute sense to me, and it is really one of the central
> themes of my book "Theory of Nothing". The only points of view are
> interior ones, because what is external is just "nothing".
>
> But I know that Colin comes from a different ontological bias, since
> we had a long debate last year where he tried to convince there really
> was something out there independent of us.

I'm glad you agree Russell, and as I've said, I found your book an
excellent exposition of this overall position. But it seems as though,
if one has somehow been able to think oneself into this position, that
one can find agreement with those who have done something similar, and
perhaps the rest is then down to the long pursuit of the details (those
little devils). But your debate with Colin exemplifies my point about
the language. I think our vocabulary in general is so hopelessly
fraught with implicit 'inside/outside' ontic dualism that, failing such
prior agreement, it's almost impossible to convince someone starting
from a different position, because each assumes that the other is
implying something different with his terminology.

My own insight, if such it was, didn't come from mathematics or comp,
it just came as I was meditating on how 'I' and 'what I saw in the
mirror' could somehow be the same thing. A picture just came to me in
which 'I', my mirror-image, what-was-reflected, and all the rest
appeared as a network of information embedded in - what? -
something-that-exists. And that this something encompassed all the
insides and outsides, which were merely contingent aspects of the
structure of information. Nature doesn't draw lines around things -
rather 'things' and their 'boundaries' self-select from a network of
(what appears to the 'things' to be) information. And the varieties of
'what it's like to be' are precisely what it *is* to be some aspect of
this ontically unique situation.

David

> On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 10:36:00AM -, David Nyman wrote:
> >
> > I think we will never be able to engage with the issues you describe
> > until we realise that what we are faced with is a view from the inside
> > of a situation that has no outside. Our characterisation of 'what
> > exists' as 'outside' of 'what appears to exist' is the
> > sleight-of-intuition that introduces the fatal ontic duality. But there
> > is no such duality. We simply *are* this situation, and its
> > multifarious forms of differentiation comprise the structures from
> > which 'we', our 'experiences' and their 'referents' seamlessly emerge.
> > Our challenge as scientists is never to forget that our observations
> > and theories all point back at ourselves (there is no other direction).
> > If they don't account for 'what appears to exist' this is as great a
> > failing as inconsistency with 'what appearance refers to', since these
> > attributions are merely distinctions of emphasis in the analysis of any
> > given situation.
> >
> > You could call this the solipsism of the whole, because there is
> > nothing else. I know this is as clear as mud, because the language just
> > doesn't exist, and I lack the inspiration to introduce it, and my
> > hackneyed old terms just get hijacked into familiar and misleading
> > connotations. Oh well
> >
> > David
> >
>
> It makes absolute sense to me, and it is really one of the central
> themes of my book "Theory of Nothing". The only points of view are
> interior ones, because what is external is just "nothing".
>
> But I know that Colin comes from a different ontological bias, since
> we had a long debate last year where he tried to convince there really
> was something out there independent of us.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
> 
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
> International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
> 


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread Bruno Marchal


About solipsism I think it is useful to distinguish:

- the (ridiculous) *doctrine* of solipsism. It says that I exist and 
you don't.

- the quasi trivial fact that any pure first person view is 
solipsistic. This makes the doctrine of solipsism non refutable, and 
thus non scientific in Popper sense. But it gives a genuine sense to 
the adjective "solipsistic" (as opposed to the ridiculous doctrine). 
This is related to "methodological solipsism" (cf Peter's post). Of 
course "methodological solipsism" is not the same as the doctrine of 
solipsism.
Rumors say that Brouwer was really solipsistic. he would have said to 
its students that he did not understand how they could be interested in 
its solipsistic philosophy which makes only personal sense ...

Russell, when you say "nothing external exist", do you mean "nothing 
primitively material" exist, or do you mean there is no independent 
reality at all, not even an immaterial one?  (I ordered your book but I 
am still waiting :)

Bruno

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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread jamikes

And another quote:
"A solopist is like the man who gave up turning around because whatever he
saw was always in front of him."
--- Ernst Mach
John M

PS: but it is so entertaining to chat about it! JM
- Original Message -
From: "Brent Meeker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test


>
> Colin Hales wrote:
> >
> >
> >>-Original Message-
> >>From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-
> >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
> >>Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 9:31 AM
> >>To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> >>Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> >>
> >>
> >>Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >>
> >>>Bruno Marchal writes:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> >>>>to me nobody defend it in the list.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked
to
> >>
> >>a
> >>
> >>>real solipsist?
> >>>
> >>>Stathis Papaioannou
> >>
> >>Will all those who believe I don't exist contact me immediately.  :-)
> >>
> >>Brent
> >>
> >
> >
> > I don't think anyone actually believes they are, but scientists
certainly
> > act as-if they are! (all except me, of course!)
>
> Then why do they collaborate, argue, and publish?  Exactly how would they
act as-if
> they weren't?
>
> Brent
> "Nobody believes a theory, except the guy who thought of it.
> Everbody believes an experiment, except the guy who did it."
>   --- Leon Lederman, on physics
>


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread jamikes

Stathis:
wouod a "real" solipsist even talk to you?
John M
- Original Message - 
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Bruno Marchal" 
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:21 PM
Subject: RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test



Bruno Marchal writes:

> About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems 
> to me nobody defend it in the list.

Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a 
real solipsist?

Stathis Papaioannou


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread Russell Standish

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 10:36:00AM -, David Nyman wrote:
> 
> I think we will never be able to engage with the issues you describe
> until we realise that what we are faced with is a view from the inside
> of a situation that has no outside. Our characterisation of 'what
> exists' as 'outside' of 'what appears to exist' is the
> sleight-of-intuition that introduces the fatal ontic duality. But there
> is no such duality. We simply *are* this situation, and its
> multifarious forms of differentiation comprise the structures from
> which 'we', our 'experiences' and their 'referents' seamlessly emerge.
> Our challenge as scientists is never to forget that our observations
> and theories all point back at ourselves (there is no other direction).
> If they don't account for 'what appears to exist' this is as great a
> failing as inconsistency with 'what appearance refers to', since these
> attributions are merely distinctions of emphasis in the analysis of any
> given situation.
> 
> You could call this the solipsism of the whole, because there is
> nothing else. I know this is as clear as mud, because the language just
> doesn't exist, and I lack the inspiration to introduce it, and my
> hackneyed old terms just get hijacked into familiar and misleading
> connotations. Oh well
> 
> David
> 

It makes absolute sense to me, and it is really one of the central
themes of my book "Theory of Nothing". The only points of view are
interior ones, because what is external is just "nothing".

But I know that Colin comes from a different ontological bias, since
we had a long debate last year where he tried to convince there really
was something out there independent of us.

Cheers

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.


A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics  
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread David Nyman

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:

> This paradoxical situation I have analysed out and, I hope, straightened
> out. The answer lies not in adopting/rejecting solipsism per se (although
> solipsism is logically untenable for subtle reasons) , but in merely
> recognising what scientific evidence is actually there and what it is
> evidence of. At least then scientists will have a consistent position and
> will no longer need to think one way and behave another. At the moment
> they are 'having it both ways' and have no awareness of it. ...if you talk
> to mainstream neuroscientists, to whom this matters the most (in terms of
> understanding the available evidence) they have no clue what you are on
> about...but they go right on doing it without question...staring down the
> microscope with their phenomenal consciouess at the "external world" they
> assume they are directly characterising without phenomenal consciousness,
> correlating the appearances of test and control..day in, day out...

It's precisely this issue that was my motivation for first posting to
this list on what has unfortunately been termed '1st-person primacy'.
In fact, all and any terms for what I've been attempting to point to
seem to be unfortunate because *all* our language is steeped in an
implicit assumption of an ontic dichotomy that does not in fact exist.
To repeat my original assertion (and I believe that this is valid
regardless of one's commitment to comp or materialism or whatever
else): whatever exists does so within a single ontic domain within
which distinctions of 'point of view' are merely contingent on which
side of an otherwise arbitrarily drawn line of distinction happens to
be making the report. What follows from this is that 'what appears to
exist' and 'what appearances refer to' are equally real (i.e. real in
the same sense) and equally aspects of this single domain.

'What appears to exist' is that part of the domain that is playing the
role (at a given point) of a picture or model (or mirror, in your
terms) of another part to which it is informationally connected, and
with which it co-varies. 'What appearances refer to' - or as we usually
say 'what exists' - is then merely our term for the co-varying part. In
the special case where 'you' are one part, and 'I' am the other, it is
easier to see that the terms '1st'-' and '3rd-person' - or 'subjective'
and 'objective' - can be used alternatively in an analysis of the
situation, and that clearly no change in ontic status could logically
follow from this.

I think we will never be able to engage with the issues you describe
until we realise that what we are faced with is a view from the inside
of a situation that has no outside. Our characterisation of 'what
exists' as 'outside' of 'what appears to exist' is the
sleight-of-intuition that introduces the fatal ontic duality. But there
is no such duality. We simply *are* this situation, and its
multifarious forms of differentiation comprise the structures from
which 'we', our 'experiences' and their 'referents' seamlessly emerge.
Our challenge as scientists is never to forget that our observations
and theories all point back at ourselves (there is no other direction).
If they don't account for 'what appears to exist' this is as great a
failing as inconsistency with 'what appearance refers to', since these
attributions are merely distinctions of emphasis in the analysis of any
given situation.

You could call this the solipsism of the whole, because there is
nothing else. I know this is as clear as mud, because the language just
doesn't exist, and I lack the inspiration to introduce it, and my
hackneyed old terms just get hijacked into familiar and misleading
connotations. Oh well

David

> "1Z" wrote:
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >> It would be a problem if the actual infinities or infinitesimals were
> thrid person describable *and* playing some role in the process of
> individuating consciousness. In that case comp is false.
> >> About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> to me nobody defend it in the list.
> >
> > Explainning matter as a pattern of experiences , rather than in
> > a "stuffy" way, is methodological solipsism.
> >
>
> I am doing a detailed look at the relationship between solipsism and
> science. I am writing it up...will post it on the list (if that's
> OK...it's not too big!) when it's Ok to read.. I am surprised at what I
> found. The feedback on solipsism is interesting...
>
> Russel is right in the sense that 'as-if' instrumentalism seems to
> characterise scientific behaviour...where scientists act 'as-if' the
> external world existed. At the same time, the facts of neuroscience tell
> us that scientific evidence arrives as contents of phenomenal
> consciousness, so science is, in fact, all about correlated appearances...
> and it is an 'as-if' solipsism. That is, science is also acting 'as-if'
> solipsism ( as per "1Z" 'methodological solipsism) defines the route to
> k

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-21 Thread Bruno Marchal

Peter,

I am afraid we are in a loop. I have already answer most of your 
comments, except this one:

>
>> Again, from a strictly logical point
>
> As opposed to ?


