Re: problem of size '10
On 16 March 2010 05:51, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: The hypothesis is that it would have some effect, not necessarily that you would feel a little pain. Maybe the effect is that a certain thought comes into your consciousness, I could have been really hurt if Even if you were unaware that there had been a near miss? In any case, do you agree that if the counterfactuals due to unused brain pathways have an effect on consciousness, then so should the counterfactuals due to events out in the world? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/16/2010 4:35 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 March 2010 05:51, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: The hypothesis is that it would have some effect, not necessarily that you would feel a little pain. Maybe the effect is that a certain thought comes into your consciousness, I could have been really hurt if Even if you were unaware that there had been a near miss? Yes; but you became aware that there could have been an accident. In any case, do you agree that if the counterfactuals due to unused brain pathways have an effect on consciousness, then so should the counterfactuals due to events out in the world? I would guess they would have an effect only in proportion to the probability of them affecting one's brain state (e.g. perceptions). As I see it, if you take MWI seriously (which I usually don't) then there are no counterfactuals - they're all factuals just in different branches. And hence it is inconsistent to argue that removing unused neurons can't make any difference. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 15 March 2010 07:28, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I don't think that's so clear. Everett's relative state interpretation implies consciousness is not unitary but continually splits just as the states of other quantum systems. So while these counterfactual states (realized in the multiple worlds) may be significant for instantiating consciousness, I don't think it would follow that the consciousness'es thus instantiated would be aware of the splitting, i.e. decoherence. So if you are subject to a probabilistic event which would cause a change in your consciousness if it eventuated there would be a change in your consciousness *in another branch of the multiple worlds*. If your brain were constructed so there was no such chance (or it had much lower probability) what would be the difference? Maybe you would have faded qualia, e.g. if you were color blind you aren't aware of colors because there's zero probability of sensing them and your consciousness is slightly diminished by this because you aren't conscious of things being not red or not blue. I'm still not clear on what you mean. If I almost have an accident which could have left me in terrible pain should I feel something in this world as a result of the near miss? Surely I would if the counterfactuals have an effect on consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/15/2010 5:37 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 15 March 2010 07:28, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I don't think that's so clear. Everett's relative state interpretation implies consciousness is not unitary but continually splits just as the states of other quantum systems. So while these counterfactual states (realized in the multiple worlds) may be significant for instantiating consciousness, I don't think it would follow that the consciousness'es thus instantiated would be aware of the splitting, i.e. decoherence. So if you are subject to a probabilistic event which would cause a change in your consciousness if it eventuated there would be a change in your consciousness *in another branch of the multiple worlds*. If your brain were constructed so there was no such chance (or it had much lower probability) what would be the difference? Maybe you would have faded qualia, e.g. if you were color blind you aren't aware of colors because there's zero probability of sensing them and your consciousness is slightly diminished by this because you aren't conscious of things being not red or not blue. I'm still not clear on what you mean. If I almost have an accident which could have left me in terrible pain should I feel something in this world as a result of the near miss? Surely I would if the counterfactuals have an effect on consciousness. The hypothesis is that it would have some effect, not necessarily that you would feel a little pain. Maybe the effect is that a certain thought comes into your consciousness, I could have been really hurt if Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 14 March 2010 08:43, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: (BTW the formatting for your last few posts looks odd when I read them with Gmail. Would it be possible to revert to plain text?) [Stathis] Does that matter here? I thought the argument was that if system A is capable of behaviour that system B is not capable, then A has different/greater consciousness than B even when we consider the case where A and B are performing the same activity. A and B could be identical except that given a particular tricky question Q, A has access to a plugin module A' that will allow it to work out the answer, while B does not. For all inputs other than Q, A and B behave identically. Now I agree that A is more *intelligent* than B, if intelligence is the ability to solve problems, since A can solve one more problem than B. Intelligence involves potential, like specifying a car's top speed, so the counterfactuals here are relevant. But to say that A and B differ in their consciousness even when they have inputs other than Q (and therefore go through the same internal state changes), [Brent] But they don't. If A has more possible states then, per QM, it, with some probability, goes through them too. Are you suggesting that consciousness is affected by some kind of interference effect between the possible states? If that is so, it should be affected not only by the possible states of the brain, which is not so easy to change, but also by the possible inputs. In other words if you are subjected to a probabilistic event which would cause a change in your consciousness if it eventuated, there would be a change in your consciousness even if it did not eventuate. This is an experiment that can easily be done - that is done by everyone many times a day - and it does not support the theory that counterfactuals affect consciousness. [Stathis] Our consciousness is instantiated by a machine that interacts with its environment and has a complex, but consistent, response to environmental stimuli. This allows one conscious entity to observe another conscious entity, and postulate that it is conscious. If consciousnesses were instantiated all around us by random processes (or even by nothing at all) they would not be of the sort that can be observed at the level of the substrate of their implementation, which is why they are not observed. So yes, it's all compatible with our physical observations. [Brent] I'm not clear on what you mean by it in it's all compatible with our physical observations. You mean that everything, including rocks, are conscious but we can't recognize them as such because their consciousness is so different? Or maybe it's not different but their interaction with the world is too different? Saying any object is conscious if you look at it the right way is just another way of saying that consciousness is not a physical property of the object: the rock won't be rendered unconscious if we blow it up since the relevant computations could just as easily be ascribed to the blown up atoms. So what we're talking about is Platonic implementations of consciousness, and those we can't interact with. We can only interact with the sort of consciousness that exhibits intelligent behaviour, generated by brains and perhaps computers. Superficially this seems to solve the empirical problem, albeit at the cost of extra metaphysical baggage. However, it doesn't solve the scientific problem because there is then the question of how do we know that our own consciousness is one of those specially privileged to be generated in the physical world and not in Platonia? We don't; and in fact if it is possible that consciousness can be generated in Platonia there is no basis for postulating an ontologically separate real world at all - it could all be a virtual reality generated in Platonia. But there is then the problem of how we find ourselves, as you say, in a nomologically consistent universe. What we need is a derivation of the observed physical laws from the principle all possible computations are necessarily implemented. That would be impressive. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/14/2010 5:10 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 14 March 2010 08:43, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: (BTW the formatting for your last few posts looks odd when I read them with Gmail. Would it be possible to revert to plain text?) [Stathis] Does that matter here? I thought the argument was that if system A is capable of behaviour that system B is not capable, then A has different/greater consciousness than B even when we consider the case where A and B are performing the same activity. A and B could be identical except that given a particular tricky question Q, A has access to a plugin module A' that will allow it to work out the answer, while B does not. For all inputs other than Q, A and B behave identically. Now I agree that A is more *intelligent* than B, if intelligence is the ability to solve problems, since A can solve one more problem than B. Intelligence involves potential, like specifying a car's top speed, so the counterfactuals here are relevant. But to say that A and B differ in their consciousness even when they have inputs other than Q (and therefore go through the same internal state changes), [Brent] But they don't. If A has more possible states then, per QM, it, with some probability, goes through them too. Are you suggesting that consciousness is affected by some kind of interference effect between the possible states? If that is so, it should be affected not only by the possible states of the brain, which is not so easy to change, but also by the possible inputs. In other words if you are subjected to a probabilistic event which would cause a change in your consciousness if it eventuated, there would be a change in your consciousness even if it did not eventuate. This is an experiment that can easily be done - that is done by everyone many times a day - and it does not support the theory that counterfactuals affect consciousness. I don't think that's so clear. Everett's relative state interpretation implies consciousness is not unitary but continually splits just as the states of other quantum systems. So while these counterfactual states (realized in the multiple worlds) may be significant for instantiating consciousness, I don't think it would follow that the consciousness'es thus instantiated would be aware of the splitting, i.e. decoherence. So if you are subject to a probabilistic event which would cause a change in your consciousness if it eventuated there would be a change in your consciousness *in another branch of the multiple worlds*. If your brain were constructed so there was no such chance (or it had much lower probability) what would be the difference? Maybe you would have faded qualia, e.g. if you were color blind you aren't aware of colors because there's zero probability of sensing them and your consciousness is slightly diminished by this because you aren't conscious of things being not red or not blue. Brent [Stathis] Our consciousness is instantiated by a machine that interacts with its environment and has a complex, but consistent, response to environmental stimuli. This allows one conscious entity to observe another conscious entity, and postulate that it is conscious. If consciousnesses were instantiated all around us by random processes (or even by nothing at all) they would not be of the sort that can be observed at the level of the substrate of their implementation, which is why they are not observed. So yes, it's all compatible with our physical observations. [Brent] I'm not clear on what you mean by it in it's all compatible with our physical observations. You mean that everything, including rocks, are conscious but we can't recognize them as such because their consciousness is so different? Or maybe it's not different but their interaction with the world is too different? Saying any object is conscious if you look at it the right way is just another way of saying that consciousness is not a physical property of the object: the rock won't be rendered unconscious if we blow it up since the relevant computations could just as easily be ascribed to the blown up atoms. So what we're talking about is Platonic implementations of consciousness, and those we can't interact with. We can only interact with the sort of consciousness that exhibits intelligent behaviour, generated by brains and perhaps computers. Superficially this seems to solve the empirical problem, albeit at the cost of extra metaphysical baggage. However, it doesn't solve the scientific problem because there is then the question of how do we know that our own consciousness is one of those specially privileged to be generated in the physical world and not in Platonia? We don't; and in fact if it is possible that consciousness can be generated in Platonia there is no basis for postulating an ontologically separate real world at all - it could all be a virtual reality generated in Platonia. But there is
Re: problem of size '10
