subject:"Re\: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed\?"


> On 5 Jan 2018, at 21:04, David Nyman  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 5 Jan 2018 19:27, "Bruno Marchal"  > wrote:
> 
>> On 4 Jan 2018, at 21:07, David Nyman > > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal" > > wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker >> > > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>  Now, it
>>>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>>>  argue, we don't know that.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There 
>>> >>> seemed to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical 
>>> >>> zombie is impossible.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
>>> >> Mechanism.
>>> >
>>> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
>>> > because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>>> 
>>> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
>>> plausible than non-computationalism.
>>> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> >
>>> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non 
>>> >> computationalist theory of mind.
>>> >
>>> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
>>> > only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
>>> > include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
>>> > intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
>>> > very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>>> 
>>> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
>>> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies 
>>> (having the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never 
>>> associated to a body, but only to the person having the infinity of 
>>> (similar enough) bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no 
>>> “real bodies” or “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes 
>>> senseless. The consciousness is associated with the person, which is never 
>>> determined by one body.
>>> 
>>> So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA 
>>> implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement 
>>> a computation in the relevant sense?
>> 
>> 
>> The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the 
>> relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD “act 
>> of faith.
>> 
>> The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent 
>> that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind 
>>> *is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of 
>>> universality.
>> 
>> 
>> A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he 
>> perceives. It is polite. 
>> 
>> The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own 
>> mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a body 
>> is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy, the 
>> electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a computational 
>> state among infinitely many others which would works as well, with respect 
>> to the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
>> Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular 
>> body or computation.
>> 
>> Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually 
>> avoid) that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean, 
>> respectively, that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting itself 
>> relatively to you. But the machine and the body are local relative 
>> representation.
>> 
>> A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical) 
>> dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state) cannot 
>> think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking with 
>> respect to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a physical 
>> computer.
>> 
>> The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1 
>> arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should 
>> stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith”

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-06 Thread Brent Meeker




On 1/6/2018 2:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Is the Mars Rover conscious?


Probably not, because, despite it run a conscious universal machine, 
Mars Rover itself might not be universal, and still less Löbian. I 
should see the program to be sure of this, of course. But it does not 
implement self-reference, from what I have heard about it.


But it does reference, and report, on its internal state and its 
position.  So how much self-reference constitutes consciousness?  In 
your reply to Bruce you said that it's not a particular computation that 
is consciousness, it's a class of machines that are capable of 
consciouness.  But it's not clear to me whether this equates 
consciousness with reflective self-awareness, or just self-awareness, or 
just awareness.


Brent

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 6 Jan 2018, at 06:06, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> On 6/01/2018 7:11 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 5 Jan 2018, at 04:22, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett  
> wrote:
> 
> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
 This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
 a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>>> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all 
>>> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>> Universality seems enough.
> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality 
> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
 OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some 
 universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
 
 
>> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, 
>> dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic 
>> consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of 
>> consciousness.
>> 
>> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive 
>> consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by 
>> it. Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own 
>> "Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second 
>> incompleteness theorem is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
 Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported 
 by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical 
 object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract 
 notion implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
 
 Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, 
 which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
>>> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a 
>>> computation (and nothing but a computation).”
>> You can’t equate a first person notion with a third person notion. You can 
>> try to associate them, but consciousness will involve undefinable notion and 
>> reference to some notion of truth.
> 
> Russell clarifies his position to say that consciousness 'supervenes' on the 
> computation. But consciousness is not a purely first person concept -- I can 
> know that you are conscious by collecting evidence and making an inference. 
> You have to have a narrow interpretation of 'knowledge' to rule this out, and 
> such a narrow definition would rule out all scientific knowledge.


It makes it more modest, especially in metaphysics. But indeed, in philosophy 
of mind it used to have some strong meaning for knowledge, and science is 
better described as belief. Knowledge is never refutable, but belief are. In 
science, the theories are only ideas, making precise enough to be shown wrong.




> 
>>> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position.
>> I think you sur-interpret Russell, which might have commit “abuse of 
>> language”, forgetting not all knows we have already discussed this. I don’t 
>> know. His theory mentioned all infinite strings, that is the reals, which 
>> are not Turing universal. His approach, which has common things with the 
>> consequence of comp is not per se comp driven.
> 
> The UD includes non-halting programs so can generate all bitstrings, 
> including the reals.


Yes, and all Turing machines using those real as oracle. But physics remains 
determined by the self-reference logic, only you build a non mechanist theory 
of mind in which some non computable real play some role.




> 
>>> If human consciousness is a computation,
>> That does not make any sense. A mental attribute of a first person cannot be 
>> identified with any third person notion. But you can associate a mentality 
>> to higher order number relation whose semantics involves themselves. 
>> Consciousness starts as the bet in a reality and ends with the awakening of 
>> a person.
> 
> Poetic, but what does it mean?


It means that the average universal machine in arithmetic starts from believing 
that it belongs to a physical reality (Aristotle) and eventually grasp that the 
physical reality is a view of the border of the universal mind (the mind of the 
universal Turing machine), as seen by that universal mind.




> 
>>> then the computation is conscious (it is an identity thesis). You say that 
>>> the computation cannot be conscious, but can support a person. It is 
>>> difficult to see this as anything other than the introduction

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 6 Jan 2018, at 01:50, Russell Standish  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 02:22:08PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>> 
>> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a
>> computation (and nothing but a computation)."
>> 
>> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
>> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
>> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
>> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other than
>> the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
>> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does consciousness
>> exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the equation. And
>> what characterizes those computations that can support a person from those
>> that cannot?
>> 
> 
> A more precise statement might have computationalism defined as
> "computational supervenience is true", where computational
> supervenience means consciousness supervenes on computations.
> 
> If you dig into what supervenience means, then it means that
> no property of consciousness can differ without a difference in the
> supervened computation.
> 
> But you can have a difference in the computation that is not reflected
> in the consciousness, so strict identity in a mathematical or
> Leibnizian sense does not follow.
> 
> AFAIK, Bruno uses "support" to mean "is supervened on". I do not know
> what he means by a "computation cannot be conscious" - as by analogy
> it would a be similar statement to "a bunch of molecules cannot be a gas”.

A bunch of molecules *can* be a gas. There is no problem as we equate two 3p 
notions.

The similar statement would be that “a bunch of molecules is a conscious 
person”. Here the correct thing would that a bunch of molecules can support a 
person relatively to some molecular world.

Bruno

> 
> 
> -- 
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> 
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> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 5 Jan 2018, at 21:19, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 12:44:53 PM UTC-7, John Clark wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 8:43 AM, Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >> in their work real AI scientists don't use personal pronouns with no 
> clear referent, nor silly homemade terminology.
> 
> > See my papers for the mathematical definitions of all pronouns
> 
> Right, just like your papers explain why pigs fly. 
>  
> > You did explicitly agree that if two computers, localized in two 
> different places, but numerically (digitally) identical, and running the same 
> program, would not, in case they emulate a "conscious program", allow to that 
> consciousness to be able to localize itself.
> 
> Yes, and a third party couldn't do it either because consciousness doesn't 
> have a location, but its not unique in that regard, "green" or "fast" or 
> "big" doesn't have a location either.
> 
> > That fact is only needed to understand how to extract physics from 
> elementary arithmetic.
> 
> That could only be done if arithmetic is more fundamental than physics and I 
> see no evidence that is true, but I do see some evidence it is false.   
>  
> > you seem to believe in a primary physical universe,
> 
> You seem to believe in a primary mathematical universe, but matter by 
> itself can do mathematics however mathematics by itself can't do matter.
> 
> But that's what the MWI does! It creates matter, indeed huge sets of 
> universes, by inferring a superposition never collapses. AG
> 



Another good reason to doubt matter. No problem with the notion of machine 3p 
histories, which is no mo more demanding that believing in the prime numbers 
(if you keep in mind that the notion of computation is arithmetical).

Bruno




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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

> On 5 Jan 2018, at 20:44, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 8:43 AM, Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >> in their work real AI scientists don't use personal pronouns with no 
> clear referent, nor silly homemade terminology.
> 
> > See my papers for the mathematical definitions of all pronouns
> 
> Right, just like your papers explain why pigs fly. 
>  
> > You did explicitly agree that if two computers, localized in two 
> different places, but numerically (digitally) identical, and running the same 
> program, would not, in case they emulate a "conscious program", allow to that 
> consciousness to be able to localize itself.
> 
> Yes, and a third party couldn't do it either because consciousness doesn't 
> have a location, but its not unique in that regard, "green" or "fast" or 
> "big" doesn't have a location either.
> 
> > That fact is only needed to understand how to extract physics from 
> elementary arithmetic.
> 
> That could only be done if arithmetic is more fundamental than physics and I 
> see no evidence that is true, but I do see some evidence it is false.   

The existence of the computations in arithmetic is a fact of the same type that 
6 is not prime, just lengthier to prove.

But what are the evidences for a primary physical universe? Usually the feeling 
is based on “known on the table” sort of argument which have been shown invalid 
since antiquity by the dream argument (which is the one also amenable to 
mathematics with comp (= YD+CT, that is “yes doctor” + Church-Turing.

>  
> > you seem to believe in a primary physical universe,
> 
> You seem to believe in a primary mathematical universe,

I never say so. I believe only that IF YD+CT is true THEN the primary reality 
is given by any sigma_1 complete theory. The physical appearances are recovered 
by the statistic on all computational consistent extensions, making YD+TC 
testable/refutable.

> but matter by itself can do mathematics

I have no clue what “matter” can mean here. I guess you mean that we can use 
matter to implement or incarnate a mathematician. Yes, that is locally first 
person plurally true;

> however mathematics by itself can't do matter.

That’s true too.

The problem if you make matter primary, or fundamental, or in need to be 
assumed, you have to explain how it make some computations more feel as real by 
some universal numbers and not others, which becomes zombie. Invoking primary 
matter is like invoking a god that nobody has ever seen to avoid justifying a 
measure mathematically to solve the mind-body problem. Such notion of matter 
just hide the problem, or provide a magical solution, which usually is not 
judged as valid. 

Bruno

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-06 Thread 'scerir' via Everything List

Somebody wrote: "So there are probably grades of consciousness, just as there 
are grades of ability to communicate. Cats, dogs, and some birds, are quite 
high on this scale, but jellyfish are probably quite low. But can you rule out 
the possibility that some environmental awareness does not constitute low level 
consciousness?"

# Indeed, there are grades of consciousness, I would say a smooth transition 
from a grade of consciuosness to another grade. When suffering from 
hydrocephalus (water in the brain) you may experience some apparent 
consciousness (and self-consciousness), but that is a true "first person" 
experience, or feeling. In other words, if somebody asks "who are you?", or 
"where are you now?", "what day is today?", you may be in trouble. Four years 
ago I said to the doctor: "That is simple, today is August 13, 1978."). Thus, 
to me, consciousness is not a 0/1 function, s.


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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-06 Thread agrayson2000



On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 11:29:44 PM UTC-7, Bruce wrote:
>
> On 6/01/2018 4:59 pm, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> On 1/5/2018 9:30 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
> On 6/01/2018 4:15 pm, Russell Standish wrote: 
>
> Other things seem possible, such as the 
> extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious. 
>
>
> That is an extraordinary claim, and sufficient in itself to falsify your 
> theory. I know as a fact that my cat is conscious, and that my various dogs 
> over the years have also been conscious. You refer to the "mirror test" in 
> your book -- an animal is conscious (is self-aware) if it recognizes itself 
> in a mirror. I agree that my cat does not recognize itself in the mirror -- 
> but that only goes to show that this is a stupid test for consciousness.
>
>
> But it's still unlikely that ALL animals can be conscious, e.g. jellyfish 
> (which recently found to sleep...perchance to dream?).
>
>
> Well, it depends on how you gauge consciousness in another living being -- 
> how do you know that your wife is conscious? or the person you meet in the 
> street? It seems that there must be a third person (intersubjective) 
> element to consciousness whereby we can know that other people are 
> conscious.
>
> I used the example of the fact that I did not see my abacus as talking to 
> me to judge that its computations were not supporting consciousness. That 
> is a good starting point. Cats and dogs can certainly "talk" to us: in fact 
> they can be very eloquent in making their wishes known! At a different 
> level, I was sitting on the verandah of our bush house over the Christmas 
> break, and a king parrot came in with his mate. They are long-lived birds, 
> and relatively territorial, so we know this pair of king parrots quite 
> well. The male sat on the roof above me and peered round to look at where I 
> was sitting. He then started to vocalize -- talk to me -- in response to my 
> quiet welcome and conversation. Sure, no English words were used, but the 
> recognition and communication was clear. So I put out some seeds on the 
> table, and he was happy. This same bird has, on another occasion, sat on 
> the arm of my wife's chair, a few feet away, while we talked.
>
> There is also a family of blue fairy wrens living by the house. Being the 
> late breeding season, the male is jealous of his territory and spends time 
> fighting his reflection in our windows, and in the bonnet of the car! He 
> fails the mirror test for consciousness, but he is clearly an able and 
> successful breeder. It is harder to establish direct communication with 
> wrens, but I have no doubt that they are intelligent birds, conscious and 
> knowledgeable of their surroundings.
>

*The problem with your claim -- and what I am about to write is surely not 
original -- is that humans could (at some point in time, if not now) build 
artificial birds that would emulate what you interpret as "consciousness".  
Think "Blade Runner" (the movie). If you had a test to distinguish the real 
from the artificial, you'd be on your way to understanding what 
consciousness IS, but at present I don't think this is the case. AG* 

>
> So there are probably grades of consciousness, just as there are grades of 
> ability to communicate. Cats, dogs, and some birds, are quite high on this 
> scale, but jellyfish are probably quite low. But can you rule out the 
> possibility that some environmental awareness does not constitute low level 
> consciousness?
>



> I'm still not clear on whether it is "machines" (axiom systems) which 
> *are* conscious, or *can be* conscious?  Or is it computations which *are* 
> consciousness, or *"support"* consciousness?  ISTM that my consciousness 
> is only a part of my thinking (and not always the best part).
>
>
> I think the notion of supervenience is the best way to approach it. But 
> one must be careful to distinguish models of supervenience for the reality 
> of actual consciousness.
>
> Bruce
>

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-06 Thread Quentin Anciaux

Le 6 janv. 2018 7:29 AM, "Bruce Kellett"  a
écrit :

On 6/01/2018 4:59 pm, Brent Meeker wrote:

On 1/5/2018 9:30 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 6/01/2018 4:15 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

Other things seem possible, such as the
extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious.