As opposed to the common sense needed for the choice of the axioms of 
the (logical) theory.

To be sure I have not yet commented an earlier statement you made (that 
we cannot identify digital machine or program with number). This is an 
important remark and I will answer it soon or later.

Bruno


- original message -
Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:40, 1Z a écrit :

>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :
>>
>>> This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
>>> matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
>>> while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of 
>>> comp,
>>> it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.
>>
>> If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if 
>> there
>> is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then 
>> that
>> piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it
>> would lead to a zombie.
>
>
> The matter isn't emulable at all. Only its behaviour. if there is prime
> matteriality, and not just material behaviour, it is necessarily
> non-emulable.
>
>> OK then.
>> But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive
>> matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without 
>> using
>> actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.
>
> Only something with no properties is necessarily non-emulable,
> and there can be only one such something.
>
>> Again, from a strictly logical point
>
> As opposed to ?
>
>> of view you are correct, but then
>> we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something
>> describable by physics, and it is above anything imaginable to link
>> that stuff to consciousness.
>
> What is immaterial doesn't exist, and what doesn't exist isn't
> conscious.
>
> The link between mental properties and the bare substrate need be no
> different
> to the link between physical properties and the substrate.
>
>> Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am 
>> afraid
>> we will not make progress.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
> >
>
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Colin Hales



> -Original Message-
> From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 9:52 AM
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> 
> 
> Colin Hales wrote:
> >
> >
> >>-Original Message-
> >>From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-
> >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
> >>Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 9:31 AM
> >>To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> >>Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> >>
> >>
> >>Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >>
> >>>Bruno Marchal writes:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> >>>>to me nobody defend it in the list.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked
> to
> >>
> >>a
> >>
> >>>real solipsist?
> >>>
> >>>Stathis Papaioannou
> >>
> >>Will all those who believe I don't exist contact me immediately.  :-)
> >>
> >>Brent
> >>
> >
> >
> > I don't think anyone actually believes they are, but scientists
> certainly
> > act as-if they are! (all except me, of course!)
> 
> Then why do they collaborate, argue, and publish?  Exactly how would they
> act as-if they weren't?
> 
> Brent
> "Nobody believes a theory, except the guy who thought of it.
> Everbody believes an experiment, except the guy who did it."
>   --- Leon Lederman, on physics
> 

All claims of the existence of Brent Meeker are hereby withdrawn. You do not
appear in my phenomenal consciousness. As a scientist I must deny your
existence, including your mind. And further more I demand that you must deny
my mind. That way all is consistent.

:) colin



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Brent Meeker

Colin Hales wrote:
> 
> 
>>-Original Message-
>>From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
>>Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 9:31 AM
>>To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
>>Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
>>
>>
>>Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>
>>>Bruno Marchal writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
>>>>to me nobody defend it in the list.
>>>
>>>
>>>Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to
>>
>>a
>>
>>>real solipsist?
>>>
>>>Stathis Papaioannou
>>
>>Will all those who believe I don't exist contact me immediately.  :-)
>>
>>Brent
>>
> 
> 
> I don't think anyone actually believes they are, but scientists certainly
> act as-if they are! (all except me, of course!) 

Then why do they collaborate, argue, and publish?  Exactly how would they act 
as-if 
they weren't?

Brent
"Nobody believes a theory, except the guy who thought of it.
Everbody believes an experiment, except the guy who did it."
  --- Leon Lederman, on physics

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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Colin Hales



> -Original Message-
> From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 9:31 AM
> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test
> 
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > Bruno Marchal writes:
> >
> >
> >>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> >>to me nobody defend it in the list.
> >
> >
> > Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to
> a
> > real solipsist?
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
> 
> Will all those who believe I don't exist contact me immediately.  :-)
> 
> Brent
> 

I don't think anyone actually believes they are, but scientists certainly
act as-if they are! (all except me, of course!) I hereby declare that Bret
exists. :-)

Colin



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Brent Meeker

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Bruno Marchal writes:
> 
> 
>>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems 
>>to me nobody defend it in the list.
> 
> 
> Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a 
> real solipsist?
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou

Will all those who believe I don't exist contact me immediately.  :-)

Brent

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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Bruno Marchal writes:

> About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems 
> to me nobody defend it in the list.

Is anyone out there really a solipsist? Has anyone ever met or talked to a 
real solipsist?

Stathis Papaioannou
_
Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread jamikes

I had in mind (from very 'old' studies/readings) a somewhat different
version of the "hard' solipsism and this one - sort of - eliminates the
validity of the questions. I will interject.
My take was Russell's remark I mark with *** in the post.