On 12 March 2010 11:59, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: The pathways are all intact and can spring into action if the person wakes up. There is a continuum from everything being there and ready to use immediately, to all there but parts of the system dormant, to not there at all but could be added if the person has extensive surgery. That would be a classical change and different from a MWI possibility. Does that matter here? I thought the argument was that if system A is capable of behaviour that system B is not capable, then A has different/greater consciousness than B even when we consider the case where A and B are performing the same activity. A and B could be identical except that given a particular tricky question Q, A has access to a plugin module A' that will allow it to work out the answer, while B does not. For all inputs other than Q, A and B behave identically. Now I agree that A is more *intelligent* than B, if intelligence is the ability to solve problems, since A can solve one more problem than B. Intelligence involves potential, like specifying a car's top speed, so the counterfactuals here are relevant. But to say that A and B differ in their consciousness even when they have inputs other than Q (and therefore go through the same internal state changes), on the grounds that A can discriminate between more possible inputs, seems incredible. It would mean that the consciousness of A when it was doing non-Q processing would be affected by what happens to A': if it was destroyed, if it was disconnected, if the special adapter needed to connect it was lost so that it couldn't be used. We could do the experiment: A would describe changes in its experiences as changes were made to A' or its connection to A'. It's not incompatible with any physical observation to say that consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. Is it incompatible with any physical observation to say that consciousness is instantiated by a rock? The only consciousness we have observation of is our own 1st person. It's not plausible that it's a recording, though in some sense it may be logically possible. Our consciousness is instantiated by a machine that interacts with its environment and has a complex, but consistent, response to environmental stimuli. This allows one conscious entity to observe another conscious entity, and postulate that it is conscious. If consciousnesses were instantiated all around us by random processes (or even by nothing at all) they would not be of the sort that can be observed at the level of the substrate of their implementation, which is why they are not observed. So yes, it's all compatible with our physical observations. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 Mar 2010, at 20:38, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Mar 2010, at 17:57, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see how we could use Tononi's paper to provide a physical or a computational role to inactive device in the actual supervenience of a an actual computation currently not using that device. I'm not sure I understand that question. It seems to turn on what is meant by using that device. Is my brain using a neuron that isn't firing? I'd say yes, it is part of the system and it's not firing is significant. Two old guys A and B decide to buy each one a car. They bought identical cars, and paid the same price. But B's car has a defect, above 90 mi/h the engine explode. But both A and B will peacefully enjoy driving their car all the rest of their life. They were old, and never go quicker than 60 mi/h until they die. Would you say that A's car was driving but that B's car was only partially driving. If I'm a multiple-worlder I'd say B's car is driving with a lower probability than A's. Why? The QM many worlds entails that he is old in the normal worlds, and he will keep going less than 60mi/h there too. Only in Harry- Potter worlds, where energy push him beyond that limit due to quantum incident accumulation. What about a brain with clever neurons. For example the neurons N24 anticipates that he will be useless for the next ten minutes, which gives him the time to make a pause cafe and to talk with some glial cells friends. Then after ten minutes he come back and do very well its job. Would that brain be less conscious? He did not miss any messages. Same answer. But this can only confirms that you put some magic in the presence of matter. If matter plays that role, by comp it just needs we have to actively emulate those inactive piece of matter, which by definition, where not inactive then. If inactive piece are needed, what about inactive soft subroutine? Then I have to ask the doctor if the program he will put in my brain evaluated in the lazy way, or strictly, or by value. Again, by definition of comp, this is a matter of finding the right level, then any implementation will do, any universal system will do. And the uda consequences follows. Tp prevent the contagion of the immateriality of the person to its environment, you can only introduce actual infinities in the local working of consciousness. But then you can no more say yes to the digitalist surgeon based on the comp assumption. This is like making a current theory more complex to avoid a simpler theory. Your move looks like the move of a superstitious boss who want all its employees present all days, even when they have nothing to do. Molecular biology shows that in the cells, the proteins which have no functions are quickly destroyed so that its atoms are recycled, and they are called by need, and reconstituted only when they are useful. The significance of the neuron (firing or not firing) is computational. If for the precise computation C the neuron n is not used in the interval of time (t1 t2), you may replace it by a functionally equivalent machine for the working in that time interval. There is no problem Well, there's not *that* problem. ? The point is that if you accept that non active part can be removed, then the movie graph expains how your immateriality extends to a sheaf of computational histories (that is really true-and-provable number relations) going through you. It is like darwin: it gives a realm (numbers, combinators, ... choose your favorite base) in which we can explain how the laws of physics appeared and evolved: not in a space-time, but in a logical space (that each Löbian number can discover in its head). And the G/G* separation extends on the quanta (SGrz1, X1, Z1) giving the qualia (S4Grz1, X1*, Z1*). I tend to work at a more general, or abstract level, and I think that consciousness needs some amount of self-reflection, two universal machines in front of each other, at least. If Mars Rover can add and multiply it may have the consciousness of Robinson Arithmetic. If Mars Rover believe in enough arithmetical induction rules, it can quickly be trivially Löbian. But its consciousness will develop when he identifies genuinely and privately itself with its unameable first person (Bp p). Using Bp for public science and opinions. It will build a memorable and unique self-experience. To be clear, Mars Rover may still be largely behind the fruit fly in matter of consciousness. The fruit fly seems capable to appreciate wine, for example. Mars Rover is still too much an infant, it wants only satisfy its mother company, not yet itself. But it also doesn't conceive of itself and its mother company - only it's mission. Our universal machine are brainwashed at their
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/12/2010 6:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Mar 2010, at 20:38, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Mar 2010, at 17:57, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see how we could use Tononi's paper to provide a physical or a computational role to inactive device in the actual supervenience of a an actual computation currently not using that device. I'm not sure I understand that question. It seems to turn on what is meant by using that device. Is my brain using a neuron that isn't firing? I'd say yes, it is part of the system and it's not firing is significant. Two old guys A and B decide to buy each one a car. They bought identical cars, and paid the same price. But B's car has a defect, above 90 mi/h the engine explode. But both A and B will peacefully enjoy driving their car all the rest of their life. They were old, and never go quicker than 60 mi/h until they die. Would you say that A's car was driving but that B's car was only partially driving. If I'm a multiple-worlder I'd say B's car is driving with a lower probability than A's. Why? The QM many worlds entails that he is old in the normal worlds, and he will keep going less than 60mi/h there too. In some worlds his car is a Toyota. Only in Harry-Potter worlds, where energy push him beyond that limit due to quantum incident accumulation. What about a brain with clever neurons. For example the neurons N24 anticipates that he will be useless for the next ten minutes, which gives him the time to make a pause cafe and to talk with some glial cells friends. Then after ten minutes he come back and do very well its job. Would that brain be less conscious? He did not miss any messages. Same answer. But this can only confirms that you put some magic in the presence of matter. If matter plays that role, by comp it just needs we have to actively emulate those inactive piece of matter, which by definition, where not inactive then. If inactive piece are needed, what about inactive soft subroutine? Then I have to ask the doctor if the program he will put in my brain evaluated in the lazy way, or strictly, or by value. Again, by definition of comp, this is a matter of finding the right level, then any implementation will do, any universal system will do. And the uda consequences follows. Tp prevent the contagion of the immateriality of the person to its environment, you can only introduce actual infinities in the local working of consciousness. QM does introduce infinites since it assumes real values probabilities. But then you can no more say yes to the digitalist surgeon based on the comp assumption. Only if the digitalist surgeon has a magically classical digital brain at his disposal...or if I insist on probability 1 success. This is like making a current theory more complex to avoid a simpler theory. Your move looks like the move of a superstitious boss who want all its employees present all days, even when they have nothing to do. Molecular biology shows that in the cells, the proteins which have no functions are quickly destroyed so that its atoms are recycled, and they are called by need, and reconstituted only when they are useful. I'm just taking seriously the Everett interpretation. Since we don't know what consciousness is, we can as well suppose it supervenes on the ray in Hilbert space as on the projection to our classical subspace. I haven't added anything to the ontology. The significance of the neuron (firing or not firing) is computational. If for the precise computation C the neuron n is not used in the interval of time (t1 t2), you may replace it by a functionally equivalent machine for the working in that time interval. There is no problem Well, there's not *that* problem. ? The point is that if you accept that non active part can be removed, then the movie graph expains how your immateriality extends to a sheaf of computational histories (that is really true-and-provable number relations) going through you. It is like darwin: it gives a realm (numbers, combinators, ... choose your favorite base) in which we can explain how the laws of physics appeared and evolved: not in a space-time, but in a logical space (that each Löbian number can discover in its head). I'll be more impressed when we can explain why *this* law rather than *that* law evolved and why there are laws (intersubjective agreements) at all. And the G/G* separation extends on the quanta (SGrz1, X1, Z1) giving the qualia (S4Grz1, X1*, Z1*). I tend to work at a more general, or abstract level, and I think that consciousness needs some amount of self-reflection, two universal machines in front of each other, at least. If Mars Rover can add and multiply it may have the consciousness of Robinson Arithmetic. If Mars Rover believe in enough arithmetical induction rules, it can quickly be trivially Löbian. But its consciousness will
Re: problem of size '10
On 12 Mar 2010, at 19:31, Brent Meeker wrote: Why? The QM many worlds entails that he is old in the normal worlds, and he will keep going less than 60mi/h there too. In some worlds his car is a Toyota. But he is old. He will not go faster than 60mi/h in the normal worlds. Tp prevent the contagion of the immateriality of the person to its environment, you can only introduce actual infinities in the local working of consciousness. QM does introduce infinites since it assumes real values probabilities. I said, in the local working of consciousness. Not in the working of matter where comp justifies the appearance of actual infinities. If you use QM in consciousness, you have to use an analog non Turing emulable pice of quantum mechanism for blocking the immateriality contagion. But then you can no more say yes to the digitalist surgeon based on the comp assumption. Only if the digitalist surgeon has a magically classical digital brain at his disposal...or if I insist on probability 1 success. What does that change to the argument? This is like making a current theory more complex to avoid a simpler theory. Your move looks like the move of a superstitious boss who want all its employees present all days, even when they have nothing to do. Molecular biology shows that in the cells, the proteins which have no functions are quickly destroyed so that its atoms are recycled, and they are called by need, and reconstituted only when they are useful. I'm just taking seriously the Everett interpretation. Since we don't know what consciousness is, I think we know ver well what consciousness is. Even more when sick. We cannot define it, but that is different. We cannot define matter either. we can as well suppose it supervenes on the ray in Hilbert space as on the projection to our classical subspace. I haven't added anything to the ontology. I don't see any problem with this, unless you are using all the decimal of the real or complex numbers in that ray, but then we are no more working in the digital mechanist theory. ? The point is that if you accept that non active part can be removed, then the movie graph expains how your immateriality extends to a sheaf of computational histories (that is really true-and-provable number relations) going through you. It is like darwin: it gives a realm (numbers, combinators, ... choose your favorite base) in which we can explain how the laws of physics appeared and evolved: not in a space-time, but in a logical space (that each Löbian number can discover in its head). I'll be more impressed when we can explain why *this* law rather than *that* law evolved and why there are laws (intersubjective agreements) at all. I don't understand. This is exactly what comp (+ the usual classical definition of belief and knowledge) provides. uda already gives theb general shape, and those laws are derivable from all variants of self-reference in the manner of AUDA. (as uda makes obligatory). And the G/G* separation extends on the quanta (SGrz1, X1, Z1) giving the qualia (S4Grz1, X1*, Z1*). And this is unique with comp. Most probably. In any case, neither the body of the fruit fly, nor the body of Mars Rover can think, because Bodies don't think. Persons, intellect or souls, can think. Bodies are projection of their mind on their distribution in the universal dovetailing (or the tiny equivalent arithmetical Sigma_1 truth). I think that means inferred components of their model of the world - with which I would agree. Not their. *We* are ding the reasoning. If it was their, butterfly would have problem to find flowers! If your theory assume a physical primary substance, it is up to you to explain its role in consciousness. Its role in consciousness is to realize the processes that are consciousness. Of course that leaves open the question of which processes do that - to which Tononi has give a possible answer. A comp subtheory. Matter does not play any role in Tononi. He takes it perhaps granted because he is not aware it cannot exist with comp, but, fortunately for him, he does not use it at all. Except in his three concluding line on Mary, where he does a mistake already well treated by Hofstadter and Dennett (and my own publications). Tononi does not aboard the comp mind body problem at all. But MGA forces that move to invoke actual infinities and non turing emulable aspects of the (generalized) brain. It forces me to invoke a non-turing emulable world; but I think any finite part can still be turing-emulable to a given fidelity 1. ? Comp implies the worlds are not Turing emulable. Even a nanocube of vaccuum is not Turing emulable (with comp, but with QM too). I don't see your point. But I'm not here to be an advocate for primary matter (Peter Jones does that well enough). I neither accept nor