That is an extraordinary claim, and sufficient in itself to falsify your
theory. I know as a fact that my cat is conscious, and that my various dogs
over the years have also been conscious. You refer to the "mirror test" in
your book -- an animal is conscious (is self-aware) if it recognizes itself
in a mirror. I agree that my cat does not recognize itself in the mirror --
but that only goes to show that this is a stupid test for consciousness.


But it's still unlikely that ALL animals can be conscious, e.g. jellyfish
(which recently found to sleep...perchance to dream?).


Well, it depends on how you gauge consciousness in another living being --
how do you know that your wife is conscious? or the person you meet in the
street? It seems that there must be a third person (intersubjective)
element to consciousness whereby we can know that other people are
conscious.

I used the example of the fact that I did not see my abacus as talking to
me to judge that its computations were not supporting consciousness.


Again that's a flawed example, so certainly not a good starting point. I
thought you understood that.

Quentin

That is a good starting point. Cats and dogs can certainly "talk" to us: in
fact they can be very eloquent in making their wishes known! At a different
level, I was sitting on the verandah of our bush house over the Christmas
break, and a king parrot came in with his mate. They are long-lived birds,
and relatively territorial, so we know this pair of king parrots quite
well. The male sat on the roof above me and peered round to look at where I
was sitting. He then started to vocalize -- talk to me -- in response to my
quiet welcome and conversation. Sure, no English words were used, but the
recognition and communication was clear. So I put out some seeds on the
table, and he was happy. This same bird has, on another occasion, sat on
the arm of my wife's chair, a few feet away, while we talked.

There is also a family of blue fairy wrens living by the house. Being the
late breeding season, the male is jealous of his territory and spends time
fighting his reflection in our windows, and in the bonnet of the car! He
fails the mirror test for consciousness, but he is clearly an able and
successful breeder. It is harder to establish direct communication with
wrens, but I have no doubt that they are intelligent birds, conscious and
knowledgeable of their surroundings.

So there are probably grades of consciousness, just as there are grades of
ability to communicate. Cats, dogs, and some birds, are quite high on this
scale, but jellyfish are probably quite low. But can you rule out the
possibility that some environmental awareness does not constitute low level
consciousness?



I'm still not clear on whether it is "machines" (axiom systems) which *are*
conscious, or *can be* conscious?  Or is it computations which *are*
consciousness, or *"support"* consciousness?  ISTM that my consciousness is
only a part of my thinking (and not always the best part).


I think the notion of supervenience is the best way to approach it. But one
must be careful to distinguish models of supervenience for the reality of
actual consciousness.

Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 5 Jan 2018, at 15:06, Jason Resch  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, January 5, 2018, David Nyman  > wrote:
> 
> 
> On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  > wrote:
> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett  > wrote:
> 
> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all 
> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
> Universality seems enough.
> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality 
> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some universal 
> machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
> 
> 
> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, dissociative, 
> form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic consciousness 
> alluded by people living highly altered state of consciousness.
> 
> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive consciousness. A 
> machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by it. Equivalently, when 
> the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) 
> -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem is the particular case 
> with p = f (f = "0≠1").
> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported by 
> those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical object) 
> can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion 
> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
> 
> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, 
> which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
> 
> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a 
> computation (and nothing but a computation)."
> 
> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If 
> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it 
> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious, but 
> can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other than the 
> introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a conscious 
> person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does consciousness exist? You 
> are introducing some unspecified magic into the equation. And what 
> characterizes those computations that can support a person from those that 
> cannot?
> 
> Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of the 
> notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate all 
> other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be 
> associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as 
> exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance, 
> self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like, the 
> fixed point on which every other feature is centred. Then, with respect to 
> this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made between what is 
> 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence communicable) 
> by the machine and what is true *about* the machine (essentially, not 
> provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but nonetheless 
> 'epistemically' true). 
> 
> 
> Given the above, what would be the shortest program with these properties?

Any first-order specification of a universal program can be considered as 
conscious, although in a dissociative state. But only the Löbian universal 
machine can talk about that. The non-Löbian machine are very simple mind, 
already in heaven, so to speak.



> 
> Is the Mars Rover conscious?

Probably not, because, despite it run a conscious universal machine, Mars Rover 
itself might not be universal, and still less Löbian. I should see the program 
to be sure of this, of course. But it does not implement self-reference, from 
what I have heard about it. 

Bruno



> 
> Jason
>  
> 
> Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle conscious, in 
> the sense of having implicit self-referential epistemic access to 
> non-communicable truths that are nonetheless entailed by its explicit and 
> communicable 'beliefs'. Of course it's a long step from the toy model to the 
> human person, but I think one can still discern the thread. The machine's 
> 'beliefs' can now be represented as communicable and explicit

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 5 Jan 2018, at 21:04, David Nyman  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 5 Jan 2018 19:27, "Bruno Marchal"  > wrote:
> 
>> On 4 Jan 2018, at 21:07, David Nyman > > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal" > > wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker >> > > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>  Now, it
>>>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>>>  argue, we don't know that.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There 
>>> >>> seemed to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical 
>>> >>> zombie is impossible.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
>>> >> Mechanism.
>>> >
>>> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
>>> > because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>>> 
>>> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
>>> plausible than non-computationalism.
>>> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> >
>>> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non 
>>> >> computationalist theory of mind.
>>> >
>>> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
>>> > only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
>>> > include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
>>> > intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
>>> > very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>>> 
>>> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
>>> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies 
>>> (having the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never 
>>> associated to a body, but only to the person having the infinity of 
>>> (similar enough) bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no 
>>> “real bodies” or “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes 
>>> senseless. The consciousness is associated with the person, which is never 
>>> determined by one body.
>>> 
>>> So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA 
>>> implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement 
>>> a computation in the relevant sense?
>> 
>> 
>> The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the 
>> relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD “act 
>> of faith.
>> 
>> The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent 
>> that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind 
>>> *is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of 
>>> universality.
>> 
>> 
>> A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he 
>> perceives. It is polite. 
>> 
>> The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own 
>> mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a body 
>> is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy, the 
>> electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a computational 
>> state among infinitely many others which would works as well, with respect 
>> to the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
>> Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular 
>> body or computation.
>> 
>> Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually 
>> avoid) that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean, 
>> respectively, that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting itself 
>> relatively to you. But the machine and the body are local relative 
>> representation.
>> 
>> A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical) 
>> dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state) cannot 
>> think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking with 
>> respect to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a physical 
>> computer.
>> 
>> The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1 
>> arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should 
>> stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith”

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 6/01/2018 4:59 pm, Brent Meeker wrote:

On 1/5/2018 9:30 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 6/01/2018 4:15 pm, Russell Standish wrote:


Other things seem possible, such as the
extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious.


That is an extraordinary claim, and sufficient in itself to falsify 
your theory. I know as a fact that my cat is conscious, and that my 
various dogs over the years have also been conscious. You refer to 
the "mirror test" in your book -- an animal is conscious (is 
self-aware) if it recognizes itself in a mirror. I agree that my cat 
does not recognize itself in the mirror -- but that only goes to show 
that this is a stupid test for consciousness.


But it's still unlikely that ALL animals can be conscious, e.g. 
jellyfish (which recently found to sleep...perchance to dream?).


Well, it depends on how you gauge consciousness in another living being 
-- how do you know that your wife is conscious? or the person you meet 
in the street? It seems that there must be a third person 
(intersubjective) element to consciousness whereby we can know that 
other people are conscious.


I used the example of the fact that I did not see my abacus as talking 
to me to judge that its computations were not supporting consciousness. 
That is a good starting point. Cats and dogs can certainly "talk" to us: 
in fact they can be very eloquent in making their wishes known! At a 
different level, I was sitting on the verandah of our bush house over 
the Christmas break, and a king parrot came in with his mate. They are 
long-lived birds, and relatively territorial, so we know this pair of 
king parrots quite well. The male sat on the roof above me and peered 
round to look at where I was sitting. He then started to vocalize -- 
talk to me -- in response to my quiet welcome and conversation. Sure, no 
English words were used, but the recognition and communication was 
clear. So I put out some seeds on the table, and he was happy. This same 
bird has, on another occasion, sat on the arm of my wife's chair, a few 
feet away, while we talked.


There is also a family of blue fairy wrens living by the house. Being 
the late breeding season, the male is jealous of his territory and 
spends time fighting his reflection in our windows, and in the bonnet of 
the car! He fails the mirror test for consciousness, but he is clearly 
an able and successful breeder. It is harder to establish direct 
communication with wrens, but I have no doubt that they are intelligent 
birds, conscious and knowledgeable of their surroundings.


So there are probably grades of consciousness, just as there are grades 
of ability to communicate. Cats, dogs, and some birds, are quite high on 
this scale, but jellyfish are probably quite low. But can you rule out 
the possibility that some environmental awareness does not constitute 
low level consciousness?



I'm still not clear on whether it is "machines" (axiom systems) which 
/*are*/ conscious, or */can be/* conscious?  Or is it computations 
which /*are*/ consciousness, or /*"support"*/ consciousness?  ISTM 
that my consciousness is only a part of my thinking (and not always 
the best part).


I think the notion of supervenience is the best way to approach it. But 
one must be careful to distinguish models of supervenience for the 
reality of actual consciousness.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?




On 1/5/2018 9:30 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 6/01/2018 4:15 pm, Russell Standish wrote:


Other things seem possible, such as the
extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious.


That is an extraordinary claim, and sufficient in itself to falsify 
your theory. I know as a fact that my cat is conscious, and that my 
various dogs over the years have also been conscious. You refer to the 
"mirror test" in your book -- an animal is conscious (is self-aware) 
if it recognizes itself in a mirror. I agree that my cat does not 
recognize itself in the mirror -- but that only goes to show that this 
is a stupid test for consciousness.


But it's still unlikely that ALL animals can be conscious, e.g. 
jellyfish (which recently found to sleep...perchance to dream?).


I'm still not clear on whether it is "machines" (axiom systems) which 
/*are*/ conscious, or */can be/* conscious?  Or is it computations which 
/*are*/ consciousness, or /*"support"*/ consciousness?  ISTM that my 
consciousness is only a part of my thinking (and not always the best part).


Brent

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 6/01/2018 4:15 pm, Russell Standish wrote:


Other things seem possible, such as the
extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious.


That is an extraordinary claim, and sufficient in itself to falsify your 
theory. I know as a fact that my cat is conscious, and that my various 
dogs over the years have also been conscious. You refer to the "mirror 
test" in your book -- an animal is conscious (is self-aware) if it 
recognizes itself in a mirror. I agree that my cat does not recognize 
itself in the mirror -- but that only goes to show that this is a stupid 
test for consciousness.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread Russell Standish

On Sat, Jan 06, 2018 at 03:33:44PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On 6/01/2018 11:50 am, Russell Standish wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 02:22:08PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> > > The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ 
> > > a
> > > computation (and nothing but a computation)."
> > > 
> > > You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
> > > human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious 
> > > (it
> > > is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
> > > but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other 
> > > than
> > > the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
> > > conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does 
> > > consciousness
> > > exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the equation. And
> > > what characterizes those computations that can support a person from those
> > > that cannot?
> > > 
> > A more precise statement might have computationalism defined as
> > "computational supervenience is true", where computational
> > supervenience means consciousness supervenes on computations.
> > 
> > If you dig into what supervenience means, then it means that
> > no property of consciousness can differ without a difference in the
> > supervened computation.
> > 
> > But you can have a difference in the computation that is not reflected
> > in the consciousness, so strict identity in a mathematical or
> > Leibnizian sense does not follow.
> 
> That probably makes more sense. Supervenience then means that no change in
> consciousness is possible without a corresponding change in the computation;
> whereas there may be differences in the underlying computation without any
> perceptible change in consciousness. Consequently, the same consciousness
> can supervene on a number of different computations (bitstrings).
> 
> In which case, it would seem to differ from the physicalist notion that
> mind, or consciousness, supervenes on the physical brain only in terms of
> the assumed ontology: you assume an ontology consisting of all possible
> bitstrings; the physicalist assumes a materialist ontology. For the
> physicalist, changes in consciousness mean corresponding changes in the
> brain, but different brain states might underlie the same conscious state --
> we are not necessarily conscious of the minutiae of brain chemistry .
> 
> In neither case, however, does that seem to get us any closer to an
> understanding of consciousness. At least the physicalist can manipulate the
> material brain and observe the conscious consequences -- stimulate this area
> and the patient reports feeling happy, or seeing red, or whatever, depending
> on the stimulation. It is difficult to manipulate all bitstrings in this
> manner. And you are still no closer to understanding exactly what properties
> a bitstring (computation) must have to support a mind (consciousness).