John M

- Original Message -
From: "Russell Standish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test


>
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 04:02:36PM +1000, Colin Hales wrote:
> >
> >
> > BACK TO THE REAL ISSUE (solipsism)
> >
> > I am confused as to what the received view of the solipsist is. As us
usual
> > in philosophical discourse, definitions disagree:
> >
> >
> >
> > "An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only
things
> > that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world -
that
> > is, the source of one's perceptions - therefore cannot be conclusively
> > known; it may not even exist."
> >
> > or
> >
> > "belief in self as only reality: the belief that the only thing somebody
can
> > be sure of is that he or she exists, and that true knowledge of anything
> > else is impossible"
> >
> > or
> >
> > "the belief that only one's own experiences and existence can be known
with
> > certainty"
> >
> >
> >
> > The definitions are all variants on this theme..
> >
>
> It could also be argued that this theme is essentially instrumentalism.
>
> > -
> >
> >
> >
> > Q1. As a solipsist, if you say 'belief in self as the only reality' does
> > this entail the disbelief in anything else other than 'self'
(=experiential
> > reality of the observer)? .i.e. ...the active denial of any reality
other
> > than your experience?
> >
> ***
> I think solipsism goes further in denying existence of other minds.
>
> Note that denial of materiality, or even of noumenon does not
> eliminate other minds.

JM:
I would formulate it harder: "there is ONLY "MY" mind and it produces all
that I (think to) experience as existent' at all. In that case it does not
make sense to "deny" or "eliminate" the nonexistent. My problem was: why am
I so stupid to imagine such a "bad" world? so I dropped solipsism.
>
> >
> >
> > Q2. If experiences are all that are known with certainty, then why have
> > scientists universally (a) adopted the explicit appearances (of the
external
> > reality) within experience as scientific evidence of an external
reality, to
> > the complete exclusion of (b) the implicit evidence that the existence
of
> > any experience at all provides that it is caused by something (and that
> > something is also external reality)? This is rather odd, since in the
> > 'certainty' stakes (b) wins.
> >

JM:
in my 'hard' solipsism that all is my figment. You are nonexistent, the
world is nonexistent, the problems and their solutions are my
decisions/experiences in my own mind. To continue this line into cosequency
is the road to the nuthouse. Bon Voyage!
>
> Most scientists do not even think about ontological issues. Its as
> though they practise "as-if" instrumentalism regardless of their
> personal beliefs.
>
>
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
> -
> A/Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Australia
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
> International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02

JM:
John Mikes


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread 1Z


Brent Meeker wrote:
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :
> >
> >
> >>This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
> >>matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
> >>while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of comp,
> >>it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.
> >
> >
> > If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if there
> > is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then that
> > piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it
> > would lead to a zombie.
>
> I don't understand that.  Computations are Turing emulable - not material 
> objects.


There is a difference between an emulation which is "as good" as the
thing being emulated, and simulation, which is a degree of abstraction
away from the thing being simulated. Flight simulators don't
actually fly, but a Mac emulating a PC is as good as a PC.

The presence or absence of infinities only affect the ability
to *simulate* something (the ability
of a finite machine to model it abstractly). Emulation is all
about whether or not the added degree of abstraction makes a
difference.

> > OK then.
> > But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive
> > matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without using
> > actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.
> > Again, from a strictly logical point of view you are correct, but then
> > we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something
> > describable by physics,
>
> I don't see that point either.  Perhaps you only mean that the mathematical
> descriptions used by physics would not *completely* constitute matter?
>
> >and it is above anything imaginable to link
> > that stuff to consciousness.
> > Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am afraid
> > we will not make progress.
>
> That seems backwards.  Physics works with matter which is defined ostensively 
> and by
> operational definitions.  To insist on an axiomatization seems to me to beg 
> the
> question of whether reality is a purely mathematical object.

Hear, hear!

> It is only descriptions
>   that can be axiomatized.
> 
> Brent Meeker


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Brent Meeker

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :
> 
> 
>>This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
>>matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
>>while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of comp,
>>it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.
> 
> 
> If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if there 
> is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then that 
> piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it 
> would lead to a zombie.

I don't understand that.  Computations are Turing emulable - not material 
objects.

> OK then.
> But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive 
> matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without using 
> actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.
> Again, from a strictly logical point of view you are correct, but then 
> we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something 
> describable by physics, 

I don't see that point either.  Perhaps you only mean that the mathematical 
descriptions used by physics would not *completely* constitute matter?

>and it is above anything imaginable to link 
> that stuff to consciousness.
> Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am afraid 
> we will not make progress.

That seems backwards.  Physics works with matter which is defined ostensively 
and by 
operational definitions.  To insist on an axiomatization seems to me to beg the 
question of whether reality is a purely mathematical object.  It is only 
descriptions 
  that can be axiomatized.