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 Mar 2010, at 02:10, Brent Meeker wrote: Here's an interesting theory of consciousness in which counterfactuals would make a difference. The fat that the counterfactuals makes a difference is the essence of comp and of the comp supervenience thesis. But that is the reason why neither the movie, nor the boolean graph *is* conscious. What is conscious is the person, and by comp, the person is an abstract immaterial being that you can locally associate it to the boolean graph/brain, (and even the movie, quasi conventionally, in the case you decide to project the last frame of the movie on the boolean graph, to trigger it relatively stable in your story). But the consciousness of that person is then related, if only in the relative way, to all computational histories going through it, from its point of view (more exactly from the 3-p views of his 1-p views). http://ntp.neuroscience.wisc.edu/faculty/fac-art/tononiconsciousness.pdf Quite consistent with AUDA, but I have often explained the consistency of machine theology, auda, with Hobson theory of dreams and neurophysiological approaches. There is an implicit use of the galois connexion theories/model, or equation/surface, and that qualia is the shape of experience, is natural with the first person who lives at the intersection of belief and truth (Bp p). This is coherent for example with his analysis of the problem of Mary (correct with respect to its implicit comp): Tononi wrote Being and describing According to the IIT, a full description of the set of informational relationships generated by a complex at a given time should say all there is to say about the experience it is having at that time: nothing else needs to be added.17 Nevertheless, the IIT also implies that to be conscious—say to have a vivid experience of pure red— one needs to be a complex of high ﰆ; there is no other way. Obviously, although a full description can provide understanding of what experience is and how it can be generated, it cannot substitute for it: being is not describing. This point should be uncontroversial, but it is worth mentioning because of a well-known argument against a scientific explanation of consciousness, best exemplified by a thought experiment involving Mary, a neuroscientist in the 23rd century (Jack- son, 1986). Mary knows everything about the brain pro- cesses responsible for color vision, but has lived her whole life in a black-and-white room and has never seen any color.18 The argument goes that, despite her complete knowledge of color vision, Mary does not know what it is like to experience a color: it follows that there is some knowledge about conscious experience that cannot be de- duced from knowledge about brain processes. The argument loses its strength the moment one realizes that conscious- ness is a way of being rather than a way of knowing. According to the IIT, being implies “knowing” from the inside, in the sense of generating information about one’s previous state. Describing, instead, implies “knowing” from the outside. But he makes a common mistakes by concluding: This conclusion is in no way surprising: just consider that though we understand quite well how energy is generated by atomic fission, unless atomic fission occurs, no energy is generated—no amount of description will substitute. Which is obviously incorrect. If you emulate the couple made of the genuine cortical integrated system + the atomic fission, there will be a conscious (and relatively correct) observation of energy generation. If you want he is correct from inside, but if his own (based on comp) theory is correct, there is view from outside of the couple observer/ atomic-fission. He is not aware of the comp first person (plural or not) indeterminacy. From this, he miss the mind-body problem, but this does not change the interest for its proposal as a theory of human consciousness. It is even coherent with my suggestion that a brain is either two universal machines in front of each other, or two brains in front of each other (making a brain 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 or 32 ... universal machines). At some point he need times, he says, but here the UD-times, or even the successor on natural numbers suits perfectly. I have no problem with his notion of graded consciousness, being an experiencer of lucidity in sleeps, and amateur of altered states of consciousness, amnesia, etc. This does not change really the nature 0 or 1 of being conscious or not: the abstract third person being the fixed point of p - Bp. Löb's formula (B(BP-p--Bp) makes such fixed point true and provable. (on the contrary; the first person lives at the intersection of p and Bp (p Bp) and has no fixed point). The p, Bp, Bp p, Bp Dt, Bp p Dt, does not describe partial states of consciousness, but different state of consciousness (like observing, feeling, proving, knowing, etc.). the modalities
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 March 2010 13:57, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Mon, 3/8/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. That's not the argument Chalmers made, and indeed he couldn't have, since he believes zombies are possible; he instead talks about fading qualia. If you start out believing that computer zombies are NOT possible, the original thought experiment is moot; you already believe the conclusion. His argument is aimed at dualists, who are NOT computationalists to start out. Since partial consciousness is possible, which he didn't take into account, his argument _fails_; a dualist who does believe zombies are possible should have no problem believing that partial zombies are. So dualists don't have to be computationalists after all. A partial zombie is very different from a full zombie! The thing about zombies is, although you can't tell if someone is a zombie, you know with absolute certainty that *you* aren't a zombie (assuming that you aren't a zombie, of course; if you are a zombie then you don't know anything at all except in a mindless zombie way). If your visual qualia were to fade but your behaviour remain unchanged, then that is equivalent to partial zombification, and partial zombification is absurd, impossible or meaningless (take your pick). The argument is simply this: if zombie vision in an otherwise intact person is possible, then I could have zombie vision right now. I behave as if I can see normally, since I am typing this email, but that is consistent with zombie vision. I am also absolutely convinced that I can see normally, but that is also consistent with zombie vision. So it seems that zombie vision is neither subjectively nor objectively different from normal vision, which means it is not different from normal vision in any way that matters. You might still say zombie vision is still different in some metaphysical sense, a category neither objective nor subjective, but now you are in the supernatural domain. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. Partial consciousness is possible and again ruins any such argument. If you don't believe to start out that consciousness can be based on whatever (e.g. nothing), you don't have any reason to accept the conclusion. It goes against the grain of functionalism to assume that consciousness is due primarily to a physical process. The primary idea is that if the black box replicates the function of a component in a system, then any mental states that the system has will also be replicated. Normally this is taken as implying a kind of materialism since the black box won't be able to replicate behaviour of brain components unless it contains a complex physical mechanism, but if miraculously it could - if the black box were empty but the remaining brain tissue behaves normally anyway - then the consciousness of the system would remain intact. If a chunk were taken out of the CPU in a computer but, miraculously, the remaining parts of the CPU behaved exactly the same as if nothing had happened, then that magical CPU is just as good as an intact one, and the computations it performs just as valid. whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. That is behaviorism, not computationalism, and I certainly don't believe it. I wouldn't say that a computer that uses a huge lookup table algorithm would be conscious. Well, functionalism reduces to a type of behaviourism. Functionalism is OK with replacing components of a system with functionally identical analogues, regardless of the internal processes of the functional analogues. If the internal processes don't matter then it should not matter if a replaced neuron, for example, is driven by a lookup table. In fact, a practical computational model of a neuron would probably contain lookup tables as a matter of course, and it would seem absurd to claim that its consciousness is inversely proportion to the number of such devices used. The requirement that a computer be able to handle the counterfactuals in order to be conscious seems to have been brought in to make computationalists feel better about computationalism. Not at all. It was always part of the notion of computation. Would you buy a PC that only plays a movie? It must handle all possible inputs in a reliable manner. But if I did buy a PC that only did addition, for example, I don't see how it would make sense to say that it isn't really doing that computation, that it's not real addition. It might not qualify as a computer,
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/11/2010 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see how we could use Tononi's paper to provide a physical or a computational role to inactive device in the actual supervenience of a an actual computation currently not using that device. I'm not sure I understand that question. It seems to turn on what is meant by using that device. Is my brain using a neuron that isn't firing? I'd say yes, it is part of the system and it's not firing is significant. I see Tononi's theory as providing a kind of answer to questions like, Is a Mars Rover concsious and if so, what is it conscious of? Is it more or less conscious than a fruit fly. Brent I f you have an idea, please elaborate. In my opinion this a priori integrate well in the comp consequences. Thanks for that interesting reference on a reasonable neurophysiological (and with a high substitution level comp) account of consciousness and qualia, probably consistent with auda, but not aware, like many, of the conceptual reversal that the basic assumption imposes. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/11/2010 4:51 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 11 March 2010 13:57, Jack Mallahjackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Mon, 3/8/10, Stathis Papaioannoustath...@gmail.com wrote: In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. That's not the argument Chalmers made, and indeed he couldn't have, since he believes zombies are possible; he instead talks about fading qualia. If you start out believing that computer zombies are NOT possible, the original thought experiment is moot; you already believe the conclusion. His argument is aimed at dualists, who are NOT computationalists to start out. Since partial consciousness is possible, which he didn't take into account, his argument _fails_; a dualist who does believe zombies are possible should have no problem believing that partial zombies are. So dualists don't have to be computationalists after all. A partial zombie is very different from a full zombie! The thing about zombies is, although you can't tell if someone is a zombie, you know with absolute certainty that *you* aren't a zombie (assuming that you aren't a zombie, of course; if you are a zombie then you don't know anything at all except in a mindless zombie way). If your visual qualia were to fade but your behaviour remain unchanged, then that is equivalent to partial zombification, and partial zombification is absurd, impossible or meaningless (take your pick). The argument is simply this: if zombie vision in an otherwise intact person is possible, then I could have zombie vision right now. I behave as if I can see normally, since I am typing this email, but that is consistent with zombie vision. I am also absolutely convinced that I can see normally, but that is also consistent with zombie vision. So it seems that zombie vision is neither subjectively nor objectively different from normal vision, which means it is not different from normal vision in any way that matters. You might still say zombie vision is still different in some metaphysical sense, a category neither objective nor subjective, but now you are in the supernatural domain. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. Partial consciousness is possible and again ruins any such argument. If you don't believe to start out that consciousness can be based on whatever (e.g. nothing), you don't have any reason to accept the conclusion. It goes against the grain of functionalism to assume that consciousness is due primarily to a physical process. The primary idea is that if the black box replicates the function of a component in a system, then any mental states that the system has will also be replicated. Normally this is taken as implying a kind of materialism since the black box won't be able to replicate behaviour of brain components unless it contains a complex physical mechanism, but if miraculously it could - if the black box were empty but the remaining brain tissue behaves normally anyway - then the consciousness of the system would remain intact. If a chunk were taken out of the CPU in a computer but, miraculously, the remaining parts of the CPU behaved exactly the same as if nothing had happened, then that magical CPU is just as good as an intact one, and the computations it performs just as valid. whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. That is behaviorism, not computationalism, and I certainly don't believe it. I wouldn't say that a computer that uses a huge lookup table algorithm would be conscious. Well, functionalism reduces to a type of behaviourism. Functionalism is OK with replacing components of a system with functionally identical analogues, regardless of the internal processes of the functional analogues. If the internal processes don't matter then it should not matter if a replaced neuron, for example, is driven by a lookup table. In fact, a practical computational model of a neuron would probably contain lookup tables as a matter of course, and it would seem absurd to claim that its consciousness is inversely proportion to the number of such devices used. The requirement that a computer be able to handle the counterfactuals in order to be conscious seems to have been brought in to make computationalists feel better about computationalism. Not at all. It was always part of the notion of computation. Would you buy a PC that only plays a movie? It must handle all possible inputs in a reliable manner. But if I did buy a PC that only did addition, for example, I don't see how it would make sense to say that