A bitstring is not the same as a computation. When I consider all
bitstrings, its more about being able to capture the complete set of
possible experiences (aka observer moments). It seems reasonable that
observer moments are defined by their information content. It is about
what can be said of observed reality (ie phenomenon). We have for
instance, a natural form of Occam's razor, and a requirement of
evolution (and deep time) to bootstrap the assumed necessary
complexity of consciousness. Other things seem possible, such as the
extraordinary unlikelihood that all animals can be conscious.

So some baby steps in the direction ...

> 
> > AFAIK, Bruno uses "support" to mean "is supervened on". I do not know
> > what he means by a "computation cannot be conscious" - as by analogy
> > it would a be similar statement to "a bunch of molecules cannot be a gas".
> 
> There seems to be a close correspondence between the bitstring ontology and
> the universal dovetailer ontology -- the UD, after all, does little more
> than produce all possible bitstrings. Bruno's account of consciousness
> appears to go beyond this by equating the qualia of consciousness with
> self-referential tautologies in modal logic. One worry I have with this is
> that it seems to take a similarity between two things as an indicator that
> the two things are identical -- the "my cat is a dog" fallacy:  basing the
> claim of identity on the superficial similarity that the animals each have
> four legs and a tail. Structural similarity does not, in general, imply
> identity.
>

Not sure where you say he's making this fallacy. Yes, there is a big
assumption that particular model logics describe the operation of
knowledge and hence consciousness. This may or may not ultimately play
out, but it is certainly a start. I'm not sure what a falsification of
any of these modal logics would mean however. Most likely that
the model logic supposedly capturing knowledge, does not in fact
capture

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 6/01/2018 7:11 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 5 Jan 2018, at 04:22, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:

This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
a computation (and nothing but a computation).

What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.

Universality seems enough.

What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality appears
to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.

OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some universal
machinery, like arithmetic or physics.

But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, dissociative,
form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic consciousness alluded
by people living highly altered state of consciousness.

You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its
universality is knowable by it. Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own
"Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem is the
particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").

Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported by
those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical object) can
ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion implemented
through some machinery which do the thinking.

Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, which
is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.

The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a
computation (and nothing but a computation).”

You can’t equate a first person notion with a third person notion. You can try
to associate them, but consciousness will involve undefinable notion and
reference to some notion of truth.

Russell clarifies his position to say that consciousness 'supervenes' on
the computation. But consciousness is not a purely first person concept
-- I can know that you are conscious by collecting evidence and making
an inference. You have to have a narrow interpretation of 'knowledge' to
rule this out, and such a narrow definition would rule out all
scientific knowledge.

You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position.

I think you sur-interpret Russell, which might have commit “abuse of language”,
forgetting not all knows we have already discussed this. I don’t know. His
theory mentioned all infinite strings, that is the reals, which are not Turing
universal. His approach, which has common things with the consequence of comp
is not per se comp driven.

The UD includes non-halting programs so can generate all bitstrings,
including the reals.

If human consciousness is a computation,

That does not make any sense. A mental attribute of a first person cannot be
identified with any third person notion. But you can associate a mentality to
higher order number relation whose semantics involves themselves. Consciousness
starts as the bet in a reality and ends with the awakening of a person.

Poetic, but what does it mean?

then the computation is conscious (it is an identity thesis). You say that the
computation cannot be conscious, but can support a person. It is difficult to
see this as anything other than the introduction of a dualistic element: the
computation supports a conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So
wherein does consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic
into the equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
person from those that cannot?

Do you agree with the following propositions, with “I” denoting you:

1) I am conscious (here and now)

2) I can’t prove that I am conscious to any bad willing person (like alien who
would believe that you are a zombie)

3) I cannot doubt consciousness

4) I cannot define consciousness.

5) I know that I am conscious.

If yes, I define the consciousness of the person associated to the
machine-number u, in some base, as an attribute (definable in arithmetic, or in
second order arithmetic) which verifies those proposition.

No it does not verify these propositions, it merely creates a model in
which they are true according to the axioms of the model. You have no
reason to assume that minds, consciousness, or human persons are the
products of an axiomatic system. This is another version of the "my cat
is a dog" fallacy.

Bruce

You might add something to make it more particular, but we have to reason
about something,

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 6/01/2018 11:50 am, Russell Standish wrote:

On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 02:22:08PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:

The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a
computation (and nothing but a computation)."

You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other than
the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does consciousness
exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the equation. And
what characterizes those computations that can support a person from those
that cannot?


A more precise statement might have computationalism defined as
"computational supervenience is true", where computational
supervenience means consciousness supervenes on computations.

If you dig into what supervenience means, then it means that
no property of consciousness can differ without a difference in the
supervened computation.

But you can have a difference in the computation that is not reflected
in the consciousness, so strict identity in a mathematical or
Leibnizian sense does not follow.


That probably makes more sense. Supervenience then means that no change 
in consciousness is possible without a corresponding change in the 
computation; whereas there may be differences in the underlying 
computation without any perceptible change in consciousness. 
Consequently, the same consciousness can supervene on a number of 
different computations (bitstrings).


In which case, it would seem to differ from the physicalist notion that 
mind, or consciousness, supervenes on the physical brain only in terms 
of the assumed ontology: you assume an ontology consisting of all 
possible bitstrings; the physicalist assumes a materialist ontology. For 
the physicalist, changes in consciousness mean corresponding changes in 
the brain, but different brain states might underlie the same conscious 
state -- we are not necessarily conscious of the minutiae of brain 
chemistry .


In neither case, however, does that seem to get us any closer to an 
understanding of consciousness. At least the physicalist can manipulate 
the material brain and observe the conscious consequences -- stimulate 
this area and the patient reports feeling happy, or seeing red, or 
whatever, depending on the stimulation. It is difficult to manipulate 
all bitstrings in this manner. And you are still no closer to 
understanding exactly what properties a bitstring (computation) must 
have to support a mind (consciousness).



AFAIK, Bruno uses "support" to mean "is supervened on". I do not know
what he means by a "computation cannot be conscious" - as by analogy
it would a be similar statement to "a bunch of molecules cannot be a gas".


There seems to be a close correspondence between the bitstring ontology 
and the universal dovetailer ontology -- the UD, after all, does little 
more than produce all possible bitstrings. Bruno's account of 
consciousness appears to go beyond this by equating the qualia of 
consciousness with self-referential tautologies in modal logic. One 
worry I have with this is that it seems to take a similarity between two 
things as an indicator that the two things are identical -- the "my cat 
is a dog" fallacy:  basing the claim of identity on the superficial 
similarity that the animals each have four legs and a tail. Structural 
similarity does not, in general, imply identity.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 09:11:49PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> I think you sur-interpret Russell, which might have commit “abuse of 
> language”, forgetting not all knows we have already discussed this. I don’t 
> know. His theory mentioned all infinite strings, that is the reals, which are 
> not Turing universal. His approach, which has common things with the 
> consequence of comp is not per se comp driven.

Yes - it is important to bear in mind. My theory is not necessarily
computationalist, but AFAIK it can be derived from
computationalism. Too many people assume that I am a computationalist
when I'm simply neutral on the matter.


-- 


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Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread Russell Standish

On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 02:22:08PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> 
> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a
> computation (and nothing but a computation)."
> 
> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other than
> the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does consciousness
> exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the equation. And
> what characterizes those computations that can support a person from those
> that cannot?
> 

A more precise statement might have computationalism defined as
"computational supervenience is true", where computational
supervenience means consciousness supervenes on computations.

If you dig into what supervenience means, then it means that
no property of consciousness can differ without a difference in the
supervened computation.

But you can have a difference in the computation that is not reflected
in the consciousness, so strict identity in a mathematical or
Leibnizian sense does not follow.

AFAIK, Bruno uses "support" to mean "is supervened on". I do not know
what he means by a "computation cannot be conscious" - as by analogy
it would a be similar statement to "a bunch of molecules cannot be a gas".

-- 

Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 Jan 2018 23:42, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 1/5/2018 3:02 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 5 January 2018 at 22:52, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/5/2018 2:17 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> To take a more realistic example.
>>
>
> I do so love your appropriation of the terms 'real' and 'realistic' to
> your own theories.
>
>
I'll take that as rhetorical snark.

Well it may have been snarky, but it wasn't meant rhetorically. Realism is
one of the key things at issue, so it isn't playing fair to appropriate it
to your own theories as by right.

> I think a Mars Rover reporting its battery is low is more realistic than
> it seeing an apple in the most common sense of "realistic".
>

A Mars Rover reporting that its battery is low is roughly analogous to your
judgement that I might look like I could do with a good meal.

No, I'm using "reporting" in the common sense that the rover sent a message
in Engligsh, "My battery is low".  That's a perception by the rover, just
as "I see an apple." is a report of an perception.

You've just equated the two different things that are at issue. If you had
said a *report* of a perception by the rover, that might be analogous to my
reporting or judging that "I see an apple". The question in the case of the
rover would then be if it were the type of 'perception' that both entailed,
and is capable of referring to, a phenomenal counterpart. Does the rover
feel hungry or low in energy? In what ways is it aware of this? If some
future evolution of the rover were capable of truthfully communicating
reports of its phenomenal states, such states being entailments of internal
judgments (as distinct from some superadded mimicry, as with a marionette)
then I would have little principled reason to disbelieve it.

'Reporting' in this sense is the more or less straightforward 'reading' by
you of some state, in this case of charge. It has no semantic content
independent of that fact, any more than my 'looking hungry'.

And "seeing an apple" is different how (aside from the fact there aren't
apples on Mars?

Ah. Assuming you are serious, at this point I think the conversation has to
terminate.

David

Brent

David

>
>
> Brent
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?




On 1/5/2018 3:02 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 5 January 2018 at 22:52, Brent Meeker > wrote:




On 1/5/2018 2:17 PM, David Nyman wrote:


To take a more realistic example.


I do so love your appropriation of the terms 'real' and
'realistic' to your own theories.




I'll take that as rhetorical snark.



I think a Mars Rover reporting its battery is low is more
realistic than it seeing an apple in the most common sense of
"realistic".


A Mars Rover reporting that its battery is low is roughly analogous to 
your judgement that I might look like I could do with a good meal.


No, I'm using "reporting" in the common sense that the rover sent a 
message in Engligsh, "My battery is low".  That's a perception by the 
rover, just as "I see an apple." is a report of an perception.


'Reporting' in this sense is the more or less straightforward 
'reading' by you of some state, in this case of charge. It has no 
semantic content independent of that fact, any more than my 'looking 
hungry'.


And "seeing an apple" is different how (aside from the fact there aren't 
apples on Mars)?


Brent



David
 



Brent
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 January 2018 at 22:52, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/5/2018 2:17 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> To take a more realistic example.
>>
>
> I do so love your appropriation of the terms 'real' and 'realistic' to
> your own theories.
>
>
> I think a Mars Rover reporting its battery is low is more realistic than
> it seeing an apple in the most common sense of "realistic".
>

A Mars Rover reporting that its battery is low is roughly analogous to your
judgement that I might look like I could do with a good meal. 'Reporting'
in this sense is the more or less straightforward 'reading' by you of some
state, in this case of charge. It has no semantic content independent of
that fact, any more than my 'looking hungry'.

David
 

>
>
> Brent
>
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 January 2018 at 20:41, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/5/2018 4:00 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:
>
> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
>> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>>
> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>
 Universality seems enough.

>>> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality
>>> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
>>>
>> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some
>> universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
>>
>>
>> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard,
 dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic
 consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of
 consciousness.

 You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive
 consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by it.
 Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
 formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem
 is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").

>>> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
>>>
>> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported
>> by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical
>> object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion
>> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
>>
>> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person,
>> which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
>>
>
> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_
> a computation (and nothing but a computation)."
>
> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other
> than the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
> consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
> equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
> person from those that cannot?
>
>
> Thanks for the attempt to make this clearer (if not clear).  It is helpful.
>

Was this addressed to Bruce or to me?