Brent Meeker


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Brent Meeker

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> "1Z" wrote:
> 
>>Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It would be a problem if the actual infinities or infinitesimals were
> 
> thrid person describable *and* playing some role in the process of
> individuating consciousness. In that case comp is false.
> 
>>>About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> 
> to me nobody defend it in the list.
> 
>>Explainning matter as a pattern of experiences , rather than in
>>a "stuffy" way, is methodological solipsism.
>>
> 
> 
> I am doing a detailed look at the relationship between solipsism and
> science. I am writing it up...will post it on the list (if that's
> OK...it's not too big!) when it's Ok to read.. I am surprised at what I
> found. The feedback on solipsism is interesting...
> 
> Russel is right in the sense that 'as-if' instrumentalism seems to
> characterise scientific behaviour...where scientists act 'as-if' the
> external world existed. At the same time, the facts of neuroscience tell
> us that scientific evidence arrives as contents of phenomenal
> consciousness, so science is, in fact, all about correlated appearances...
> and it is an 'as-if' solipsism. That is, science is also acting 'as-if'
> solipsism ( as per "1Z" 'methodological solipsism) defines the route to
> knowledge but is actually in denial of solipsism!

You talk about "as-if" as though it had no empirical support and was a mere 
assumption.  I see other people.  When I sleep and wake up I see the same 
people. 
Denial of solipism is as well supported empirically as my own historical 
existence - 
which I know of only through memory and some artifacts.  I'm afraid you are 
slipping 
into radical skepticism which if applied consistently will leave you with no 
knowledge of anything.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales

"1Z" wrote:
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> It would be a problem if the actual infinities or infinitesimals were
thrid person describable *and* playing some role in the process of
individuating consciousness. In that case comp is false.
>> About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
to me nobody defend it in the list.
>
> Explainning matter as a pattern of experiences , rather than in
> a "stuffy" way, is methodological solipsism.
>

I am doing a detailed look at the relationship between solipsism and
science. I am writing it up...will post it on the list (if that's
OK...it's not too big!) when it's Ok to read.. I am surprised at what I
found. The feedback on solipsism is interesting...

Russel is right in the sense that 'as-if' instrumentalism seems to
characterise scientific behaviour...where scientists act 'as-if' the
external world existed. At the same time, the facts of neuroscience tell
us that scientific evidence arrives as contents of phenomenal
consciousness, so science is, in fact, all about correlated appearances...
and it is an 'as-if' solipsism. That is, science is also acting 'as-if'
solipsism ( as per "1Z" 'methodological solipsism) defines the route to
knowledge but is actually in denial of solipsism!

The weird state that seems to be in place is that science is tacitly
radically solipsistic in respect of what evidence is available (phenomenal
consciousness is all there is), whilst scientist's actual behaviour denies
this solipsism and tacitly adopts the 'as-if' stance in respect of the
existence of an external world. The net affect is that the external world
is assumed to exist, consciousness is eschewed as evidence of anything in
its own right and objectivity allows correlates of appearances within
consciousness to literally define the workings of the (assumed existent)
external world. Science is a methodological-solispsist-in-denial
instrumentalism? whew!

This paradoxical situation I have analysed out and, I hope, straightened
out. The answer lies not in adopting/rejecting solipsism per se (although
solipsism is logically untenable for subtle reasons) , but in merely
recognising what scientific evidence is actually there and what it is
evidence of. At least then scientists will have a consistent position and
will no longer need to think one way and behave another. At the moment
they are 'having it both ways' and have no awareness of it. ...if you talk
to mainstream neuroscientists, to whom this matters the most (in terms of
understanding the available evidence) they have no clue what you are on
about...but they go right on doing it without question...staring down the
microscope with their phenomenal consciouess at the "external world" they
assume they are directly characterising without phenomenal consciousness,
correlating the appearances of test and control..day in, day out...

The thing is, none of it actually matters...until one day you decide
scientifically study phenomenal cosnciousness... which I think I have said
previously so many ways to get to the same place!

I'll probably dump the text of 'Solipsism and Science' to the list
tomorrow. Who'd have thought that in looking at AI i'd end up forced to
analyse solipsism in science?

cheers
colin hales



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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :
>
> > This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
> > matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
> > while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of comp,
> > it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.
>
> If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if there
> is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then that
> piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it
> would lead to a zombie.


The matter isn't emulable at all. Only its behaviour. if there is prime
matteriality, and not just material behaviour, it is necessarily
non-emulable.

> OK then.
> But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive
> matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without using
> actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.

Only something with no properties is necessarily non-emulable,
and there can be only one such something.

> Again, from a strictly logical point

As opposed to ?

> of view you are correct, but then
> we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something
> describable by physics, and it is above anything imaginable to link
> that stuff to consciousness.

What is immaterial doesn't exist, and what doesn't exist isn't
conscious.

The link between mental properties and the bare substrate need be no
different
to the link between physical properties and the substrate.

> Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am afraid
> we will not make progress.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Bruno Marchal


Le 20-sept.-06, à 14:08, 1Z a écrit :

> This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
> matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
> while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of comp,
> it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.

If matter exists, and if consciousness is dependent on it, and if there 
is no actual infinities on which my consciousness can depend, then that 
piece of matter is turing emulable, and so by turing-emulating it, it 
would lead to a zombie.
OK then.
But now I have still less understanding of your notion of primitive 
matter. You could define it by anything making comp false without using 
actual infinities, and this would lead to ad hoc theories.
Again, from a strictly logical point of view you are correct, but then 
we have to ask you what you mean by matter. It is no more something 
describable by physics, and it is above anything imaginable to link 
that stuff to consciousness.
Unless you present some axiomatic of your notion of matter, I am afraid 
we will not make progress.