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 Mar 2010, at 17:57, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see how we could use Tononi's paper to provide a physical or a computational role to inactive device in the actual supervenience of a an actual computation currently not using that device. I'm not sure I understand that question. It seems to turn on what is meant by using that device. Is my brain using a neuron that isn't firing? I'd say yes, it is part of the system and it's not firing is significant. Two old guys A and B decide to buy each one a car. They bought identical cars, and paid the same price. But B's car has a defect, above 90 mi/h the engine explode. But both A and B will peacefully enjoy driving their car all the rest of their life. They were old, and never go quicker than 60 mi/h until they die. Would you say that A's car was driving but that B's car was only partially driving. What about a brain with clever neurons. For example the neurons N24 anticipates that he will be useless for the next ten minutes, which gives him the time to make a pause cafe and to talk with some glial cells friends. Then after ten minutes he come back and do very well its job. Would that brain be less conscious? He did not miss any messages. The significance of the neuron (firing or not firing) is computational. If for the precise computation C the neuron n is not used in the interval of time (t1 t2), you may replace it by a functionally equivalent machine for the working in that time interval. There is no problem when you make consciousness supervene on the abstract relevant computations, that the existence of some relations between some numbers (given that I have chosen the base elementary arithmetic (it is Turing Universal). To attach consciousness on physical activity + the abstract counterfactual, is useless. It introduces more difficulty than what it solves. With comp that needed physical activity has to be turing emulable itself: if not it means you make consciousness depending on something not turing emulable, and you cannot say yes to the doctor qua computatio. I see Tononi's theory as providing a kind of answer to questions like, Is a Mars Rover concsious and if so, what is it conscious of? Is it more or less conscious than a fruit fly. I tend to work at a more general, or abstract level, and I think that consciousness needs some amount of self-reflection, two universal machines in front of each other, at least. If Mars Rover can add and multiply it may have the consciousness of Robinson Arithmetic. If Mars Rover believe in enough arithmetical induction rules, it can quickly be trivially Löbian. But its consciousness will develop when he identifies genuinely and privately itself with its unameable first person (Bp p). Using Bp for public science and opinions. It will build a memorable and unique self-experience. To be clear, Mars Rover may still be largely behind the fruit fly in matter of consciousness. The fruit fly seems capable to appreciate wine, for example. Mars Rover is still too much an infant, it wants only satisfy its mother company, not yet itself. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/11/2010 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Mar 2010, at 17:57, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/11/2010 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't see how we could use Tononi's paper to provide a physical or a computational role to inactive device in the actual supervenience of a an actual computation currently not using that device. I'm not sure I understand that question. It seems to turn on what is meant by using that device. Is my brain using a neuron that isn't firing? I'd say yes, it is part of the system and it's not firing is significant. Two old guys A and B decide to buy each one a car. They bought identical cars, and paid the same price. But B's car has a defect, above 90 mi/h the engine explode. But both A and B will peacefully enjoy driving their car all the rest of their life. They were old, and never go quicker than 60 mi/h until they die. Would you say that A's car was driving but that B's car was only partially driving. If I'm a multiple-worlder I'd say B's car is driving with a lower probability than A's. What about a brain with clever neurons. For example the neurons N24 anticipates that he will be useless for the next ten minutes, which gives him the time to make a pause cafe and to talk with some glial cells friends. Then after ten minutes he come back and do very well its job. Would that brain be less conscious? He did not miss any messages. Same answer. The significance of the neuron (firing or not firing) is computational. If for the precise computation C the neuron n is not used in the interval of time (t1 t2), you may replace it by a functionally equivalent machine for the working in that time interval. There is no problem Well, there's not *that* problem. when you make consciousness supervene on the abstract relevant computations, that the existence of some relations between some numbers (given that I have chosen the base elementary arithmetic (it is Turing Universal). To attach consciousness on physical activity + the abstract counterfactual, is useless. It introduces more difficulty than what it solves. With comp that needed physical activity has to be turing emulable itself: if not it means you make consciousness depending on something not turing emulable, and you cannot say yes to the doctor qua computatio. I see Tononi's theory as providing a kind of answer to questions like, Is a Mars Rover concsious and if so, what is it conscious of? Is it more or less conscious than a fruit fly. I tend to work at a more general, or abstract level, and I think that consciousness needs some amount of self-reflection, two universal machines in front of each other, at least. If Mars Rover can add and multiply it may have the consciousness of Robinson Arithmetic. If Mars Rover believe in enough arithmetical induction rules, it can quickly be trivially Löbian. But its consciousness will develop when he identifies genuinely and privately itself with its unameable first person (Bp p). Using Bp for public science and opinions. It will build a memorable and unique self-experience. To be clear, Mars Rover may still be largely behind the fruit fly in matter of consciousness. The fruit fly seems capable to appreciate wine, for example. Mars Rover is still too much an infant, it wants only satisfy its mother company, not yet itself. But it also doesn't conceive of itself and its mother company - only it's mission. I think the interesting point is that the two may have incommensurable consciousness; they may be conscious of different things in different ways. Brent Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 12 March 2010 04:17, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: [Stathis] We can do a thought experiment. A brain is rigged to explode unless it goes down one particular pathway. Does it change the computation being implemented if it is given the right input so that it does go down that pathway? Does it change the consciousness? Is it different to a brain that lacks the connections to begin with so that it does not explode but simply stops working unless it is provided with the right input? What do you lose if you say both brains have exactly the same conscious experience as a normal brain which goes down that pathway? [Brent] You might have diminished consciousness. If you identify consciousness with a computation, as in a digital computer, then any specific computation will leave some components unused. But 0's are as much a part of the computation as 1's. So just because the same causal chain of gates or neurons is used it is not the same computation unless it is relative to the same possible computations. Or at least that's one way to look at it. It's not magic, it's just that computation and consciousness maybe holistic properties of a system. When a brain is not being consciously used at all, because the person is in dreamless sleep, the counterfactuals are all still there; they just don't have any effect. As the person is waking up their consciousness for the first second might be very limited, while again the counterfactual behaviour is still there. A common sense conclusion would be that only that part of the system which is being used contributes to consciousness. What reason is there to reject this conclusion? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/11/2010 2:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 12 March 2010 04:17, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: [Stathis] We can do a thought experiment. A brain is rigged to explode unless it goes down one particular pathway. Does it change the computation being implemented if it is given the right input so that it does go down that pathway? Does it change the consciousness? Is it different to a brain that lacks the connections to begin with so that it does not explode but simply stops working unless it is provided with the right input? What do you lose if you say both brains have exactly the same conscious experience as a normal brain which goes down that pathway? [Brent] You might have diminished consciousness. If you identify consciousness with a computation, as in a digital computer, then any specific computation will leave some components unused. But 0's are as much a part of the computation as 1's. So just because the same causal chain of gates or neurons is used it is not the same computation unless it is relative to the same possible computations. Or at least that's one way to look at it. It's not magic, it's just that computation and consciousness maybe holistic properties of a system. When a brain is not being consciously used at all, because the person is in dreamless sleep, the counterfactuals are all still there; Hmmm. Are they? Suppose instead of being asleep the person is anesthetized and cooled so there is no activity at all in the brain...it's inert. Are counterfactuals still there? From an information processing standpoint, counterfactuals only exist because they are alternate possibilities. Possibility though is too vague to base a theory on. Suppose it is refined by saying the counterfactuals are defined by the probabilities of quantum mechanics. I think this is what Jack is getting at when he appeals to physical laws. they just don't have any effect. As the person is waking up their consciousness for the first second might be very limited, while again the counterfactual behaviour is still there. A common sense conclusion would be that only that part of the system which is being used contributes to consciousness. What reason is there to reject this conclusion? Because it leads to the MGA, where consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. Bruno uses this to argue that the consciousness must be associated with the abstract counterfactuals which are part of the computation. But that raises the problem that arbitrarily many abstract computations exist which include that same part. Bruno makes a virtue of this by saying that is why there are multiple worlds in QM (although it seems to allow many more worlds than QM would). But if we're going to appeal to things happening in the multiple worlds we can maintain the counterfactuals without going to Platonia. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 12 March 2010 10:46, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: [Stathis] When a brain is not being consciously used at all, because the person is in dreamless sleep, the counterfactuals are all still there; [Brent] Hmmm. Are they? Suppose instead of being asleep the person is anesthetized and cooled so there is no activity at all in the brain...it's inert. Are counterfactuals still there? From an information processing standpoint, counterfactuals only exist because they are alternate possibilities. Possibility though is too vague to base a theory on. Suppose it is refined by saying the counterfactuals are defined by the probabilities of quantum mechanics. I think this is what Jack is getting at when he appeals to physical laws. The pathways are all intact and can spring into action if the person wakes up. There is a continuum from everything being there and ready to use immediately, to all there but parts of the system dormant, to not there at all but could be added if the person has extensive surgery. And a firm plan to do the surgery would be different again from the mere availability of surgery. You would need an entire theory of how the probability of the counterfactual behaviour occurring would affect consciousness [Stathis] they just don't have any effect. As the person is waking up their consciousness for the first second might be very limited, while again the counterfactual behaviour is still there. A common sense conclusion would be that only that part of the system which is being used contributes to consciousness. What reason is there to reject this conclusion? [Brent] Because it leads to the MGA, where consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. Bruno uses this to argue that the consciousness must be associated with the abstract counterfactuals which are part of the computation. But that raises the problem that arbitrarily many abstract computations exist which include that same part. Bruno makes a virtue of this by saying that is why there are multiple worlds in QM (although it seems to allow many more worlds than QM would). But if we're going to appeal to things happening in the multiple worlds we can maintain the counterfactuals without going to Platonia. It's not incompatible with any physical observation to say that consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/11/2010 4:35 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 12 March 2010 10:46, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: [Stathis] When a brain is not being consciously used at all, because the person is in dreamless sleep, the counterfactuals are all still there; [Brent] Hmmm. Are