>
> Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of the
> notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate all
> other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be
> associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
> exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance,
> self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like,
> the fixed point on which every other feature is centred.
>
>
> Is this really a fixed point in the computer science sense of recursion?
> Or are you using this in a metaphorical way?
>

Metaphorical. It might have some technical application but I'm less than
competent to judge.


>
>
> Then, with respect to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made
> between what is 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and
> hence communicable) by the machine and what is true *about* the machine
> (essentially, not provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but
> nonetheless 'epistemically' true).
>
>
> As I understood it the things that are true put unprovable are not about
> the machine (although they may characterize it in some sense) they are just
> sentences whose proof by that machine would lead to contradiction, but
> could be proven by different machine.
>

Yes, in my understanding that's what makes them true *about* the machine.


>
>
>
> Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle conscious,
> in the sense of having implicit self-referential epistemic access to
> non-communicable truths that are nonetheless entailed by its explicit and
> communicable 'beliefs'.
>
>
> But why is not being able to prove some sentence like, "I'm lying." and
> example of epistemic access to a non-communicable truth like "I'm
> experiencing red."?
>

Well, I take it that you aren't actually trying to

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?




On 1/5/2018 2:17 PM, David Nyman wrote:


To take a more realistic example.


I do so love your appropriation of the terms 'real' and 'realistic' 
to your own theories.


I think a Mars Rover reporting its battery is low is more realistic than 
it seeing an apple in the most common sense of "realistic".


Brent

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 January 2018 at 21:51, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/5/2018 6:48 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 5 January 2018 at 14:06, Jason Resch  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, January 5, 2018, David Nyman  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett 
> wrote:
>
> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>
>>> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
>>>
 This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness
 _is_
 a computation (and nothing but a computation).

>>> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
>>> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>>>
>> Universality seems enough.
>>
> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality
> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
>
 OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some
 universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.


 But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard,
>> dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic
>> consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of
>> consciousness.
>>
>> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive
>> consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by 
>> it.
>> Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
>> formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness 
>> theorem
>> is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
>>
> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
>
 Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person
 supported by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number,
 physical object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more
 abstract notion implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.

 Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a
 person, which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious
 attribute.

>>>
>>> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness
>>> _is_ a computation (and nothing but a computation)."
>>>
>>> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
>>> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
>>> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
>>> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other
>>> than the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
>>> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
>>> consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
>>> equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
>>> person from those that cannot?
>>>
>>>
>>> Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of
>>> the notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate
>>> all other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can
>>> be associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
>>> exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance,
>>> self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like,
>>> the fixed point on which every other feature is centred. Then, with respect
>>> to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made between what is
>>> 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence communicable)
>>> by the machine and what is true *about* the machine (essentially, not
>>> provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but nonetheless
>>> 'epistemically' true).
>>>
>>
>>
>> Given the above, what would be the shortest program with these properties?
>>
>> Is the Mars Rover conscious?
>>
>
> Don't forget that the acid test is Yes (or No) Doctor. So AFAICT the
> only way to assess whether the Mars Rover is conscious would be against the
> same criteria as for any other independent agent. With human persons,
> assuming truthfulness and consistency, if for example you tell me that you
> see an apple, and that by this you do not alternatively mean to say that
> you have somehow indirectly figured out that your body and an apple are in
> some third-person relation, I typically accept your statement as the
> behavioural corollary of the epistemic truth to which you refer.
>
>
> To take a more realistic example.
>

I do so love your appropriation of the terms 'real' and 'realistic' to
your

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread agrayson2000

On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 2:16:56 PM UTC-7, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 3:19 PM,  wrote:
>
> > 
>>> You
>>>  seem to believe in a primary 
>>> mathematical
>>>  universe
>>> , but matter by itself can do mathematics however mathematics by 
>>> itself can't do matter.
>>>
>>
>> > 
>> But that's what the MWI does! It creates matter, indeed huge sets of 
>> universes, by inferring a superposition never collapses. AG
>>
>
> *But the MWI has the help of your flying saucer men in their secret 
> headquarters at Roswell.*
>

*That's a really dumb-shit reply, There could be a brown dwarf star nearby, 
so far undetected, and aliens could have evolved on one of its planets. 
Other possibilities exist. And so far you have failed to respond to your 
easily falsified idea about your overly broad claims of deficiencies of 
witness reports. You utterly fail to take CONTEXT into account. Can a 
dumb-shit recall anything that happened on the day his/her children were 
born many years ago? AG *

>
> *John K Clark  *
>
>
>  
>

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 1/5/2018 6:48 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 5 January 2018 at 14:06, Jason Resch > wrote:

On Friday, January 5, 2018, David Nyman > wrote:

On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"
>
wrote:

On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett
> wrote:

On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish
wrote:

This is computationalism - the idea
that our human consciousness _is_
a computation (and nothing but a
computation).

What distinguishes a conscious computation
within the class of all computations?
After all, not all computations are conscious.

Universality seems enough.

What is a universal computation? From what you say
below, universality appears to be a property of a
machine, not of a computation.

OK, universality is an attribute of a machine,
relatively to some universal machinery, like
arithmetic or physics.

But just universality gives rise only to a
highly non standard, dissociative, form of
consciousness. It might correspond to the
cosmic consciousness alluded by people living
highly altered state of consciousness.

You need Löbianity to get
*self-consciousness*, or reflexive
consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its
universality is knowable by it. Equivalently,
when the machine is universal and can prove
its own "Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p.
Note that the second incompleteness theorem is
the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").

Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the
computation.

Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about
the person supported by those machine. No machine (as
conceived as a code, number, physical object) can ever
be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract
notion implemented through some machinery which do the
thinking.

Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it
can support a person, which is the one having
genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.

The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human
consciousness _is_ a computation (and nothing but a
computation)."

You seem to be steering away from Russell's
straightforward position. If human consciousness is a
computation, then the computation is conscious (it is an
identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be
conscious, but can support a person. It is difficult to
see this as anything other than the introduction of a
dualistic element: the computation supports a conscious
person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified
magic into the equation. And what characterizes those
computations that can support a person from those that cannot?

Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The
utility of the notion of the 'universal' mechanism is
precisely its ability to emulate all other finitely computable
mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be associated with
persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first
instance, self-referentiality. This first-personal
characteristic is, if you like, the fixed point on which every
other feature is centred. Then, with respect to this fixed
point of view, a distinction can be made between what is
'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence
communicable) by the machine and what is true *about* the
machine (essentially,

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 3:19 PM,  wrote:

> 
>> You
>>  seem to believe in a primary
>> mathematical
>>  universe
>> , but matter by itself can do mathematics however mathematics by itself
>> can't do matter.
>>
>
> > 
> But that's what the MWI does! It creates matter, indeed huge sets of
> universes, by inferring a superposition never collapses. AG
>

*But the MWI has the help of your flying saucer men in their secret
headquarters at Roswell.*

*John K Clark  *

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?




On 1/5/2018 4:00 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett" > wrote:


On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett
> wrote:

On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:

This is computationalism - the idea that our
human consciousness _is_
a computation (and nothing but a computation).

What distinguishes a conscious computation within
the class of all computations? After all, not all
computations are conscious.

Universality seems enough.

What is a universal computation? From what you say below,
universality appears to be a property of a machine, not of
a computation.

OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to
some universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.


But just universality gives rise only to a highly non
standard, dissociative, form of consciousness. It
might correspond to the cosmic consciousness alluded
by people living highly altered state of consciousness.

You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or
reflexive consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its
universality is knowable by it. Equivalently, when the
machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second
incompleteness theorem is the particular case with p =
f (f = "0≠1").

Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person
supported by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a
code, number, physical object) can ever be conscious or think.
It is always a more abstract notion implemented through some
machinery which do the thinking.

Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can
support a person, which is the one having genuinely the
thinking or conscious attribute.


The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human
consciousness _is_ a computation (and nothing but a computation)."

You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward
position. If human consciousness is a computation, then the
computation is conscious (it is an identity thesis). You say that
the computation cannot be conscious, but can support a person. It
is difficult to see this as anything other than the introduction
of a dualistic element: the computation supports a conscious
person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does consciousness
exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
equation. And what characterizes those computations that can
support a person from those that cannot?



Thanks for the attempt to make this clearer (if not clear).  It is helpful.

Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of 
the notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to 
emulate all other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such 
mechanisms can be associated with persons. What distinguishes this 
particular class, as exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, 
in the first instance, self-referentiality. This first-personal 
characteristic is, if you like, the fixed point on which every other 
feature is centred.


Is this really a fixed point in the computer science sense of 
recursion?  Or are you using this in a metaphorical way?


Then, with respect to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be 
made between what is 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a 
theorem and hence communicable) by the machine and what is true 
*about* the machine (essentially, not provable as a theorem and hence 
not communicable, but nonetheless 'epistemically' true).


As I understood it the things that are true put unprovable are not about 
the machine (although they may characterize it in some sense) they are 
just sentences whose proof by that machine would lead to contradiction, 
but could be proven by different machine.




Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle 
conscious, in the sense of having implicit self-referential epistemic 
access to non-communicable truths that are nonetheless entailed by its 
explicit and communicable 'beliefs'.


But why is not being able to prove some sentence like, "I'm lying." and 
example of epistemic access to a

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread agrayson2000



On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 12:44:53 PM UTC-7, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 8:43 AM, Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
>
> >> 
>>> in their work real AI scientists don't use personal pronouns with no 
>>> clear referent, nor silly homemade terminology.
>>
>>
>> > 
>> See my papers for the mathematical definitions of all pronouns
>>
>
> Right, just like your papers explain why pigs fly.
>  
>  
>
>> > 
>> You did explicitly agree that if two computers, localized in two 
>> different places, but numerically (digitally) identical, and running the 
>> same program, would not, in case they emulate a "conscious program", allow 
>> to that consciousness to be able to localize itself.
>>
>
> Yes, and a third party couldn't do it either because consciousness 
> doesn't have a location, but its not unique in that regard, "green" or 
> "fast"
>  
> or "big" doesn't have a location either.
>
> > 
>> That fact is only needed to understand how to extract physics from 
>> elementary arithmetic.
>>
>
> That could only be done if arithmetic is more fundamental than physics 
> and I see no evidence that is true, but I do see some evidence it is false. 
>  
>  
>  
>
>> > 
>> you seem to believe in a primary physical universe,
>>
>
> You
>  seem to believe in a primary 
> mathematical
>  universe
> , but matter by itself can do mathematics however mathematics by itself 
> can't do matter.
>

*But that's what the MWI does! It creates matter, indeed huge sets of 
universes, by inferring a superposition never collapses. AG*

>
>  John K Clark
>  
>
>
>
>
>>
>>

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

> On 5 Jan 2018, at 04:22, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
>> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
>> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all 
> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
 Universality seems enough.
>>> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality 
>>> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
>> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some universal 
>> machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
>> 
>> 
 But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, 
 dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic 
 consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of 
 consciousness.

 You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive 
 consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by 
 it. Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own 
 "Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness 
 theorem is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
>>> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
>> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported by 
>> those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical object) 
>> can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion 
>> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
>> 
>> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, 
>> which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
> 
> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a 
> computation (and nothing but a computation).”

You can’t equate a first person notion with a third person notion. You can try 
to associate them, but consciousness will involve undefinable notion and 
reference to some notion of truth.

> 
> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position.

I think you sur-interpret Russell, which might have commit “abuse of language”, 
forgetting not all knows we have already discussed this. I don’t know. His 
theory mentioned all infinite strings, that is the reals, which are not Turing 
universal. His approach, which has common things with the consequence of comp 
is not per se comp driven.

> If human consciousness is a computation,

That does not make any sense. A mental attribute of a first person cannot be 
identified with any third person notion. But you can associate a mentality to 
higher order number relation whose semantics involves themselves. Consciousness 
starts as the bet in a reality and ends with the awakening of a person.

> then the computation is conscious (it is an identity thesis). You say that 
> the computation cannot be conscious, but can support a person. It is 
> difficult to see this as anything other than the introduction of a dualistic 
> element: the computation supports a conscious person, but is not itself 
> conscious? So wherein does consciousness exist? You are introducing some 
> unspecified magic into the equation. And what characterizes those 
> computations that can support a person from those that cannot?

Do you agree with the following propositions, with “I” denoting you:

1) I am conscious (here and now)

2) I can’t prove that I am conscious to any bad willing person (like alien who 
would  believe that you are a zombie)

3) I cannot doubt consciousness

4) I cannot define consciousness.

5) I know that I am conscious.

If yes, I define the consciousness of the person associated to the 
machine-number u, in some base, as an attribute (definable in arithmetic, or in 
second order arithmetic) which verifies those proposition. You might add 
something to make it more particular, but we have to reason about something, 
and be sure we talk on the same thing.

Consciousness is a cousine of knowledge, it is private knowledge that something 
is happening. It can focus and un-focuse attention, and speed up the relative 
computations. It makes you enjoying the good coffee and disguted by the bad one.