Bruno


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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread 1Z


Bruno Marchal wrote:

> It would be a problem if the actual infinities or infinitesimals were
> thrid person describable *and* playing some role in the process of
> individuating consciousness. In that case comp is false.
>
>
> About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems
> to me nobody defend it in the list.

Epxlainning matter as a pattern of experiences , rather than in
a "stuffy" way, is methodological solipsism.


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread 1Z


Colin Hales wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm overrun with stuff at uni, but I have this one issue - solipsism- which
> is hot and we seem to be touching on, so I thought you may help me collect
> my thoughts before I run off. gotta leave all those threads hanging
> there.and I left them in an awfully under engineered state.sorry!
>
>
>
> SIDE ISSUE (infinity and the UDA)
>
> From the UDA you can show that to make comp false you need to introduce
> actual infinities in the subject.

This isn't the only way COMP couldbe false. For instance, if
matter exists, consciousness could be dependent on it. Thus,
while the existence of matter might disprove the Bruno version of comp,
it doesn't prove the existence of actual infintities.

> The infinitely small and infinitely large are two sides of the same thing.
> One can construct an infinitesimal as an identity = the difference between
> two very nearly cancelling infinities (type A and type B) or from a single
> infinity consisting of an infinite number of random simple transitory events
> (changes from state A to B and back) that acts as an effective average
> 'NOTHING'.

You can construct infinitessimals in a purely mathematical way.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonstandardAnalysis.html


> Q1. As a solipsist, if you say 'belief in self as the only reality' does
> this entail the disbelief in anything else other than 'self' (=experiential
> reality of the observer)? .i.e. ...the active denial of any reality other
> than your experience?

yes. Not that I am a solipsist.

>
>
> This denial seems a tad optional from the definitions. That denial would
> necessitate magical intervention in the provision of phenomenal
> consciousness (Berkeley-esque beliefs) that constitute a mass-delusion of
> relentless detail.. a belief which is also bereft of empirical parsimony..

Not a mass delusion, a personal one.


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-20 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 19-sept.-06, à 08:02, Colin Hales a écrit :

Hi,
I’m overrun with stuff at uni, but I have this one issue – solipsism- which is hot and we seem to be touching on, so I thought you may help me collect my thoughts before I run off… gotta leave all those threads hanging there…and I left them in an awfully under engineered state…sorry!
 
SIDE ISSUE (infinity and the UDA)
Fromthe UDA you can show that to make comp false you need to introduce actual infinities in the subject.
The infinitely small and infinitely large are two sides of the same thing. One can construct an infinitesimal as an identity = the difference between two very nearly cancelling infinities (type A and type B) or from a single infinity consisting of an infinite number of random simple transitory events (changes from state A to B and back) that acts as an effective average ‘NOTHING’.
 
From this ‘change based’ model of infinity, based on mere statistical happenstance, an infinitesimal’s existence (albeit transitory) is predictable logically by the nature of the impossibility of infinity (a perfect NOTHING requires infinite cancellation of all A with all B under all circumstances). Indeed, rarely, you will get extraordinarily large (not very infinitesimal!) collections of transitory events as temporary coherence of massive quantities of simultaneous state A or state B.
 
The infinitesimal is therefore evidence of actual infinities, but in an ‘as-if’ sense. Whether this constitutes the introduction of ‘actual infinities’ in the context of disproof of the UDA you can work out yourself


It would be a problem if the actual infinities or infinitesimals were thrid person describable *and* playing some role in the process of individuating consciousness. In that case comp is false.


About solipsism I am not sure why you introduce the subject. It seems to me nobody defend it in the list. 
Perhaps we should abandon both the term solipsism and the term platonism, and use instead the terms 
subjective 1-personal idealism for "solipsism"
and objective 3-personal idealism for platonism,

But I am not sure either. Change of terminology hardly solves problem, but it can help in some context.

Bruno



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


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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-19 Thread Russell Standish

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 04:02:36PM +1000, Colin Hales wrote:
>  
> 
> BACK TO THE REAL ISSUE (solipsism)
> 
> I am confused as to what the received view of the solipsist is. As us usual
> in philosophical discourse, definitions disagree: 
> 
>  
> 
> "An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things
> that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world - that
> is, the source of one's perceptions - therefore cannot be conclusively
> known; it may not even exist."
> 
> or
> 
> "belief in self as only reality: the belief that the only thing somebody can
> be sure of is that he or she exists, and that true knowledge of anything
> else is impossible"
> 
> or
> 
> "the belief that only one's own experiences and existence can be known with
> certainty"
> 
>  
> 
> The definitions are all variants on this theme..
> 

It could also be argued that this theme is essentially instrumentalism.

> -
> 
>  
> 
> Q1. As a solipsist, if you say 'belief in self as the only reality' does
> this entail the disbelief in anything else other than 'self' (=experiential
> reality of the observer)? .i.e. ...the active denial of any reality other
> than your experience?
> 

I think solipsism goes further in denying existence of other minds.

Note that denial of materiality, or even of noumenon does not
eliminate other minds.