they? Suppose instead of being asleep the person is anesthetized and cooled so there is no activity at all in the brain...it's inert. Are counterfactuals still there? From an information processing standpoint, counterfactuals only exist because they are alternate possibilities. Possibility though is too vague to base a theory on. Suppose it is refined by saying the counterfactuals are defined by the probabilities of quantum mechanics. I think this is what Jack is getting at when he appeals to physical laws. The pathways are all intact and can spring into action if the person wakes up. There is a continuum from everything being there and ready to use immediately, to all there but parts of the system dormant, to not there at all but could be added if the person has extensive surgery. That would be a classical change and different from a MWI possibility. And a firm plan to do the surgery would be different again from the mere availability of surgery. You would need an entire theory of how the probability of the counterfactual behaviour occurring would affect consciousness I doesn't occur - that's why it's counterfactual. We have a theory about the probability of counterfactuals occuring, i.e. QM. MWI has the effect of making the counterfactuals available as explanations (at least metaphysically). Tononi's theory is one that relates this to consciousness. Bruno's theory has the same requirement, except the counterfactuals are in the abstract computation. [Stathis] they just don't have any effect. As the person is waking up their consciousness for the first second might be very limited, while again the counterfactual behaviour is still there. A common sense conclusion would be that only that part of the system which is being used contributes to consciousness. What reason is there to reject this conclusion? [Brent] Because it leads to the MGA, where consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. Bruno uses this to argue that the consciousness must be associated with the abstract counterfactuals which are part of the computation. But that raises the problem that arbitrarily many abstract computations exist which include that same part. Bruno makes a virtue of this by saying that is why there are multiple worlds in QM (although it seems to allow many more worlds than QM would). But if we're going to appeal to things happening in the multiple worlds we can maintain the counterfactuals without going to Platonia. It's not incompatible with any physical observation to say that consciousness is instantiated by just a recorded sequence. Is it incompatible with any physical observation to say that consciousness is instantiated by a rock? The only consciousness we have observation of is our own 1st person. It's not plausible that it's a recording, though in some sense it may be logically possible. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Mon, 3/8/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. That's not the argument Chalmers made, and indeed he couldn't have, since he believes zombies are possible; he instead talks about fading qualia. If you start out believing that computer zombies are NOT possible, the original thought experiment is moot; you already believe the conclusion. His argument is aimed at dualists, who are NOT computationalists to start out. Since partial consciousness is possible, which he didn't take into account, his argument _fails_; a dualist who does believe zombies are possible should have no problem believing that partial zombies are. So dualists don't have to be computationalists after all. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. Partial consciousness is possible and again ruins any such argument. If you don't believe to start out that consciousness can be based on whatever (e.g. nothing), you don't have any reason to accept the conclusion. whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. That is behaviorism, not computationalism, and I certainly don't believe it. I wouldn't say that a computer that uses a huge lookup table algorithm would be conscious. The requirement that a computer be able to handle the counterfactuals in order to be conscious seems to have been brought in to make computationalists feel better about computationalism. Not at all. It was always part of the notion of computation. Would you buy a PC that only plays a movie? It must handle all possible inputs in a reliable manner. Brains are all probabilistic in that disaster could at any point befall them causing them to deviate widely from normal behaviour It is not a problem, it just seems like one at first glance. Such cases include input to the formal system; for some inputs, the device halts or acts differently. Hence my talk of derailable computations in my MCI paper. or else prevent them from deviating at all from a rigidly determined pathway If that were done, that would change what computation is being implemented. Depending on how it was done, it might or might not affect consciousness. We can't do such an experimemt. --- On Tue, 3/9/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Suppose box A contains a probabilistic mechanism that displays the right I/O behaviour 99% of the time. Would the consciousness of the system be perfectly normal until the box misbehaved ... ? I'd expect it to be. As above, I'd treat it as a box with input. Now, as far as we know, there really is no such thing as true randomness. It's all down to initial conditions (which are certainly to be treated as input) or to quantum splitting (which is again deterministic). I don't believe in true randomness. However, if true randomness is possible, then you'd have the same problem with Platonia. In addition to having all of the determininistic Turing machines, you'd have all of the probabilistic Turing machines. It is not an issue that bears on physicalism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/10/2010 6:57 PM, Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Mon, 3/8/10, Stathis Papaioannoustath...@gmail.com wrote: In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. That's not the argument Chalmers made, and indeed he couldn't have, since he believes zombies are possible; he instead talks about fading qualia. If you start out believing that computer zombies are NOT possible, the original thought experiment is moot; you already believe the conclusion. His argument is aimed at dualists, who are NOT computationalists to start out. Since partial consciousness is possible, which he didn't take into account, his argument _fails_; a dualist who does believe zombies are possible should have no problem believing that partial zombies are. So dualists don't have to be computationalists after all. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. Partial consciousness is possible and again ruins any such argument. If you don't believe to start out that consciousness can be based on whatever (e.g. nothing), you don't have any reason to accept the conclusion. whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. That is behaviorism, not computationalism, and I certainly don't believe it. I wouldn't say that a computer that uses a huge lookup table algorithm would be conscious. Whatever consciousness is, it's almost certainly a system level property. We're not going to find a neuron even a small group of neurons that are conscious. If it's a system level property, then the system will include parts that aren't doing anything at any given time - yet the very fact they aren't will be part of the implementation of consciousness in that system. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
HI, 2010/3/11 Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com --- On Mon, 3/8/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. That's not the argument Chalmers made, and indeed he couldn't have, since he believes zombies are possible; he instead talks about fading qualia. If you start out believing that computer zombies are NOT possible, the original thought experiment is moot; you already believe the conclusion. His argument is aimed at dualists, who are NOT computationalists to start out. Since partial consciousness is possible, Well you say so... but what is it exactly ? which he didn't take into account, his argument _fails_; a dualist who does believe zombies are possible should have no problem believing that partial zombies are. So dualists don't have to be computationalists after all. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. Partial consciousness is possible Saying it again doesn't render it true nor meaningful. and again ruins any such argument. If you don't believe to start out that consciousness can be based on whatever (e.g. nothing), you don't have any reason to accept the conclusion. whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. That is behaviorism, not computationalism, and I certainly don't believe it. I wouldn't say that a computer that uses a huge lookup table algorithm would be conscious. The requirement that a computer be able to handle the counterfactuals in order to be conscious seems to have been brought in to make computationalists feel better about computationalism. Not at all. It was always part of the notion of computation. Would you buy a PC that only plays a movie? It must handle all possible inputs in a reliable manner. I wouldn't... but if it plays a movie, it does perform a computation, I wouldn't buy a *general purpose* computer which does only one computation... because it would obviously not be a general purpose computer. Brains are all probabilistic in that disaster could at any point befall them causing them to deviate widely from normal behaviour It is not a problem, it just seems like one at first glance. Such cases include input to the formal system; for some inputs, the device halts or acts differently. Hence my talk of derailable computations in my MCI paper. or else prevent them from deviating at all from a rigidly determined pathway If that were done, that would change what computation is being implemented. Depending on how it was done, it might or might not affect consciousness. We can't do such an experimemt. --- On Tue, 3/9/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Suppose box A contains a probabilistic mechanism that displays the right I/O behaviour 99% of the time. Would the consciousness of the system be perfectly normal until the box misbehaved ... ? I'd expect it to be. As above, I'd treat it as a box with input. Now, as far as we know, there really is no such thing as true randomness. It's all down to initial conditions (which are certainly to be treated as input) or to quantum splitting (which is again deterministic). I don't believe in true randomness. However, if true randomness is possible, then you'd have the same problem with Platonia. In addition to having all of the determininistic Turing machines, you'd have all of the probabilistic Turing machines. It is not an issue that bears on physicalism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 08 Mar 2010, at 06:46, Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Tue, 3/2/10, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: computationalist theory of mind would amount to the claim that consciousness supervenes only on realisations capable of instantiating this complete range of underlying physical activity (i.e. factual + counterfactual) in virtue of relevant physical laws. Right (assuming physicalism). Of course, implementing only part of the range of a computation that leads to consciousness might lead to the same consciousness, if it is the right part. What do you mean by right part? In the case of a mechanism with the appropriate arrangements for counterfactuals - i.e. one that in principle at least could be re- run in such a way as to elicit the counterfactual activity - the question of whether the relevant physical law is causal, or merely inferred, would appear to be incidental. Causality is needed to define implementation of a computation because otherwise we only have correlations. Correlations could be coincidental or due to a common cause (such as the running of a movie). Is is physical causality? Or computational causality. Which needs only a universal mathematical base (like arithmetic, combinators, ...). I try to understand your physical or platonic. --- On Fri, 3/5/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If the inputs to the remaining brain tissue are the same as they would have been normally then effectively you have replaced the missing parts with a magical processor, and I would say that the thought experiment shows that the consciousness must be replicated in this magical processor. No, that's wrong. Having the right inputs could be due to luck (which is conceptually the cleanest way), or it could be due to pre- recording data from a previous simulation. The only consciousness present is the partial one in the remaining brain. I have no clue by what you mean by partial consciousness. Suppose a brain is implementing a computation to which some pain can be associated to the person owning that brain. Suppose that neuron B is never used, and remain inactive, during that computation. Eliminating the neuron B does not change the physical activity, but would change the counterfactuals. Would such an elimination of inactive neuron alleviate the pain? But then the person will change its behavior (taking less powerful pain killer for example), and this despite the brain implements the same computation? Continuing in that direction, we could build a partial zombie. Partial consciousness does not make sense for me. Computationalism doesn't necessarily mean only digital computations, and it can include super-Turing machines that perform infinite steps in finite time. The main characteristic of computationalism is its identification of consciousness with systems that causally solve initial-value math problems given the right mapping from system to formal states. That is weird. Can you give a reference? I should also note that if you _can't_ make a partial quantum brain, you probably don't have to worry about the things my argument is designed to attack, either, such as substituting _part_ of the brain with a movie (with no change in the rest) and invoking the 'fading qualia' argument. Like in the movie graph? Look at MGA3 thread of last year. Bruno, do you have the link? I searched the list archive but the only references to fading qualia I could find are to the argument I mentioned, in which a brain is progressively substituted for by a movie, as Bishop does to attack computationalism. It _is_ different than Chalmers, who substitutes components that _do_ have the right counterfactuals - Chalmers' argument is a defense of computationalism (albeit from a dualist point of view), not an attack on it. Search the thread MG11, MGA2 and MGA3. I don't use the expression fading qualia. I ask if consciousness disappear or not. It is is an old argument already in my 1988 papers and earlier talks. All of the 'fading qualia' arguments fail, for the reason I discussed in my PB paper: consciousness could be partial, not faded. I am sure that yours is no different in that regard. You are the one saying there is something wrong, you are the one who should be sure about this, and cite the passage you have refuted. What do you mean by partial consciousness? In what sense this would deter the movie graph. You don't give any indices. If consciousness supervenes on the physical realization of a computation, including the inactive part, it means you attach consciousness on an unknown physical phenomenon. It is a magical move which blurs the difficulty. There is no new physics or magic involved in taking laws and counterfactuals into account, obviously. So you seem to be just talking nonsense. If consciousness supervene of laws, which laws? The (physical)