Bruno

> 
> Bruce
> 
> -- 
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 Jan 2018 19:27, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:

On 4 Jan 2018, at 21:07, David Nyman  wrote:

On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman  wrote:

On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>  Now, it
>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>  argue, we don't know that.
> >>>
> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There
> seemed to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie
> is impossible.
> >>
> >>
> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume
> Mechanism.
> >
> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is
> impossible because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>
> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more
> plausible than non-computationalism.
> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>
>
>
> >
> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non
> computationalist theory of mind.
> >
> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is
> only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use
> include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that
> intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a
> very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>
> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the
> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies
> (having the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never
> associated to a body, but only to the person having the infinity of
> (similar enough) bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no
> “real bodies” or “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes
> senseless. The consciousness is associated with the person, which is never
> determined by one body.
>

So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA
implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement
a computation in the relevant sense?

The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the
relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD
“act of faith.

The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent
that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.

I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind
*is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of
universality.

A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he
perceives. It is polite.

The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own
mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a
body is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy,
the electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a
computational state among infinitely many others which would works as well,
with respect to the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular
body or computation.

Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually
avoid) that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean,
respectively, that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting
itself relatively to you. But the machine and the body are local relative
representation.

A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical)
dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state)
cannot think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking
with respect to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a
physical computer.

The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1
arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should
stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith” position of
the one betting that comp is true, and … assuming comp is true. It is
subtle to talk on those things, and it is important to admit that we don’t
know the truth (or we do get inconsistent and fall in the theological trap).

If so, according to comp, it would follow that (the material appearance and
behaviour of) a body cannot be considered *causally* relevant to the
computation-mind polarity,

Yes, that is true, with respect to the arithmetical truth (where there is
no bodies, only natural numbers), and false for the physical realm, which,
despite being a statistics on dreams (associated to computations in

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 8:43 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> 
>> in their work real AI scientists don't use personal pronouns with no
>> clear referent, nor silly homemade terminology.
>
>
> > 
> See my papers for the mathematical definitions of all pronouns
>

Right, just like your papers explain why pigs fly.



> > 
> You did explicitly agree that if two computers, localized in two different
> places, but numerically (digitally) identical, and running the same
> program, would not, in case they emulate a "conscious program", allow to
> that consciousness to be able to localize itself.
>

Yes, and a third party couldn't do it either because consciousness doesn't
have a location, but its not unique in that regard, "green" or "fast"

or "big" doesn't have a location either.

> 
> That fact is only needed to understand how to extract physics from
> elementary arithmetic.
>

That could only be done if arithmetic is more fundamental than physics and
I see no evidence that is true, but I do see some evidence it is false.  



> > 
> you seem to believe in a primary physical universe,
>

You
 seem to believe in a primary
mathematical
 universe
, but matter by itself can do mathematics however mathematics by itself
can't do matter.

 John K Clark





>
>

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 4 Jan 2018, at 21:07, David Nyman  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal"  > wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman > > wrote:
>> 
>> On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal > > wrote:
>> 
>> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker > > > wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>  Now, it
>>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>>  argue, we don't know that.
>> >>>
>> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed 
>> >>> to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is 
>> >>> impossible.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
>> >> Mechanism.
>> >
>> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
>> > because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>> 
>> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
>> plausible than non-computationalism.
>> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non 
>> >> computationalist theory of mind.
>> >
>> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
>> > only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
>> > include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
>> > intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
>> > very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>> 
>> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
>> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having 
>> the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to 
>> a body, but only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) 
>> bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or 
>> “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The 
>> consciousness is associated with the person, which is never determined by 
>> one body.
>> 
>> So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA 
>> implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement 
>> a computation in the relevant sense?
> 
> 
> The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the 
> relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD “act 
> of faith.
> 
> The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent 
> that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.
> 
> 
> 
>> I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind 
>> *is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of 
>> universality.
> 
> 
> A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he 
> perceives. It is polite. 
> 
> The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own 
> mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a body 
> is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy, the 
> electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a computational 
> state among infinitely many others which would works as well, with respect to 
> the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
> Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular 
> body or computation.
> 
> Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually avoid) 
> that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean, respectively, 
> that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting itself relatively to 
> you. But the machine and the body are local relative representation.
> 
> A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical) 
> dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state) cannot 
> think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking with respect 
> to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a physical computer.
> 
> The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1 
> arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should 
> stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith” position of the 
> one betting that comp is true, and … assuming comp is true. It is subtle to 
> talk on those things, and it is important to admit that we don’t know the 
> truth (or we do get inconsistent and fall in the theological trap).
> 
> 
> 
>> If so, according to comp, it would follow that (the material appearance and 
>>

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 January 2018 at 14:06, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
> On Friday, January 5, 2018, David Nyman  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:
>>
>> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett 
 wrote:

 On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
>>
>>> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
>>> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>>>
>> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
>> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>>
> Universality seems enough.
>
 What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality
 appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.

>>> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some
>>> universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
>>>
>>>
>>> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard,
> dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic
> consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of
> consciousness.
>
> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive
> consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by 
> it.
> Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
> formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem
> is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
>
 Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

>>> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported
>>> by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical
>>> object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion
>>> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
>>>
>>> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a
>>> person, which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious
>>> attribute.
>>>
>>
>> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_
>> a computation (and nothing but a computation)."
>>
>> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
>> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
>> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
>> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other
>> than the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
>> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
>> consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
>> equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
>> person from those that cannot?
>>
>>
>> Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of the
>> notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate all
>> other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be
>> associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
>> exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance,
>> self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like,
>> the fixed point on which every other feature is centred. Then, with respect
>> to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made between what is
>> 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence communicable)
>> by the machine and what is true *about* the machine (essentially, not
>> provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but nonetheless
>> 'epistemically' true).
>>
>
>
> Given the above, what would be the shortest program with these properties?
>
> Is the Mars Rover conscious?
>

Don't forget that the acid test is Yes (or No) Doctor. So AFAICT the only
way to assess whether the Mars Rover is conscious would be against the same
criteria as for any other independent agent. With human persons, assuming
truthfulness and consistency, if for example you tell me that you see an
apple, and that by this you do not alternatively mean to say that you have
somehow indirectly figured out that your body and an apple are in some
third-person relation, I typically accept your statement as the behavioural
corollary of the epistemic truth to which you refer.

I suppose, notwithstanding this, if I were a computationalist Doctor, I
might have some theory about the shortest program with the relevant
characteristics to be associated with epistemic phenomena of the relevant
sort. But I'm not and I don't, so please don't ask me to operate.

David

Jason
>
>
>>
>> Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-05 Thread Jason Resch

On Friday, January 5, 2018, David Nyman  wrote:

>
>
> On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:
>
> On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
>> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>>
> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>
 Universality seems enough.

>>> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality
>>> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
>>>
>> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some
>> universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
>>
>>
>> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard,
 dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic
 consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of
 consciousness.

 You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive
 consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by it.
 Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
 formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem
 is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").

>>> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
>>>
>> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported
>> by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical
>> object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion
>> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
>>
>> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person,
>> which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
>>
>
> The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_
> a computation (and nothing but a computation)."
>
> You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
> human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
> is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
> but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other
> than the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
> conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
> consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
> equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
> person from those that cannot?
>
>
> Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of the
> notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate all
> other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be
> associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
> exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance,
> self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like,
> the fixed point on which every other feature is centred. Then, with respect
> to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made between what is
> 'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence communicable)
> by the machine and what is true *about* the machine (essentially, not
> provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but nonetheless
> 'epistemically' true).
>


Given the above, what would be the shortest program with these properties?

Is the Mars Rover conscious?

Jason


>
> Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle conscious,
> in the sense of having implicit self-referential epistemic access to
> non-communicable truths that are nonetheless entailed by its explicit and
> communicable 'beliefs'. Of course it's a long step from the toy model to
> the human person, but I think one can still discern the thread. The
> machine's 'beliefs' can now be represented as communicable and explicit
> third-person behaviour with respect to a 'physical' environment in which it
> is embedded; however, associated with this behaviour there are true but
> non-communicable epistemic phenomena to which the behaviour indirectly
> refers (i.e. they are true *about* the machine). An example of this would
> be any statement (or judgment, in the usual terminology of the field) you
> might make about your own phenomenal experience, as in "I see an apple". In
> behavioral terms, this statement or judgment is cashed out purely as
> physical action (neurocognitive, neuromuscular, etc). In epistemic terms
> however it cashes out as a truth (tautological and hence

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 5 Jan 2018 03:22, "Bruce Kellett"  wrote:

On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett 
>> wrote:
>>
>> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>>
 On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:

> This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
> a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>
 What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
 computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.

>>> Universality seems enough.
>>>
>> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality
>> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.
>>
> OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some
> universal machinery, like arithmetic or physics.
>
>
> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard,
>>> dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic
>>> consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of
>>> consciousness.
>>>
>>> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive
>>> consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by it.
>>> Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's
>>> formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem
>>> is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
>>>
>> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.
>>
> Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported
> by those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical
> object) can ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion
> implemented through some machinery which do the thinking.
>
> Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person,
> which is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.
>

The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness _is_ a
computation (and nothing but a computation)."

You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious (it
is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be conscious,
but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as anything other
than the introduction of a dualistic element: the computation supports a
conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So wherein does
consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified magic into the
equation. And what characterizes those computations that can support a
person from those that cannot?

Let me see if I can attempt some sort of answer Bruce. The utility of the
notion of the 'universal' mechanism is precisely its ability to emulate all
other finitely computable mechanisms. But not all such mechanisms can be
associated with persons. What distinguishes this particular class, as
exemplified by Bruno's modal logic toy models is, in the first instance,
self-referentiality. This first-personal characteristic is, if you like,
the fixed point on which every other feature is centred. Then, with respect
to this fixed point of view, a distinction can be made between what is
'believed' (essentially, provably true as a theorem and hence communicable)
by the machine and what is true *about* the machine (essentially, not
provable as a theorem and hence not communicable, but nonetheless
'epistemically' true).

Any machine possessing the foregoing features is in principle conscious, in
the sense of having implicit self-referential epistemic access to
non-communicable truths that are nonetheless entailed by its explicit and
communicable 'beliefs'. Of course it's a long step from the toy model to
the human person, but I think one can still discern the thread. The
machine's 'beliefs' can now be represented as communicable and explicit
third-person behaviour with respect to a 'physical' environment in which it
is embedded; however, associated with this behaviour there are true but
non-communicable epistemic phenomena to which the behaviour indirectly
refers (i.e. they are true *about* the machine). An example of this would
be any statement (or judgment, in the usual terminology of the field) you
might make about your own phenomenal experience, as in "I see an apple". In
behavioral terms, this statement or judgment is cashed out purely as
physical action (neurocognitive, neuromuscular, etc). In epistemic terms
however it cashes out as a truth (tautological and hence undoubtable)
that's implied by that same behaviour - in other words that it is in fact
the case that you really do see an apple.

It's important to take into account that all the terms employed are given
precise technical sense in mathematical logic, emulable in computation.
Bruno's computational schema is an attempt (motivated by

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 4 Jan 2018, at 21:07, David Nyman  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal"  > wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman > > wrote:
>> 
>> On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal > > wrote:
>> 
>> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker > > > wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>  Now, it
>>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>>  argue, we don't know that.
>> >>>
>> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed 
>> >>> to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is 
>> >>> impossible.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
>> >> Mechanism.
>> >
>> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
>> > because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>> 
>> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
>> plausible than non-computationalism.
>> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non 
>> >> computationalist theory of mind.
>> >
>> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
>> > only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
>> > include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
>> > intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
>> > very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>> 
>> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
>> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having 
>> the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to 
>> a body, but only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) 
>> bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or 
>> “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The 
>> consciousness is associated with the person, which is never determined by 
>> one body.
>> 
>> So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA 
>> implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement 
>> a computation in the relevant sense?
> 
> 
> The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the 
> relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD “act 
> of faith.
> 
> The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent 
> that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.
> 
> 
> 
>> I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind 
>> *is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of 
>> universality.
> 
> 
> A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he 
> perceives. It is polite. 
> 
> The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own 
> mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a body 
> is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy, the 
> electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a computational 
> state among infinitely many others which would works as well, with respect to 
> the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
> Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular 
> body or computation.
> 
> Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually avoid) 
> that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean, respectively, 
> that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting itself relatively to 
> you. But the machine and the body are local relative representation.
> 
> A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical) 
> dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state) cannot 
> think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking with respect 
> to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a physical computer.
> 
> The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1 
> arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should 
> stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith” position of the 
> one betting that comp is true, and … assuming comp is true. It is subtle to 
> talk on those things, and it is important to admit that we don’t know the 
> truth (or we do get inconsistent and fall in the theological trap).
> 
> 
> 
>> If so, according to comp, it would follow that (the material appearance and 
>>

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 4 Jan 2018, at 19:31, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/4/2018 3:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
 
> 
> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Now, it
>> could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>> argue, we don't know that.
> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed 
> to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is 
> impossible.
 
 Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
 Mechanism.
>>> But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
>>> because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
>> plausible than non-computationalism.
>> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>> 
>> 
>> 
 Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non computationalist 
 theory of mind.
>>> It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
>>> only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
>>> include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
>>> intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
>>> very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
>> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having 
>> the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to 
>> a body, but only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) 
>> bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or 
>> “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The 
>> consciousness is associated with the person, which is never determined by 
>> one body.
> 
> That's just word salad: A person has an infinity of bodies, but they're in 
> arithmetic and there are no real bodies so the person is not determined by 
> one body. ??

In the relative 3p way, the person is determined by the 
body/code/number/representation.

In the 1p way, the person is determined by the FPI on infinities of 
computations.






> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
 
 
 
> Of course that doesn't mean it's true. But it seems as good a working 
> hypothesis as "Yes, doctor".  And in fact it's the working hypothesis of 
> most studies of neurocognition, intelligence, and mind.
 Neuroscience and AI often bet, more or less explicitly, on mechanism, or 
 on its "strong AI" weakenings.
 
 (Note that UDA use mechanism, but its translation in arithmetic needs only 
 strong-AI. Note that if strong AI is true, and comp false, we get 
 infinitely many zombies in arithmetic.
>>> How do you know that?
>> 
>> I was wrong. Wrote to quickly. It is only if weak AI is true, and strong AI 
>> or comp false, that there will be infinitely many zombies in arithmetic. Of 
>> course, if strong AI is false, comp is false too.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
 very curious one, which lacks body and mind, but act like you and me. They 
 are quite similar with the "Bohm's zombies", the beings in the branches of 
 the universal quantum wave which have no particles.
 
 
> If it's true then it provides a link from intelligent behavior to mind.
 The "non-zombie" principle is a consequence of comp, but I doubt that it 
 implies comp. It is not related to finiteness, as comp and strong AI are.
 
 
 
> We already have links from from physics to brain to intelligent behavior. 
>  So why isn't this the physics based theory of mind that Bruno et al keep 
> saying is impossible?
 This is a bit ambiguous and misleading. Comp makes physics necessary, and 
 that is why with Occam, physics cannot be assumed primitively if we want 
 to use actual physics to verify or refute comp.
>>> That very much depends on what physics comp makes necessary.
>> Well, if it violate our empirical physics, comp is refuted.
> 
> That's why we need to know what physics comp makes necessary in order to test 
> it.

Yes. And we know already that its propositional logic is a quantum logic of 
some sort. 



> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
 We can of course assume physics when doing physics, but not when doing 
 computationalist theory of mind.
>>> No, but we can assume physics when doing physicalist theory of mind.
>> Yes, but then the point is that a physicalist theory of mind (like with 
>> consciousness reducing the wave) will be non-computationalist.
>> 
>> 
 OK? "physics" is necessary for machine/numbers is what makes the physical 
 assumption eliminable, and is what makes computationalism testable.
>>> But it doesn't

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On 5 Jan 2018, at 04:36, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> On 5/01/2018 1:46 am, Jason Resch wrote:
>> On Thursday, January 4, 2018, Bruce Kellett < 
>> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au 
>> > wrote:
>> On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>> 2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett >> >:
>>> My abacus does not talk to me.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> That would mean no computation are conscious at all...
>> 
>> No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation, it does 
>> not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B does not imply that 
>> all Bs are As.
>> 
>>> technically your abacus is turing complete (well it has to be large 
>>> enough), so it could run a conscious computation... but that doesn't mean 
>>> that computation could talk to you, for that it would also need an I/O 
>>> system with our reality.
>> 
>> No, it does not have the necessary I/O equipment. But, as above, even Turing 
>> completeness does not mean that every computation such a Turing machine 
>> makes is conscious.
>> 
>> The real point of my original comment was that the only way you can 
>> distinguish a conscious computation from a non-conscious one is if it is 
>> conscious. In other words, the suggestion that consciousness is a 
>> computation tells you absolutely nothing interesting about consciousness.
>> 
>> 
>> Bruce
>> 
>> It tells you that consciousness can be multiply realized. That your "soul" 
>> can be resurrected by the right machine. It tells you that teleportation is 
>> possible. It tells you that first person indeterminacy is an artifact of 
>> duplication. It tells you that if arithmetic is real we must explain physics 
>> from the sum of experiences of the infinite consciousness Turing machines 
>> who exist in arithmetic.
> 
> If consciousness is a computation implementable on a universal Turing 
> machine, then these things might follow, but that does not really tell us 
> what consciousness is: it does not tell us which computations are conscious 
> and which are not.

We know very well what is the factorial function, but we can prove that there 
is no algorithmic procedure, or machine ever able to distinguish a program 
computing factorial and one which does not. Only in some case can we do that. 
That remains true for the computation too. (Rice theorem: if we could 
distinguish the semantics, we would be able to build a permutation of programs 
which would have no fixed point contradiction the second recursion theorem of 
Kleene. 
There are very few semantic attribute of programs/machines which are 
computable.So, there are no chance we will ever have any criteria to decide if 
an entity (3p describable) is conscious or not.

Of course I take your expression “consciousness is a computation” as an abuse 
of language. Computations are 3p, and consciousness is 1p, and such things can 
never been identified.

Bruno



> 
> Bruce
> 
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread Jason Resch

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 9:36 PM, Bruce Kellett 
wrote:

> On 5/01/2018 1:46 am, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> On Thursday, January 4, 2018, Bruce Kellett < 
> bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>> On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>> 2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett :
>>
>>> My abacus does not talk to me.
>>>
>>>
>> That would mean no computation are conscious at all...
>>
>>
>> No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation, it does
>> not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B does not imply
>> that all Bs are As.
>>
>> technically your abacus is turing complete (well it has to be large
>> enough), so it could run a conscious computation... but that doesn't mean
>> that computation could talk to you, for that it would also need an I/O
>> system with our reality.
>>
>>
>> No, it does not have the necessary I/O equipment. But, as above, even
>> Turing completeness does not mean that every computation such a Turing
>> machine makes is conscious.
>>
>> The real point of my original comment was that the only way you can
>> distinguish a conscious computation from a non-conscious one is if it is
>> conscious. In other words, the suggestion that consciousness is a
>> computation tells you absolutely nothing interesting about consciousness.
>>
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>
> It tells you that consciousness can be multiply realized. That your "soul"
> can be resurrected by the right machine. It tells you that teleportation is
> possible. It tells you that first person indeterminacy is an artifact of
> duplication. It tells you that if arithmetic is real we must explain
> physics from the sum of experiences of the infinite consciousness Turing
> machines who exist in arithmetic.
>
>
> If consciousness is a computation implementable on a universal Turing
> machine, then these things might follow, but that does not really tell us
> what consciousness is: it does not tell us which computations are conscious
> and which are not.
>

I agree.  Though it might give us a place to start.  My hypothesis is that
"if statements" are the atoms of consciousness, as they can put the machine
into different states based on some conditional
.  You
could then say that the program is "aware" of that conditional variable.

Others on this list have argued that conscious is related to "Sigma 1
sentences", and still others that any universal machine is conscious.  In
any case, if computationalism were proved, it would tell us where to focus
on attention, rather than looking for some elan vital, some special
material as with biological naturalism, or some unknown physics like
quantum gravity.

Jason

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 5/01/2018 1:46 am, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thursday, January 4, 2018, Bruce Kellett > wrote:


On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett
>:

My abacus does not talk to me.


That would mean no computation are conscious at all...


No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation,
it does not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B
does not imply that all Bs are As.


technically your abacus is turing complete (well it has to be
large enough), so it could run a conscious computation... but
that doesn't mean that computation could talk to you, for that it
would also need an I/O system with our reality.


No, it does not have the necessary I/O equipment. But, as above,
even Turing completeness does not mean that every computation such
a Turing machine makes is conscious.

The real point of my original comment was that the only way you
can distinguish a conscious computation from a non-conscious one
is if it is conscious. In other words, the suggestion that
consciousness is a computation tells you absolutely nothing
interesting about consciousness.


Bruce


It tells you that consciousness can be multiply realized. That your 
"soul" can be resurrected by the right machine. It tells you that 
teleportation is possible. It tells you that first person 
indeterminacy is an artifact of duplication. It tells you that if 
arithmetic is real we must explain physics from the sum of experiences 
of the infinite consciousness Turing machines who exist in arithmetic.


If consciousness is a computation implementable on a universal Turing 
machine, then these things might follow, but that does not really tell 
us what consciousness is: it does not tell us which computations are 
conscious and which are not.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 5/01/2018 12:18 am, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2018-01-04 12:36 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett >:


On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett
>:

My abacus does not talk to me.


That would mean no computation are conscious at all...


No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation,
it does not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B
does not imply that all Bs are As.


You say that as your abacus does not talk to you that means not all 
computations are conscious... but that does not follows, it just means 
your abacus as not way to convey you it is conscious as it lacks a 
correct I/O system with you... the fact it does not talk to you is not 
evidence computations performed on it are not conscious even the 
simplest one.


Also if it was true *some* computations are conscious, as your abacus 
is turing complete, you could in principle run them on it... but your 
abacus still wouldn't talk to you, and it would be wrong to say that 
the computation is not conscious in this case...


The abacus was not a good example of a computation that was not 
conscious, because even if it were conscious it could not talk to me (no 
suitable I/O). However, a program that takes the number 2 as input and 
produces its square, namely 4, performs a perfectly good computation, 
but is clearly not conscious (else you reduce consciousness to 
triviality). This program is not universal, not part of a Turing machine 
(though it could be performed on such a machine). A computation 
performed on a machine is not the machine itself.


So we still need a mechanism by which we can sort conscious computations 
from the complete set of all computations, as produced, for example, by 
the universal dovetailer, since not all of these computations are conscious.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

On 4/01/2018 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:

This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
a computation (and nothing but a computation).

What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all
computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.

Universality seems enough.

What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality appears
to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.

OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some universal
machinery, like arithmetic or physics.

Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, which
is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.

The original suggestion by Russell was that "our human consciousness
_is_ a computation (and nothing but a computation)."

You seem to be steering away from Russell's straightforward position. If
human consciousness is a computation, then the computation is conscious
(it is an identity thesis). You say that the computation cannot be
conscious, but can support a person. It is difficult to see this as
anything other than the introduction of a dualistic element: the
computation supports a conscious person, but is not itself conscious? So
wherein does consciousness exist? You are introducing some unspecified
magic into the equation. And what characterizes those computations that
can support a person from those that cannot?

Bruce

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 4/01/2018 11:00 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Yes, in my Conscience and Mechanism appendices, or in the appendice of the 
Lille thesis. I translated a Bell’s inequality in arithmetic, but cannot test 
it due to its intractability + my own incompetence of course. But Z1* 
introducing tuns of nesting modal boxes, making things hard to verify for 
reasonably complex formula.


Bell-like inequalities are easy to obtain -- in classical physics as 
well as in QM. The hard thing is to show that your theory requires that 
they be experimentally violated.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 Jan 2018 21:04, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 1/4/2018 5:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 3 January 2018 at 21:57, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
 Now, it
 could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
 argue, we don't know that.

>>>
>>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed
>>> to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is
>>> impossible.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume
>> Mechanism.
>>
>
> But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible
> because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>
> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non computationalist
>> theory of mind.
>>
>
> It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is
> only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use
> include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that
> intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a
> very cheap standard for theories to meet.

ISTM that you are failing to take account of an important distinction
here, despite having acknowledged it in previous conversations. I don't
think of comp as really taking it as axiomatic that computation produces
mind. Of course, CTM, which comp takes as its nominal point of departure,
does do precisely that. But the comp theory seeks then to provide a
*persuasive* model of an 'internalised' epistemic access (i.e to knowledge)
that can be emulated via computation. This form of subjective access to
knowledge - as distinct from information, mechanism, or behaviour in
general - can, as you know, be represented by a toy model deploying a range
of self-referential modal logics. Of course this model doesn't directly
allow one to infer a priori the entire phenomenal spectrum of
consciousness. But it is adequate to demonstrate a range of distinctively
first-personal characteristics of mind, such as internal/external,
shareable/non-shareable, doubtable/undoubtable, that are otherwise
effectively indistinguishable from a purely third-personal perspective.
Hence part of its role is to *persuade* us that the distinction between
body and mind is coterminous with that between a 'universal' mechanistic
ontology and its possible epistemic consequences.

Of these, ISTM the most important is actually the first mentioned. The idea
that intelligent behaviour entails mind is equivalent to mind's being
something entirely extrinsic.

No, that's a logical fallacy.  That X is entailed by Y and Y is extrinsic,
does not imply that X is entirely extrinsic.

No, but if X is to be understood as intrinsic, it demands a convincing
explication of why that claim of intrinsicality is warranted, other than as
a brute a posteriori assertion. IOW, if we already have a perfectly
adequate extrinsic account of all the relevant behaviour, what reason would
you propose for the additional assumption that this somehow additionally
entails all the phenomena of subjective internality, other than this is
(inconveniently) what remains to be explained?