>  
> 
> Q2. If experiences are all that are known with certainty, then why have
> scientists universally (a) adopted the explicit appearances (of the external
> reality) within experience as scientific evidence of an external reality, to
> the complete exclusion of (b) the implicit evidence that the existence of
> any experience at all provides that it is caused by something (and that
> something is also external reality)? This is rather odd, since in the
> 'certainty' stakes (b) wins.
> 

Most scientists do not even think about ontological issues. Its as
though they practise "as-if" instrumentalism regardless of their
personal beliefs.



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RE: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-18 Thread Colin Hales










Hi,

I’m overrun with
stuff at uni, but I have this one issue – solipsism- which is hot and we seem to be
touching on, so I thought you may help me collect my thoughts before I run off… gotta leave all those
threads hanging there…and I left them in an awfully under
engineered state…sorry!

 

SIDE ISSUE (infinity and the UDA)

Fromthe
UDA you can show that to make comp false you need to introduce actual
infinities in the subject.

The infinitely small and infinitely large
are two sides of the same thing. One can construct an infinitesimal as an
identity = the difference between two very nearly cancelling infinities (type A
and type B) or from a single infinity consisting of an infinite number of random
simple transitory events (changes from state A to B and back) that acts as an
effective average ‘NOTHING’.

 

From this ‘change based’ model
of infinity, based on mere statistical happenstance, an infinitesimal’s
existence (albeit transitory) is predictable logically by the nature of the
impossibility of infinity (a perfect NOTHING requires infinite cancellation of
all A with all B under all circumstances). Indeed, rarely, you will get
extraordinarily large (not very infinitesimal!) collections of transitory
events as temporary coherence of massive quantities of simultaneous state A or
state B.

 

The infinitesimal is therefore evidence of
actual infinities, but in an ‘as-if’ sense. Whether this
constitutes the introduction of ‘actual infinities’ in the context
of disproof of the UDA you can work out yourself. There is a possibility it may
do the job. I hope I have made sense. The important nuance to this idea is the
intrinsic parallelism of it (massive numbers of identical instances of a
transitory event)…that is where the UDA can fail, for the parallelism is
innate…not ‘computed’….which means that if any property
of nature occurs as a result of the innateness, replacement by computational
abstractions will not replicate it. Am I making sense?… probably not…
oh well.

 

 

BACK TO THE REAL ISSUE (solipsism)

I am confused as to what the received view
of the solipsist is. As us usual in philosophical discourse, definitions
disagree: 

 

“An
epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things that
can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world - that is, the
source of one's perceptions - therefore cannot be conclusively known; it may
not even exist.”

or

“belief in
self as only reality: the belief that the only thing somebody can be sure of is that he or she
exists, and that true knowledge of anything else is impossible”

or

“the belief that only one's
own experiences and existence can be known with certainty”

 

The definitions are all variants on this
theme….

-

 

Q1. As a solipsist, if you say ‘belief in self as the only reality’
does this entail the disbelief in anything else other than ‘self’
(=experiential reality of the observer)? .i.e. …..the active denial of
any reality other than your experience?

 

This denial seems a tad optional from the
definitions. That denial would necessitate magical intervention in the
provision of phenomenal consciousness (Berkeley-esque beliefs) that constitute
a mass-delusion of relentless detail.… a belief which is also bereft of
empirical parsimony…. 

 

It seems to me that the denial or
otherwise can have little effect on scientific behaviour. A scientist does not
get up in the morning, deny reality and then use that denial to alter
procedures… (apart from giving up altogether! – “for what’s
the point”!)…so the denial seems a little moot…. nevertheless
I’d like to have an opinion or two….

---

 

Q2. If experiences are all that are known
with certainty, then why have scientists universally (a) adopted the explicit appearances
(of the external reality) within experience as scientific evidence of an
external reality, to the complete exclusion of (b) the implicit evidence that the
existence of any experience at all provides that it is caused by something (and
that something is also external reality)? This is rather odd, since in the ‘certainty’
stakes (b) wins.

-

Q3. How does a solipsistic denial of ‘other
minds’ fit into the above in the context of provision of scientific
evidence?

 

I have others but this will do as a start.

 

Regards

 

Colin Hales






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Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-18 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 16-sept.-06, à 23:37, Colin Geoffrey Hales a écrit :

Bruno wrote
Colin Geoffrey Hales a ��it :
5) Re a fatal test for the Turing machine? Give it exquisite novelty by
asking it to do science on an unknown area of the natural world. Proper
science. It will fail because it does not know there is an outside
world.
And you *know* that?

We can *bet* on a independent reality, that's all. Justifiably so
assuming comp, but I think you don't.
Self-referentially correct machine can *only* bet on their
self-referential and referential correctness.


Bruno

I don't assume COMP. The idea that this is necessary to hold a position on
anything is, for me, simply irrelevant and preumptuous that COMP is able
to make any useful predictions. 


My point is that COMP is a so big assumption that it does make verifiable predictions.




COMP is not an empirically supportable
position, no matter how elegant it may look. 

But is there any empirically reason to disbelieve in it? 
Fromthe UDA you can show that to make comp false you need to introduce actual infinities in the subject.
I know only Penrose for having try to do that, unsuccessfully. 




I would consider it so if it
could predict the existence and properties of brain material.

But that is exactly my modest (UDA) point. Comp has to predict the (apparent) existence of the brain, atoms ...
I show why.
Then I show how and got results in the arithmetical UDA (or lobian interview).