Re: problem of size '10
On 9 March 2010 09:06, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: If consciousness supervenes on the physical realization of a computation, including the inactive part, it means you attach consciousness on an unknown physical phenomenon. It is a magical move which blurs the difficulty. There is no new physics or magic involved in taking laws and counterfactuals into account, obviously. So you seem to be just talking nonsense. The only charitable interpretation of what you are saying that I can think of is that, like Jesse Mazer, you don't think that details of situations that don't occur could have any effect on consciousness. Did you follow the 'Factual Implications Conjecture' (FIC)? I do find it basically plausible, and it's no problem for physicalism. For example, suppose we have a pair of black boxes, A and B. The external functioning of each box is simple: it takes a single bit as input, and as output it gives a single bit which has the same value as the input bit. So they are trivial gates. We can insert them into our computer with no problem. Suppose that in the actual run, A comes into play, while B does not. The thing about these boxes is, while their input-output relations are simple, inside are very complex Rube Goldberg devices. If you study schematics of these devices, it would be very hard to predict their functioning without actually doing the experiments. Now, if box A were to function differently, the physical activity in our computer would have been different. But there is a chain of causality that makes it work. If you reject the idea that such a system could play a role in consciousness, I would characterize that as a variant of the well-known Chinese Room argument. I don't agree that it's a problem. It's harder to believe that the way in which box B functions could matter. Since it didn't come into play, perhaps no one knows what it would have done. That's why I agree that the FIC is plausible. However, in principle, there would be no 'magic' involved even if the functioning of B did matter. It's a part of the overall system, and the overall system implements the computation. But the consciousness of the system would be the same *whatever* the mechanism inside box A, wouldn't it? Suppose box A contains a probabilistic mechanism that displays the right I/O behaviour 99% of the time. Would the consciousness of the system be perfectly normal until the box misbehaved, or would the consciousness of the system be (somehow) 1% diminished even while the box was functioning appropriately? The latter idea seems to me to invoke magic, as if the system knows there is a dodgy box in there even if there is no evidence of it. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 8 March 2010 16:46, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Fri, 3/5/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If the inputs to the remaining brain tissue are the same as they would have been normally then effectively you have replaced the missing parts with a magical processor, and I would say that the thought experiment shows that the consciousness must be replicated in this magical processor. No, that's wrong. Having the right inputs could be due to luck (which is conceptually the cleanest way), or it could be due to pre-recording data from a previous simulation. The only consciousness present is the partial one in the remaining brain. In the original fading qualia thought experiment the artificial neurons could be considered black boxes, the consciousness status of which is unknown. The conclusion is that if the artificial neurons lack consciousness, then the brain would be partly zombified, which is absurd. I think this holds *whatever* is in the black boxes: computers, biological tissue, a demon pulling strings or nothing. It is of course extremely unlikely that the rest of the brain would behave normally if the artificial neurons were in fact empty boxes, but if it did, then intelligent behaviour would be normal and consciousness would also be normal. Even if the brain were completely removed and, miraculously, the empty-headed body carried on normally, passing the Turing test and so on, then it would be conscious. This is simply another way of saying that philosophical zombies are impossible: whatever is going on inside the putative zombie's head, if it reproduces the I/O behaviour of a human, it will have the mind of a human. The requirement that a computer be able to handle the counterfactuals in order to be conscious seems to have been brought in to make computationalists feel better about computationalism. Certainly, a computer that behaves randomly or rigidly follows one pathway is not a very useful computer, but why should that render any computations it does correctly perform invalid or, if still valid as computations, incapable of giving rise to consciousness? Brains are all probabilistic in that disaster could at any point befall them causing them to deviate widely from normal behaviour or else prevent them from deviating at all from a rigidly determined pathway, and I don't see in either case how their consciousness could possibly be affected as a result. computationalism is only a subset of functionalism. I used to think so but the terms don't quite mean what they sound like they should. It's a common misconception that functionalism means computationalism generalized to include analog and noncomputatble systems. Functionalism as philosophers use it focuses on input and output. It holds that any system which behaves the same in terms of i/o and which acts the same in terms of memory effects has the same consciousness. There are different ways to make this more precise, and I believe that computationalism is one way, but it is not the only way. For example, some functionalists would claim that a 'swampman' who spontaneously formed in a swamp due to random thermal motion of atoms, but who is physically identical to a human and coincidentally speaks perfect English, would not be conscious because he didn't have the right inputs. I obviously reject that; 'swapman' would be a normal human. Computationalism doesn't necessarily mean only digital computations, and it can include super-Turing machines that perform infinite steps in finite time. The main characteristic of computationalism is its identification of consciousness with systems that causally solve initial-value math problems given the right mapping from system to formal states. It's perhaps just a matter of definition but I would have thought the requirement for a hypercomputer was not compatible with computationalism, but potentially could still come under functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 08 Mar 2010, at 10:08, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: It's perhaps just a matter of definition but I would have thought the requirement for a hypercomputer was not compatible with computationalism, but potentially could still come under functionalism. Putnam(*) is responsible for introducing functionalism, and he defines it explicitly in term of emulability by Turing Machines. The only difference with computationalism is that computationalism explicitly refer to the (unknown) level of substitution, something which remains implicit in Putnam's paper. Now, if UDA is simpler with computationalism (or comp +oracle), AUDA, and thus machine theology, works for a vast set of weakening of computationalism (from machine with oracles, to abstract highly non effective notion of probability defined in terms of subset of models of theories, like in Solovay paper). (*) PUTNAM H., 1960, Minds and Machines, Dimensions of Mind : A Symposium, Sidney Hook (Ed.), New-York University Press, New-York. Repris dans Anderson A. R. (Ed.),1964. ANDERSON A.R. (ed.), 1964, Minds and Machine, Prentice Hall inc. New Jersey. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 06 Mar 2010, at 23:54, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/6/2010 5:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2010, at 03:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/5/2010 11:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In this list I have already well explained the seven step of UDA, and one difficulty remains in the step 8, which is the difference between a computation and a description of computation. Due to the static character of Platonia, some believes it is the same thing, but it is not, and this is hard to explain. That hardness is reflected in the AUDA: the 'translation' of UDA in arithmetic. The subtlety is that again, the existence of a computation is true if and only if the existence of a description of the computation exist, but that is true at the level G*, and not at the G level, so that such an equivalence is not directly available, and it does not allow to confuse a computation (a mathematical relation among numbers), and a description of a computation (a number). This mixing of existence and true in the context of a logic confuses me. I understand you take a Platonic view of arithmetic so that all propositions of arithmetic are either true or false, even though most of them are not provable (from any given finite axioms), so true=/=provable. A computation is not true or false. Only a proposition can be true or false. But the existence of a computation is a proposition. I was talking about the existence of a computation. This can be true or false. Let c be a description of a computation. The following can be true or false: c describes a computation That's true ex hypothesi. OK. or c is a computation If I interpret c as a definite description, i.e. name, that's true. OK. Otherwise it's false. Indeed. or c is the Gödel number of a computation I suppose that depends on the form used in the description c. If the Godel numbering scheme is defined and then c is described as being a certain number in that scheme it's true. Yes. Otherwise it's false. Ex(x = c c describes a computation) == the computation c exists. OK? To say that something exists, is the same as saying that an existential proposition is true. But what does it mean to say a computation is true at one level and not another? Does it mean provable? or it there is some other meaning of true relative to a logic? There is only one meaning of true, in this arithmetical (digital) frame. Here by computation I meant a finite computation (to make things easier). To be a (description of a) finite computation is a decidable predicate. You can decide in a finite time if c is a computation or not. So if a particular computation c exists, So I should think of c in the above sentence as a description - distinct from the computation itself. If I informally refer to computing the largest prime less than 100, is that an example of c or is it an equivalence class of many different c's. It is very difficult to explain this, especially by mail. We have the same difficulty with numbers and actually with all mathematical notions, and this both when we explain a notion to a machine or to a human. For example the number 4 is different from 4, four, 2+2, etc. But to talk about the number 4 I have to use a description, and then, automatically, we introduce an ambiguity. With the numbers, we manage that difficulty very well, by the use and practice. But when we talk about the conceptual difference between a notion and its representation, it is harder to explain, given that we have to go from a description to a description of that description, and hope the reader will abstract from the first description, which in this context, necessitates some familiarity or training. In particular, if I say, let c be computation, I am referring to the computation itself (an abstract immaterial relation between numbers, different from any representation of it). It is certainly not an equivalence class of description. In this case c refers to the real thing. PA can prove that fact, and reciprocally, if PA proves that fact then the computation c exists. PA, or any sound Löbian machine. Let us write k for the proposition c exists. What I just said can be written c - Bc, and Bc - c. i.e. c - Bc. What happened to k? I should have written: k - Bk, and Bk - k. i.e. k - Bk. Or, I should have directly commit the language trick: let c be the proposition c exists. I recall you that G is the complete logic of provability, PROVABLE by the machine; and G* is the complete logic of provability, TRUE for the machine. As you notice PROVABLE is different from TRUE, and those two logics are different. Given that we restrict ourself on correct machine, we have that G is strictly included in G*. What I said is that G* proves c - Bc (so the existence of a computation is equivalent with the provability of the existence of a computation). But G does not prove c