Neither behaviour nor matter possess, or require in any explanatory role,
an 'interior' aspect. Neither matter nor behaviour have an 'inside' - plumb
their depths as you will and all you will discover is more 'outsides'. So
the axiom that intelligent behaviour entails mind would seem either to be
an effective elimination of the concept as redundant (popular in certain
recently discussed circles) or a theoretically ex nihilo evocation of
first-personal epistemic access on the exclusive basis of third-personal
action. The former option undercuts itself at the start; the latter seems
to lack any theoretical motivation other than a tacit (or on occasion
explicit) dismissal of the viability of any alternative approach to the
matter.

That's the same argument you've made in several different forms: Any third
person explanation of mind implies that there can be no first person
experience.  I don't see that it follows.

It doesn't. It's just that it's unargued for except as a brute 'identity'.
That's my point. That's why I contrasted it with the explicitly epistemic
elements of Bruno's theory. That's the sum and total of the distinction I'm
pointing out.

  Any reduction banishes the thing reduced.

Not at all. But that's just the point. In third person terms, when you
build a house from bricks, you don't then have the bricks plus a house
somehow evoked ex nihilo. You just have an optional redescription of the
same bricks. And that redescription, or emergent, is ultimately a
phenomenal construct. But you can 'reduce' that redescription to its
constituent bricks without banishing the phenomenal house. It continues

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 1/4/2018 5:13 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 3 January 2018 at 21:57, Brent Meeker > wrote:




On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:



On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Now, it
could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but
as you yourself
argue, we don't know that.


Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the
mind? There seemed to be universal agreement on this list
that a philosophical zombie is impossible.



Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we
assume Mechanism.


But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is
impossible because it exhibits intelligent behavior.

Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non
computationalist theory of mind.


It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain.
It is only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind
because use include as an axiom that computation produces mind. 
One can as say that intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom
of physicalism.  Logic is a very cheap standard for theories to meet.


ISTM that you are failing to take account of an important distinction 
here, despite having acknowledged it in previous conversations. I 
don't think of comp as really taking it as axiomatic that computation 
produces mind. Of course, CTM, which comp takes as its nominal point 
of departure, does do precisely that. But the comp theory seeks then 
to provide a *persuasive* model of an 'internalised' epistemic access 
(i.e to knowledge) that can be emulated via computation. This form of 
subjective access to knowledge - as distinct from information, 
mechanism, or behaviour in general - can, as you know, be represented 
by a toy model deploying a range of self-referential modal logics. Of 
course this model doesn't directly allow one to infer a priori the 
entire phenomenal spectrum of consciousness. But it is adequate to 
demonstrate a range of distinctively first-personal characteristics of 
mind, such as internal/external, shareable/non-shareable, 
doubtable/undoubtable, that are otherwise effectively 
indistinguishable from a purely third-personal perspective. Hence part 
of its role is to *persuade* us that the distinction between body and 
mind is coterminous with that between a 'universal' mechanistic 
ontology and its possible epistemic consequences.


Of these, ISTM the most important is actually the first mentioned. The 
idea that intelligent behaviour entails mind is equivalent to mind's 
being something entirely extrinsic.


No, that's a logical fallacy.  That X is entailed by Y and Y is 
extrinsic, does not imply that X is entirely extrinsic.


Neither behaviour nor matter possess, or require in any explanatory 
role, an 'interior' aspect. Neither matter nor behaviour have an 
'inside' - plumb their depths as you will and all you will discover is 
more 'outsides'. So the axiom that intelligent behaviour entails mind 
would seem either to be an effective elimination of the concept as 
redundant (popular in certain recently discussed circles) or a 
theoretically ex nihilo evocation of first-personal epistemic access 
on the exclusive basis of third-personal action. The former option 
undercuts itself at the start; the latter seems to lack any 
theoretical motivation other than a tacit (or on occasion explicit) 
dismissal of the viability of any alternative approach to the matter.


That's the same argument you've made in several different forms: Any 
third person explanation of mind implies that there can be no first 
person experience.  I don't see that it follows.  Any reduction banishes 
the thing reduced.  It appears to be just an assertion to save the 
mystery.  Somehow an explanation in terms of number relations in a 
Platonic realm is OK.  Forget saving the phenomenon; save the soul.




And indeed this bears directly on the 'consensus' against 
philosophical zombies. Physicalism, and in its wake any putative 
entailment from intelligent behaviour directly to mind, leads 
ineluctably to the notion of zombies.


Only for those who intuitively dismiss any physical explanation of 
mind..."My computer can't have a mind.  If it did it could beat me at 
chess."


The only evidence contra the notion that all bodies are zombies is the 
conjunction of 'I am not a zombie' + solipsism is false.


And that internal reflection is essential to my intelligent behavior.  
It's interesting that comp also has to assume solipism is false.


Whereas this conjunction may indeed be true, it is an act of faith 
rather than any non-trivial explication of the relation between bodies 
and minds.


Bruno's explication of the relation between bodies and minds is so 
non-trivial it's

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 Jan 2018 18:16, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:

On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman  wrote:

On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>  Now, it
>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>  argue, we don't know that.
> >>>
> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There
> seemed to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie
> is impossible.
> >>
> >>
> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume
> Mechanism.
> >
> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is
> impossible because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>
> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more
> plausible than non-computationalism.
> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>
>
>
> >
> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non
> computationalist theory of mind.
> >
> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is
> only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use
> include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that
> intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a
> very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>
> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the
> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies
> (having the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never
> associated to a body, but only to the person having the infinity of
> (similar enough) bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no
> “real bodies” or “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes
> senseless. The consciousness is associated with the person, which is never
> determined by one body.
>

So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA
implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement
a computation in the relevant sense?

The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the
relevant (Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD
“act of faith.

The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent
that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.

I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind
*is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of
universality.

A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he
perceives. It is polite.

The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own
mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a
body is an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy,
the electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a
computational state among infinitely many others which would works as well,
with respect to the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular
body or computation.

Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually
avoid) that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean,
respectively, that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting
itself relatively to you. But the machine and the body are local relative
representation.

A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical)
dynamic 3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state)
cannot think. Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking
with respect to another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a
physical computer.

The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1
arithmetical truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should
stay mute, or insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith” position of
the one betting that comp is true, and … assuming comp is true. It is
subtle to talk on those things, and it is important to admit that we don’t
know the truth (or we do get inconsistent and fall in the theological trap).

If so, according to comp, it would follow that (the material appearance and
behaviour of) a body cannot be considered *causally* relevant to the
computation-mind polarity,

Yes, that is true, with respect to the arithmetical truth (where there is
no bodies, only natural numbers), and false for the physical realm, which,
despite being a statistics on dreams (associated to computations in
arithmetic)

but instead must be regarded as a consistent *consequence* of it.

Again that is correct in the 0th person view, but

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 1/4/2018 3:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:



On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:



On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Now, it
could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
argue, we don't know that.

Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed to be 
universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is impossible.


Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume Mechanism.

But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
because it exhibits intelligent behavior.

Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more plausible 
than non-computationalism.
Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.




Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non computationalist 
theory of mind.

It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is only 
inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use include as an 
axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that intelligent behavior 
entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a very cheap standard for 
theories to meet.

At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the notion 
of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having the right 
behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to a body, but 
only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) bodies relative 
representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or “ontological 
bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The consciousness is 
associated with the person, which is never determined by one body.


That's just word salad: A person has an infinity of bodies, but they're 
in arithmetic and there are no real bodies so the person is not 
determined by one body. ??












Of course that doesn't mean it's true. But it seems as good a working hypothesis as 
"Yes, doctor".  And in fact it's the working hypothesis of most studies of 
neurocognition, intelligence, and mind.

Neuroscience and AI often bet, more or less explicitly, on mechanism, or on its 
"strong AI" weakenings.

(Note that UDA use mechanism, but its translation in arithmetic needs only 
strong-AI. Note that if strong AI is true, and comp false, we get infinitely 
many zombies in arithmetic.

How do you know that?


I was wrong. Wrote to quickly. It is only if weak AI is true, and strong AI or 
comp false, that there will be infinitely many zombies in arithmetic. Of 
course, if strong AI is false, comp is false too.






very curious one, which lacks body and mind, but act like you and me. They are quite 
similar with the "Bohm's zombies", the beings in the branches of the universal 
quantum wave which have no particles.



If it's true then it provides a link from intelligent behavior to mind.

The "non-zombie" principle is a consequence of comp, but I doubt that it 
implies comp. It is not related to finiteness, as comp and strong AI are.




We already have links from from physics to brain to intelligent behavior.  So 
why isn't this the physics based theory of mind that Bruno et al keep saying is 
impossible?

This is a bit ambiguous and misleading. Comp makes physics necessary, and that 
is why with Occam, physics cannot be assumed primitively if we want to use 
actual physics to verify or refute comp.

That very much depends on what physics comp makes necessary.

Well, if it violate our empirical physics, comp is refuted.


That's why we need to know what physics comp makes necessary in order to 
test it.







We can of course assume physics when doing physics, but not when doing 
computationalist theory of mind.

No, but we can assume physics when doing physicalist theory of mind.

Yes, but then the point is that a physicalist theory of mind (like with 
consciousness reducing the wave) will be non-computationalist.



OK? "physics" is necessary for machine/numbers is what makes the physical 
assumption eliminable, and is what makes computationalism testable.

But it doesn't seem to be testable because the conclusions drawn from it are 
extremely general


Not at all. It is very precise mathematical theories (qZ1*, qX1*, qS4Grz1).


Those are not theories, they are axiomatic systems.  Theories include an 
interpretation applying the mathematics to the observable world.








and already known

No. They are totally unknown, even ignored. I bet, and many others bet, in the 
eighties that this would be refuted before 2000. Some thought having already refute 
it, but they assumed a theory which was already refuted by incompleteness. Then we 
got the main confirmation in the nineties, but still no contradiction with 
“nature".




and supported by other assumptions: e.g. linearity of QM, probabilistic 
physics.  It doesn't tell us

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

> On Jan 4, 2018, at 1:22 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> 
> On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  > > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>  Now, it
>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>  argue, we don't know that.
> >>>
> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed 
> >>> to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is 
> >>> impossible.
> >>
> >>
> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
> >> Mechanism.
> >
> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
> > because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
> 
> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more 
> plausible than non-computationalism.
> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
> 
> 
> 
> >
> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non computationalist 
> >> theory of mind.
> >
> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is 
> > only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use 
> > include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that 
> > intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a 
> > very cheap standard for theories to meet.
> 
> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the 
> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having 
> the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to a 
> body, but only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) bodies 
> relative representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or 
> “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The 
> consciousness is associated with the person, which is never determined by one 
> body.
> 
> So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA 
> implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement a 
> computation in the relevant sense?

The physical world has to be able to implement the computation in the relevant 
(Turing-Church-Post-Kleene CT) sense. You need this for the YD “act of faith.

The physical world is a persistent illusion. It has to be enough persistent 
that you wake up at the hospital with the digital brain.

> I ask this because you say mind is *never* associated with a body, but mind 
> *is* associated with computation via the epistemic consequences of 
> universality.

A (conscious) third person can associate a mind/person to a body that he 
perceives. It is polite. 

The body perceived by that third person is itself a construction of its own 
mind, and with computationalism (but also with QM), we know that such a body is 
an (evolving) map of where, and in which states, we could find, sy, the 
electron and proton of that body, and such snapshot is only a computational 
state among infinitely many others which would works as well, with respect to 
the relevant computations which brought its conscious state.
Now, the conscious first person cannot associate itself to any particular body 
or computation.

Careful: sometimes I say that a machine can think, or maybe (I usually avoid) 
that a computation can think or be conscious. It always mean, respectively, 
that a machine can make a person capable of manifesting itself relatively to 
you. But the machine and the body are local relative representation.

A machine cannot think, and a computation (which is the (arithmetical) dynamic 
3p view of the sequence of the relative static machine/state) cannot think. 
Only a (first) person can think, and to use that thinking with respect to 
another person, a machine is handy, like brain or a physical computer.

The person is in heaven (arithmetical truth) and on earth (sigma_1 arithmetical 
truth), simultaneously. But this belongs to G*, and I should stay mute, or 
insist that we are in the “after-act-of-faith” position of the one betting that 
comp is true, and … assuming comp is true. It is subtle to talk on those 
things, and it is important to admit that we don’t know the truth (or we do get 
inconsistent and fall in the theological trap).

> If so, according to comp, it would follow that (the material appearance and 
> behaviour of) a body cannot be considered *causally* relevant to the 
> computation-mind polarity,

Yes, that is true, with respect to the arithmetical truth (where there is no 
bodies, only natural numbers), and false for the physical realm, which, despite 
being a statistics on dreams (associated to computations in arithmetic)

> but instead must be

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2018-01-04 12:36 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett :

> On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> 2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett :
>
>> My abacus does not talk to me.
>>
>>
> That would mean no computation are conscious at all...
>
>
> No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation, it does
> not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B does not imply
> that all Bs are As.
>

You say that as your abacus does not talk to you that means not all
computations are conscious... but that does not follows, it just means your
abacus as not way to convey you it is conscious as it lacks a correct I/O
system with you... the fact it does not talk to you is not evidence
computations performed on it are not conscious even the simplest one.

Also if it was true *some* computations are conscious, as your abacus is
turing complete, you could in principle run them on it... but your abacus
still wouldn't talk to you, and it would be wrong to say that the
computation is not conscious in this case...