Having said that yes you are right that 'betting' on an independent
reality is all we can dothis is an empirical matter. 

All right. Note that if you believe in primitive physicality, you are quite coherent by abandoning comp.



Whatever it is
that enables vast legions of scientists to do their job (deines their
job), relentlessly for hundreds of yearsthat mutually eqisitely
produced, shared delusion called the natural world that thing... that
we appear to be within and constantly demonstrate it via creation of novel
technology that seems to operate within it That is worth betting
on...the process of consideration that it may not be there is of no
practical value.

I do agree with you, but let us not confuse the two following bets:
a) Betting on an independent reality (like I do)
b) Betting on a material primitive world (like I do not).

I have always feel myself as a REALIST scientist. But then I argue that if comp is true, then physical stuff emerge from a deeper non material reality, like for example (assuming comp) the relation between numbers.

Perhaps even Stephen Hawking points in that direction with his beautiful selected basic papers: "God created the Integers".


But I'm not sure you have really 'got' what I mean by 'it does not know
there is an outiside world'. This is a practical matter. Brain material
does something special...which enables an internal literal phenomenal
mapping of the universe outside the scientist. The Turing machine is a
collection of abstractions with an ASSUMED relationship to the outside
world. 

Anything talking about anything supposedly outside itself  makes such an assumption.



Until we know what that physics is any argument assuming the lack
of that special physics is simply going to take you down the usual
argument path of assumption.

Only when we isolate the real physics of phenomenal consciousness in brain
material can we then make any valid judgement as to its necessity in
intelligence. Until then I hole all discussion based on assumption of
computational (as-if) substrates as invalid or at least interesting but of
little practical use at this stage.


No problem.



---
TURING TEST.
The turing test always infuriates me. Since when does dumbing a human down
to the point of looking like machine X prove that machine X has
consciousness? I just don't get it.


Turing was really not searching any proof there.



When you give the machine that faculties of a human and make it do what
humans do ...I I believe getting them both to do science is the
appropriate ttest... then the Turing test is a complete irrelevance based
on an assumption that the presence of the physics of phenomenal
consciousness is optional in intelligence. It is an empirical reality that
when you alter phenomenal consciousness then scientific behaviour is
altered. No further argument is needed. The turing test is not a test of
consciousness. I'm not sure what it is a test of, but it is certainly not
a test of consciousness.


I think Turing would agree here, except that it would have add that such a test is the better thing you can ever have to evaluate the plausibility of the presence of consciousness (without being influenced by the prejudices based on body shapes). I am less sure because with the technical progress only arbitrary longer test can make sense. I know someone who did took some program for a conscious being after a short "conversation" with it!

Bruno


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


--~--~-

Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

2006-09-16 Thread Colin Geoffrey Hales

Bruno wrote
> Colin Geoffrey Hales a 飲it :
>> 5) Re a fatal test for the Turing machine? Give it exquisite novelty by
asking it to do science on an unknown area of the natural world. Proper
science. It will fail because it does not know there is an outside
world.
>
>
> And you *know* that?
>
> We can *bet* on a independent reality, that's all. Justifiably so
assuming comp, but I think you don't.
>
> Self-referentially correct machine can *only* bet on their
> self-referential and referential correctness.
>
>
> Bruno

I don't assume COMP. The idea that this is necessary to hold a position on
anything is, for me, simply irrelevant and preumptuous that COMP is able
to make any useful predictions. COMP is not an empirically supportable
position, no matter how elegant it may look. I would consider it so if it
could predict the existence and properties of brain material.

Having said that yes you are right that 'betting' on an independent
reality is all we can dothis is an empirical matter. Whatever it is
that enables vast legions of scientists to do their job (deines their
job), relentlessly for hundreds of yearsthat mutually eqisitely
produced, shared delusion called the natural world that thing... that
we appear to be within and constantly demonstrate it via creation of novel
technology that seems to operate within it That is worth betting
on...the process of consideration that it may not be there is of no
practical value.

But I'm not sure you have really 'got' what I mean by 'it does not know
there is an outiside world'. This is a practical matter. Brain material
does something special...which enables an internal literal phenomenal
mapping of the universe outside the scientist. The Turing machine is a
collection of abstractions with an ASSUMED relationship to the outside
world. Until we know what that physics is any argument assuming the lack
of that special physics is simply going to take you down the usual
argument path of assumption.

Only when we isolate the real physics of phenomenal consciousness in brain
material can we then make any valid judgement as to its necessity in
intelligence. Until then I hole all discussion based on assumption of
computational (as-if) substrates as invalid or at least interesting but of
little practical use at this stage.
---
TURING TEST.
The turing test always infuriates me. Since when does dumbing a human down
to the point of looking like machine X prove that machine X has
consciousness? I just don't get it.

When you give the machine that faculties of a human and make it do what
humans do ...I I believe getting them both to do science is the
appropriate ttest... then the Turing test is a complete irrelevance based
on an assumption that the presence of the physics of phenomenal
consciousness is optional in intelligence. It is an empirical reality that
when you alter phenomenal consciousness then scientific behaviour is
altered. No further argument is needed. The turing test is not a test of
consciousness. I'm not sure what it is a test of, but it is certainly not
a test of consciousness.

regards

Colin Hales


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