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Tue, 3/2/10, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: computationalist theory of mind would amount to the claim that consciousness supervenes only on realisations capable of instantiating this complete range of underlying physical activity (i.e. factual + counterfactual) in virtue of relevant physical laws. Right (assuming physicalism). Of course, implementing only part of the range of a computation that leads to consciousness might lead to the same consciousness, if it is the right part. In the case of a mechanism with the appropriate arrangements for counterfactuals - i.e. one that in principle at least could be re-run in such a way as to elicit the counterfactual activity - the question of whether the relevant physical law is causal, or merely inferred, would appear to be incidental. Causality is needed to define implementation of a computation because otherwise we only have correlations. Correlations could be coincidental or due to a common cause (such as the running of a movie). --- On Fri, 3/5/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If the inputs to the remaining brain tissue are the same as they would have been normally then effectively you have replaced the missing parts with a magical processor, and I would say that the thought experiment shows that the consciousness must be replicated in this magical processor. No, that's wrong. Having the right inputs could be due to luck (which is conceptually the cleanest way), or it could be due to pre-recording data from a previous simulation. The only consciousness present is the partial one in the remaining brain. computationalism is only a subset of functionalism. I used to think so but the terms don't quite mean what they sound like they should. It's a common misconception that functionalism means computationalism generalized to include analog and noncomputatble systems. Functionalism as philosophers use it focuses on input and output. It holds that any system which behaves the same in terms of i/o and which acts the same in terms of memory effects has the same consciousness. There are different ways to make this more precise, and I believe that computationalism is one way, but it is not the only way. For example, some functionalists would claim that a 'swampman' who spontaneously formed in a swamp due to random thermal motion of atoms, but who is physically identical to a human and coincidentally speaks perfect English, would not be conscious because he didn't have the right inputs. I obviously reject that; 'swapman' would be a normal human. Computationalism doesn't necessarily mean only digital computations, and it can include super-Turing machines that perform infinite steps in finite time. The main characteristic of computationalism is its identification of consciousness with systems that causally solve initial-value math problems given the right mapping from system to formal states. --- On Fri, 3/5/10, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: The only fundamental difficulty I can see with this is if the brain actually uses quantum computation, as suggested by some evidence that photopsynthesis does (quoted by Bruno in another thread) - in which case it might be impossible, even in principle, to reproduce the activity of the rest of the brain (I'm not sure whether it would, but it seems a lot more likely). It seems very unlikely that the brain uses QC for neural processes, which are based on electrical and chemical signals which decohere rapidly. Also, I wouldn't make too much of the hype about photosynthesis using it - that seems an exaggeration; you can't make a general purpose quantum computer just by having some waves interfere. Protein folding might use it in a sense but again nothing that could be used for a real QC. But, that aside, even a quantum computer could be made partial. I think that due to the no-signalling condition, the partial QC's interaction with the other part amounts to some combination of unitary operations which can be perfomed on the partial QC, and entanglement-induced decoherence. You would still have to have something entangled with the partial QC but it wouldn't have to perform the computations associated with the missing parts if you perform the right operations on the remaining parts and know when to entangle or recohere things, I think. In any case, a normal classical computer could simulate a QC - which should be good enough for a computationalist - and you could make the simulation partial in the normal way. I should also note that if you _can't_ make a partial quantum brain, you probably don't have to worry about the things my argument is designed to attack, either, such as substituting _part_ of the brain with a movie (with no change in the rest) and invoking the 'fading qualia' argument. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List
Re: problem of size '10
On 06 Mar 2010, at 03:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/5/2010 11:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In this list I have already well explained the seven step of UDA, and one difficulty remains in the step 8, which is the difference between a computation and a description of computation. Due to the static character of Platonia, some believes it is the same thing, but it is not, and this is hard to explain. That hardness is reflected in the AUDA: the 'translation' of UDA in arithmetic. The subtlety is that again, the existence of a computation is true if and only if the existence of a description of the computation exist, but that is true at the level G*, and not at the G level, so that such an equivalence is not directly available, and it does not allow to confuse a computation (a mathematical relation among numbers), and a description of a computation (a number). This mixing of existence and true in the context of a logic confuses me. I understand you take a Platonic view of arithmetic so that all propositions of arithmetic are either true or false, even though most of them are not provable (from any given finite axioms), so true=/=provable. A computation is not true or false. Only a proposition can be true or false. But the existence of a computation is a proposition. I was talking about the existence of a computation. This can be true or false. Let c be a description of a computation. The following can be true or false: c describes a computation or c is a computation or c is the Gödel number of a computation Ex(x = c c describes a computation) == the computation c exists. OK? To say that something exists, is the same as saying that an existential proposition is true. But what does it mean to say a computation is true at one level and not another? Does it mean provable? or it there is some other meaning of true relative to a logic? There is only one meaning of true, in this arithmetical (digital) frame. Here by computation I meant a finite computation (to make things easier). To be a (description of a) finite computation is a decidable predicate. You can decide in a finite time if c is a computation or not. So if a particular computation c exists, PA can prove that fact, and reciprocally, if PA proves that fact then the computation c exists. PA, or any sound Löbian machine. Let us write k for the proposition c exists. What I just said can be written c - Bc, and Bc - c. i.e. c - Bc. I recall you that G is the complete logic of provability, PROVABLE by the machine; and G* is the complete logic of provability, TRUE for the machine. As you notice PROVABLE is different from TRUE, and those two logics are different. Given that we restrict ourself on correct machine, we have that G is strictly included in G*. What I said is that G* proves c - Bc (so the existence of a computation is equivalent with the provability of the existence of a computation). But G does not prove c - Bc . G does prove c - Bc (the existence of a computation entails the provability of the existence of a computation), but G does not prove Bc - c. G does not prove that the provability of the existence of a computation entails the existence of that computation. c - Bc belongs to the corona G* minus G. It is true, but not provable by the machine. OK? Once we fix a Löbian machine, we keep the same notion of truth (first hypostase), and the same arithmetical proposition will be the provable one. But according to the point of view chosen (the other hypostases), they obey different logics. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/6/2010 5:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Mar 2010, at 03:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 3/5/2010 11:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In this list I have already well explained the seven step of UDA, and one difficulty remains in the step 8, which is the difference between a computation and a description of computation. Due to the static character of Platonia, some believes it is the same thing, but it is not, and this is hard to explain. That hardness is reflected in the AUDA: the 'translation' of UDA in arithmetic. The subtlety is that again, the existence of a computation is true if and only if the existence of a description of the computation exist, but that is true at the level G*, and not at the G level, so that such an equivalence is not directly available, and it does not allow to confuse a computation (a mathematical relation among numbers), and a description of a computation (a number). This mixing of existence and true in the context of a logic confuses me. I understand you take a Platonic view of arithmetic so that all propositions of arithmetic are either true or false, even though most of them are not provable (from any given finite axioms), so true=/=provable. A computation is not true or false. Only a proposition can be true or false. But the existence of a computation is a proposition. I was talking about the existence of a computation. This can be true or false. Let c be a description of a computation. The following can be true or false: c describes a computation That's true ex hypothesi. or c is a computation If I interpret c as a definite description, i.e. name, that's true. Otherwise it's false. or c is the Gödel number of a computation I suppose that depends on the form used in the description c. If the Godel numbering scheme is defined and then c is described as being a certain number in that scheme it's true. Otherwise it's false. Ex(x = c c describes a computation) == the computation c exists. OK? To say that something exists, is the same as saying that an existential proposition is true. But what does it mean to say a computation is true at one level and not another? Does it mean provable? or it there is some other meaning of true relative to a logic? There is only one meaning of true, in this arithmetical (digital) frame. Here by computation I meant a finite computation (to make things easier). To be a (description of a) finite computation is a decidable predicate. You can decide in a finite time if c is a computation or not. So if a particular computation c exists, So I should think of c in the above sentence as a description - distinct from the computation itself. If I informally refer to computing the largest prime less than 100, is that an example of c or is it an equivalence class of many different c's. PA can prove that fact, and reciprocally, if PA proves that fact then the computation c exists. PA, or any sound Löbian machine. Let us write k for the proposition c exists. What I just said can be written c - Bc, and Bc - c. i.e. c - Bc. What happened to k? I recall you that G is the complete logic of provability, PROVABLE by the machine; and G* is the complete logic of provability, TRUE for the machine. As you notice PROVABLE is different from TRUE, and those two logics are different. Given that we restrict ourself on correct machine, we have that G is strictly included in G*. What I said is that G* proves c - Bc (so the existence of a computation is equivalent with the provability of the existence of a computation). But G does not prove c - Bc . G does prove c - Bc (the existence of a computation entails the provability of the existence of a computation), Certainly for finite computations since you can just perform the computation to prove it exists. but G does not prove Bc - c. G does not prove that the provability of the existence of a computation entails the existence of that computation. So in G, (Bc ~c) does not lead to a contradiction. Can you give a simple example of such a c in arithmetic? Brent c - Bc belongs to the corona G* minus G. It is true, but not provable by the machine. OK? Once we fix a Löbian machine, we keep the same notion of truth (first hypostase), and the same arithmetical proposition will be the provable one. But according to the point of view chosen (the other hypostases), they obey different logics. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 04 Mar 2010, at 22:59, Jack Mallah wrote: Bruno, I hope you feel better. Thanks. My quarrel with you is nothing personal. Why would I think so? Now I am warned. --- Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that 'prescience' or any kind of problem. This would lead to fading qualia in the case of progressive substitution from the Boolean Graph to the movie graph. I thought you said you don't use the 'fading qualia' argument (see below), which in any case is invalid as my partial brain paper shows. So, you are wrong. It is a different fading qualia argument, older and different from Chlamers. It is explained in my PhD thesis, and earlier article, bur also in MGA3 on this list, and in a paper not yet submitted. Do you agree with the definition I give of the first person and third person in teleportation arguments? I mean I have no clue what you are missing. You confuse MGA and Maudlin's argument. If consciousness supervenes on the physical realization of a computation, including the inactive part, it means you attach consciousness on an unknown physical phenomenon. It is a magical move which blurs the difficulty. Eithr the physical counterfactualness is Turing emulable, or not. If it is, we can emulate it at a some level, and you will have to make consciousness supervene on something not Turing emulable to keep the physical supervenience. gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid though. ? What do you mean by ?? You may cite the paper then, and say where things go wrong. I provide a deductive argument. It is a proof, if you prefer. It is not easy, but most who take the time to study it have not so much problem with the seven first steps, and eventually ask precise questions for the 8th one, which needs some understanding of what is a computation, in the mathematical sense of the terms. The key consists in understanding the difference that exists, even in platonia, between a 'genuine computation, and a mere description of a computation. I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. Not at all. In the comp theory, it means supervenience on the physical realization of a computation. So, it includes supervenience on the counterfactuals? But physical is taken in the agnostic sense. It is whatever is (Turing) universal and stable enough in my neighborhood so that I can bet my immaterial self and its immaterial (mathematica) computation or processing will go through a functional substitution. Eventually, that physical realization is shown to be a sum on an infinity of computation realized in elementary arithmetic. If so, the movie obviously doesn't have the right counterfactuals, Of course. Glad you agree that the movie has no private experience. Most who want to block the UD argument pretend that the movie is conscious (but this leads to other absurdities). so your MGA fails. On the contrary, that was the point. It was a reductio ad absurdo. If consciousness supervenes, in real time and place to a physical activity realizing a computation, and this qua computatio then consciousness supervenes on the movie (MGA2). But this is indeed absurd, and so consciousness does not supervene on the physical activity realizing the computation, but on the computation itself (and then on all computations by first person indeterminacy). This solves also Maudlin's difficulty, given that Maudlin find weird that consciousness supervenience needs the presence of physically inactive entities. I see nothing nontrivial in your arguments. Nice! You agree with the argument then. Or what? Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). ? You evacuate the computation? I have no idea what you mean by that. Computations are implemented based on both activity and counterfactuals, which is the same as saying they supervene on both. Then you have to provide a physical definition of what are