>
>
> technically your abacus is turing complete (well it has to be large
> enough), so it could run a conscious computation... but that doesn't mean
> that computation could talk to you, for that it would also need an I/O
> system with our reality.
>
>
> No, it does not have the necessary I/O equipment. But, as above, even
> Turing completeness does not mean that every computation such a Turing
> machine makes is conscious.
>
> The real point of my original comment was that the only way you can
> distinguish a conscious computation from a non-conscious one is if it is
> conscious. In other words, the suggestion that consciousness is a
> computation tells you absolutely nothing interesting about consciousness.
>
> Bruce
>
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On Jan 4, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>> On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:
 This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
 a computation (and nothing but a computation).
>>> 
>>> What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all 
>>> computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.
>> 
>> Universality seems enough.
> 
> What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality 
> appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.

OK, universality is an attribute of a machine, relatively to some universal 
machinery, like arithmetic or physics.




> 
>> But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, 
>> dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic 
>> consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of consciousness.
>> 
>> You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive consciousness. 
>> A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable by it. Equivalently, 
>> when the machine is universal and can prove its own "Löb's formula". []([]p 
>> -> p) -> []p. Note that the second incompleteness theorem is the particular 
>> case with p = f (f = "0≠1").
> 
> Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

Yes. The same. I was talking about machine or about the person supported by 
those machine. No machine (as conceived as a code, number, physical object) can 
ever be conscious or think. It is always a more abstract notion implemented 
through some machinery which do the thinking.

Similarly a computation cannot be conscious, but it can support a person, which 
is the one having genuinely the thinking or conscious attribute.

But, sometimes I commit abuse of language for reason of being short and clear. 
Sorry for the possible confusion possible.

Bruno




> 
> Bruce
> 
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

2018-01-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 January 2018 at 11:55, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> > On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>
> >> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>  Now, it
>  could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
>  argue, we don't know that.
> >>>
> >>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There
> seemed to be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie
> is impossible.
> >>
> >>
> >> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume
> Mechanism.
> >
> > But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is
> impossible because it exhibits intelligent behavior.
>
> Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more
> plausible than non-computationalism.
> Computationalism makes zombies non sensical.
>
>
>
> >
> >> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non
> computationalist theory of mind.
> >
> > It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is
> only inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use
> include as an axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that
> intelligent behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a
> very cheap standard for theories to meet.
>
> At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the
> notion of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies
> (having the right behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never
> associated to a body, but only to the person having the infinity of
> (similar enough) bodies relative representation in arithmetic. There are no
> “real bodies” or “ontological bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes
> senseless. The consciousness is associated with the person, which is never
> determined by one body.
>

So in the light of what you say above, does it then follow that the MGA
implies (assuming comp) that a physical system does *not* in fact implement
a computation in the relevant sense? I ask this because you say mind is
*never* associated with a body, but mind *is* associated with computation
via the epistemic consequences of universality. If so, according to comp,
it would follow that (the material appearance and behaviour of) a body
cannot be considered *causally* relevant to the computation-mind polarity,
but instead must be regarded as a consistent *consequence* of it.

David


>
>
>
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Of course that doesn't mean it's true. But it seems as good a working
> hypothesis as "Yes, doctor".  And in fact it's the working hypothesis of
> most studies of neurocognition, intelligence, and mind.
> >>
> >> Neuroscience and AI often bet, more or less explicitly, on mechanism,
> or on its "strong AI" weakenings.
> >>
> >> (Note that UDA use mechanism, but its translation in arithmetic needs
> only strong-AI. Note that if strong AI is true, and comp false, we get
> infinitely many zombies in arithmetic.
> >
> > How do you know that?
>
>
> I was wrong. Wrote to quickly. It is only if weak AI is true, and strong
> AI or comp false, that there will be infinitely many zombies in arithmetic.
> Of course, if strong AI is false, comp is false too.
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> >> very curious one, which lacks body and mind, but act like you and me.
> They are quite similar with the "Bohm's zombies", the beings in the
> branches of the universal quantum wave which have no particles.
> >>
> >>
> >>> If it's true then it provides a link from intelligent behavior to mind.
> >>
> >> The "non-zombie" principle is a consequence of comp, but I doubt that
> it implies comp. It is not related to finiteness, as comp and strong AI are.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> We already have links from from physics to brain to intelligent
> behavior.  So why isn't this the physics based theory of mind that Bruno et
> al keep saying is impossible?
> >>
> >> This is a bit ambiguous and misleading. Comp makes physics necessary,
> and that is why with Occam, physics cannot be assumed primitively if we
> want to use actual physics to verify or refute comp.
> >
> > That very much depends on what physics comp makes necessary.
>
> Well, if it violate our empirical physics, comp is refuted.
>
>
>
> >
> >> We can of course assume physics when doing physics, but not when doing
> computationalist theory of mind.
> >
> > No, but we can assume physics when doing physicalist theory of mind.
>
> Yes, but then the point is that a physicalist theory of mind (like with
> consciousness reducing the wave) will be non-computationalist.
>
>
> >
> >>
> >> OK? "physics" is necessary for machine/numbers is what makes the
> physical assumption eliminable, and is what makes computationalism testable.
> >
> > But it doesn't seem to be testable because the conclusions drawn from it
> are extremely

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


> On Jan 4, 2018, at 4:58 AM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/2/2018 6:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> On 01 Jan 2018, at 23:38, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> No. I do not commit the fallacy of "Your god is false, so my god is real".  
>>> I'm willing to say I don't know what must be real.
>> 
>> 
>> You just did it. You just said in your previews post: " I think arithmetic 
>> is a human invention...not the basis of reality."
> 
> A logician should know the difference between saying what something is not 
> and saying what something is.


You need to have some idea of what is real, to assert that arithmetic is not 
what is fundamentally real.



> ...
>> 
>>> Bell is (rightly) famous for suggesting an definitive experiment...not just 
>>> an illustration.
>> 
>> Here too. In particular the violation of Bell's inequality itself can be 
>> tested in the machine's physics. That is detailed in my long thesis version.
> 
> Is it available online?

Yes, in my Conscience and Mechanism appendices, or in the appendice of the 
Lille thesis. I translated a Bell’s inequality in arithmetic, but cannot test 
it due to its intractability + my own incompetence of course. But Z1* 
introducing tuns of nesting modal boxes, making things hard to verify for 
reasonably complex formula.

Bruno


> 
> Brent
> 
>> It leads to complex math, but that is hardly an argument of falsity. If the 
>> results were not ignored, (for pseudo-philosophical reason intolerable in 
>> science), we would have already refuted computationalism (or that classical 
>> indexical weak formulation of it), or improved it, notably by noting which 
>> of S4Grz1, Z1* and X1* are closer to the physicists' quantum logic. Note 
>> that if physics is entirely explained in S4Grz1, that would be a case for 
>> some sort of solipsism, but not ecaxtly the common one, and also, there are 
>> few chance that can happen (because quantum logic obeys the excluded middle, 
>> and the quantum logic coming from S4Grz1 does not).
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
> 
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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?

> On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/3/2018 5:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> On 03 Jan 2018, at 03:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 1/2/2018 8:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Now, it
 could be that intelligent behavior implies mind, but as you yourself
 argue, we don't know that.
>>> 
>>> Isn't this at the crux of the scientific study of the mind? There seemed to 
>>> be universal agreement on this list that a philosophical zombie is 
>>> impossible.
>> 
>> 
>> Precisely: that a philosophical zombie is impossible when we assume 
>> Mechanism. 
> 
> But the consensus here has been that a philosophical zombie is impossible 
> because it exhibits intelligent behavior.

Well, I think the consensus here is that computationalism is far more plausible 
than non-computationalism.
Computationalism makes zombies non sensical. 

> 
>> Philosophical zombie remains logical consistent for a non computationalist 
>> theory of mind.
> 
> It's logically consistent with a computationalist theory of brain. It is only 
> inconsistent with a computationalist theory of mind because use include as an 
> axiom that computation produces mind.  One can as say that intelligent 
> behavior entails mind as an axiom of physicalism.  Logic is a very cheap 
> standard for theories to meet.

At first sight, zombies seems consistent with computationalism, but the notion 
of zombies requires the idea that we attribute mind to bodies (having the right 
behavior). But with computationalism, mind is never associated to a body, but 
only to the person having the infinity of (similar enough) bodies relative 
representation in arithmetic. There are no “real bodies” or “ontological 
bodies”, so the notion of zombie becomes senseless. The consciousness is 
associated with the person, which is never determined by one body.

> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Of course that doesn't mean it's true. But it seems as good a working 
>>> hypothesis as "Yes, doctor".  And in fact it's the working hypothesis of 
>>> most studies of neurocognition, intelligence, and mind.
>> 
>> Neuroscience and AI often bet, more or less explicitly, on mechanism, or on 
>> its "strong AI" weakenings.
>> 
>> (Note that UDA use mechanism, but its translation in arithmetic needs only 
>> strong-AI. Note that if strong AI is true, and comp false, we get infinitely 
>> many zombies in arithmetic. 
> 
> How do you know that?

I was wrong. Wrote to quickly. It is only if weak AI is true, and strong AI or 
comp false, that there will be infinitely many zombies in arithmetic. Of 
course, if strong AI is false, comp is false too.

> 
>> very curious one, which lacks body and mind, but act like you and me. They 
>> are quite similar with the "Bohm's zombies", the beings in the branches of 
>> the universal quantum wave which have no particles.
>> 
>> 
>>> If it's true then it provides a link from intelligent behavior to mind.
>> 
>> The "non-zombie" principle is a consequence of comp, but I doubt that it 
>> implies comp. It is not related to finiteness, as comp and strong AI are.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> We already have links from from physics to brain to intelligent behavior.  
>>> So why isn't this the physics based theory of mind that Bruno et al keep 
>>> saying is impossible?
>> 
>> This is a bit ambiguous and misleading. Comp makes physics necessary, and 
>> that is why with Occam, physics cannot be assumed primitively if we want to 
>> use actual physics to verify or refute comp. 
> 
> That very much depends on what physics comp makes necessary.

Well, if it violate our empirical physics, comp is refuted.

> 
>> We can of course assume physics when doing physics, but not when doing 
>> computationalist theory of mind.
> 
> No, but we can assume physics when doing physicalist theory of mind.

Yes, but then the point is that a physicalist theory of mind (like with 
consciousness reducing the wave) will be non-computationalist.

> 
>> 
>> OK? "physics" is necessary for machine/numbers is what makes the physical 
>> assumption eliminable, and is what makes computationalism testable.
> 
> But it doesn't seem to be testable because the conclusions drawn from it are 
> extremely general

Not at all. It is very precise mathematical theories (qZ1*, qX1*, qS4Grz1). 

> and already known

No. They are totally unknown, even ignored. I bet, and many others bet, in the 
eighties that this would be refuted before 2000. Some thought having already 
refute it, but they assumed a theory which was already refuted by 
incompleteness. Then we got the main confirmation in the nineties, but still no 
contradiction with “nature".

> and supported by other assumptions: e.g. linearity of QM, probabilistic 
> physics.  It doesn't tell us why memories get less reliable when they are 
> more often recalled. 

That kind of things are expected to be understood through mechanism.

> It doesn't tell us why we have no memories of

Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 4/01/2018 12:30 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Dec 2017, at 01:29, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 29/12/2017 10:14 am, Russell Standish wrote:

This is computationalism - the idea that our human consciousness _is_
a computation (and nothing but a computation).


What distinguishes a conscious computation within the class of all 
computations? After all, not all computations are conscious.


Universality seems enough.


What is a universal computation? From what you say below, universality 
appears to be a property of a machine, not of a computation.


But just universality gives rise only to a highly non standard, 
dissociative, form of consciousness. It might correspond to the cosmic 
consciousness alluded by people living highly altered state of 
consciousness.


You need Löbianity to get *self-consciousness*, or reflexive 
consciousness. A machine is Löbian when its universality is knowable 
by it. Equivalently, when the machine is universal and can prove its 
own "Löb's formula". []([]p -> p) -> []p. Note that the second 
incompleteness theorem is the particular case with p = f (f = "0≠1").


Löbanity is a property of the machine, not of the computation.

Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?


On 4/01/2018 6:41 pm, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2018-01-04 6:57 GMT+01:00 Bruce Kellett >:


My abacus does not talk to me.


That would mean no computation are conscious at all...


No, that does not follow. Even if consciousness is a computation, it 
does not follow that all computations are conscious: A is a B does not 
imply that all Bs are As.


technically your abacus is turing complete (well it has to be large 
enough), so it could run a conscious computation... but that doesn't 
mean that computation could talk to you, for that it would also need 
an I/O system with our reality.


No, it does not have the necessary I/O equipment. But, as above, even 
Turing completeness does not mean that every computation such a Turing 
machine makes is conscious.


The real point of my original comment was that the only way you can 
distinguish a conscious computation from a non-conscious one is if it is 
conscious. In other words, the suggestion that consciousness is a 
computation tells you absolutely nothing interesting about consciousness.


Bruce

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Re: What falsifiability tests has computationalism passed?