Re: problem of size '10
On Mar 5, 8:43 am, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: and in any case is a thought experiment. The term seems particularly appropriate in this case! Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, The only fundamental difficulty I can see with this is if the brain actually uses quantum computation, as suggested by some evidence that photopsynthesis does (quoted by Bruno in another thread) - in which case it might be impossible, even in principle, to reproduce the activity of the rest of the brain (I'm not sure whether it would, but it seems a lot more likely). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/5/2010 11:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: In this list I have already well explained the seven step of UDA, and one difficulty remains in the step 8, which is the difference between a computation and a description of computation. Due to the static character of Platonia, some believes it is the same thing, but it is not, and this is hard to explain. That hardness is reflected in the AUDA: the 'translation' of UDA in arithmetic. The subtlety is that again, the existence of a computation is true if and only if the existence of a description of the computation exist, but that is true at the level G*, and not at the G level, so that such an equivalence is not directly available, and it does not allow to confuse a computation (a mathematical relation among numbers), and a description of a computation (a number). This mixing of existence and true in the context of a logic confuses me. I understand you take a Platonic view of arithmetic so that all propositions of arithmetic are either true or false, even though most of them are not provable (from any given finite axioms), so true=/=provable. But what does it mean to say a computation is true at one level and not another? Does it mean provable? or it there is some other meaning of true relative to a logic? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 3/5/2010 1:29 PM, Charles wrote: --- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stathis Papaioannoustath...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, The only fundamental difficulty I can see with this is if the brain actually uses quantum computation, as suggested by some evidence that photopsynthesis does (quoted by Bruno in another thread) - in which case it might be impossible, even in principle, to reproduce the activity of the rest of the brain (I'm not sure whether it would, but it seems a lot more likely). Charles That would keep you from cloning the state of the brain, but it should still be possible to reproduce the functionality. So it be like replacing part of your brain with that same part from some other time; you'd lose memories, or have them scrambled, but it wouldn't affect whether or not you had qualia. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ I've finally come around to reading this paper. You may or may not be aware that there is a condition called Anton's syndrome in which some patients who are blind as a result of a lesion to their occipital cortex are unaware that they are blind. It is not a matter of denial: the patients honestly believe they have normal vision, and confabulate when asked to describe things placed in front of them. They are deluded about their qualia, in other words. Interesting, Stathis. I hadn't heard of that before. Despite the superficial similarity, though, it's very different from the partial brains I consider in the paper. similarly in your paper where you consider a gradual removal of brain tissue. It would have to be very specific surgery to produce the sort of delusional state you describe. I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, and in any case is a thought experiment. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
Bruno, I hope you feel better. My quarrel with you is nothing personal. --- Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that 'prescience' or any kind of problem. This would lead to fading qualia in the case of progressive substitution from the Boolean Graph to the movie graph. I thought you said you don't use the 'fading qualia' argument (see below), which in any case is invalid as my partial brain paper shows. So, you are wrong. gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid though. ? What do you mean by ?? I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. Not at all. In the comp theory, it means supervenience on the physical realization of a computation. So, it includes supervenience on the counterfactuals? If so, the movie obviously doesn't have the right counterfactuals, so your MGA fails. I see nothing nontrivial in your arguments. Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). ? You evacuate the computation? I have no idea what you mean by that. Computations are implemented based on both activity and counterfactuals, which is the same as saying they supervene on both. Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. This is not computationalism. Of course it is. Any mainstream computationalist agrees that the right counterfactuals (aka the right 'physical' laws) are needed. Certainly Chalmers would agree. What else would you call this position? (I should note that when I say 'physical laws' it might instead be Platonic laws, if Platonic stuff exists in the right way. I say 'physical' for short. I am agnostic on whether Platonic stuff exists in a strong enough sense. In any case I maintain that it *could* be physical, as far as we know.) Bruno, try to read what I write instead of putting in your own meanings to my words. I try politely to make sense to what you say by interpreting favorably your term. There is no polite way to say this: C'est merde. You tried to twist my words towards your position. Don't. Show the error, then. I have already done so (for MGA): You claim that taking counterfactuals into account amounts to assuming 'prescience' and is thus implausible, but that's NOT true. Using counterfactuals/laws is how computation is defined. Your repeated claims that the error has not been pointed out are a standard crackpot behavior. It helps to be agnostic on primitive matter before trying to understand the reasoning. In that case I should be the perfect candidate, being that I am agnostic on Platonism. Your arguments don't sway me because they don't make any sense. Remember, I came to this list because like many others here I thought up the 'everthing that exists mathematically exists in the same way we do' idea by myself, and only found out online that others had thought of it too. So I'm not prejudiced against it. I just don't know if it's true, and I think it's important not to jump to conclusions. Your 'work' has had no effect on my views on that. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 5 March 2010 06:43, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: similarly in your paper where you consider a gradual removal of brain tissue. It would have to be very specific surgery to produce the sort of delusional state you describe. I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, and in any case is a thought experiment. If the inputs to the remaining brain tissue are the same as they would have been normally then effectively you have replaced the missing parts with a magical processor, and I would say that the thought experiment shows that the consciousness must be replicated in this magical processor. Functionalism is sometimes used interchangeably with computationalism, but computationalism is only a subset of functionalism. It could be, for example, that the brain is not computable because it uses exotic physics of the sort postulated by Penrose. We would then fail in our efforts to make a computer that behaves like a human. However, we could succeed if we used non-computational components. If we replace a neuron with a demon that reproduces its I/O behaviour, the behaviour of the whole brain will be unchanged and its consciousness will also be unchanged. Functionalism is saved, even if computationalism is lost. The main problem I have with fading qualia is that it would lead to the possibility of partial zombies. If partial zombies are possible, then I might be a partial zombie now and not know it. I may, for example, have zombie vision: I believe I can see, I can correctly describe everything I look at, but in fact I am completely lacking in visual perception. What am I missing out on? I am apparently not missing out on anything. The zombie vision is just as good, in every objective and subjective sense, as normal vision. So the objection to the fading qualia is either that the qualia won't fade, or if they do fade they will be replaced by zombie qualia that are indistinguishable from normal qualia and we may as well call normal qualia. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 02 Mar 2010, at 20:33, Jack Mallah wrote: I finally figured out what was happening to my emails: the spam filter got overly agressive and it was sending some of the list posts to the spam folder, but letting others into the inbox. The post I'm replying to now was one that was hidden that way. --- On Sun, 2/14/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. OK. I was talking in a context which is missing. You can also conclude in the prescience of the neurons for example. The point is that if you assume the physical supervenience thesis, you have to abandon comp and/or to introduce magical (non Turing emulable) property in matter. That is false. Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that 'prescience' or any kind of problem. This would lead to fading qualia in the case of progressive substitution from the Boolean Graph to the movie graph. gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid though. ? I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. It is a reasoning by a an absurdum reduction. If you agree (with any computationalist) that we cannot attribute prescience to the neurons, then the physical activity of the movie is the same as the physical activity of the movie, so that physical supervenience + comp entails that the consciousness supervenes on the movie (and this is absurd, mainly because the movie does not compute anything). I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. Not at all. In the comp theory, it means supervenience on the physical realization of a computation. MGA shows physical supervenience entails comp supervenience. No universal machine can know what is its most probable computation, and they can know that below that level, the appearance come from all. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). ? You evacuate the computation? There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. This is not computationalism. Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical laws don't exist per se, and are merely descriptions of what is already in the physical activity. A computationalist physicalist obviously rejects that view. Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. But that is the point: the counterfactuals are in the math. Not in the physical activity. Bruno, try to read what I write instead of putting in your own meanings to my words. I try politely to make sense to what you say by interpreting favorably your term. A physical system has mathematically describable properties. Among these are the physical activity and also the counterfactuals. There is no distinction to make on that basis. That is what I was saying. That has nothing whatsoever to do with Platonism. machine ... its next personal state has to be recovered from the statistics on the possible relative continuations. No, nyet, non, and hell no. That is merely your view, which I obviously reject and which has nothing to recommend it - especially NOT computationalism, your erroneous claims to the contrary. Show the error, then. But I think you have not even read the step zero (of UDA) correctly. To explain comp I assume consensual reality. Comp is really the thesis that I survive with a digital PHYSICAL brain. But we don't assume that PHYSICAL is primitive, and indeed the reasoning shows that Comp entails that the mind body problem is transformed into a
Re: problem of size '10
On 12 February 2010 03:14, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ I've finally come around to reading this paper. You may or may not be aware that there is a condition called Anton's syndrome in which some patients who are blind as a result of a lesion to their occipital cortex are unaware that they are blind. It is not a matter of denial: the patients honestly believe they have normal vision, and confabulate when asked to describe things placed in front of them. They are deluded about their qualia, in other words. It is a type of organic delusional disorder called anosognosia, an inability to recognise an obvious functional deficit in oneself. This is interesting, but I don't think it damages the fading qualia argument. For a start, the syndrome does not occur in most patients who have such cortical lesions, and it is very rare in patients whose lesion is downstream in the visual pathway, such as in the eye or the optic nerve. It is not a routine response to the loss of perception, but rather a specific delusional disorder called an anosognosia, where the patient's reality testing is impaired and he does not recognise a functional deficit obvious to everyone else. More to the point, the fading qualia argument requires that there be no functional change as a result of the neural replacement, and in Anton's syndrome there is a gross functional change, since the patient is blind. A patient who is cognitively intact would immediately notice that something was awry, and even if he was hallucinating rather than blind, he would notice that there was a discrepancy between what he thinks he sees and what his other faculties tell him is really there. There would thus be an immediate change in consciousness, and similarly in your paper where you consider a gradual removal of brain tissue. It would have to be very specific surgery to produce the sort of delusional state you describe. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
I finally figured out what was happening to my emails: the spam filter got overly agressive and it was sending some of the list posts to the spam folder, but letting others into the inbox. The post I'm replying to now was one that was hidden that way. --- On Sun, 2/14/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. OK. I was talking in a context which is missing. You can also conclude in the prescience of the neurons for example. The point is that if you assume the physical supervenience thesis, you have to abandon comp and/or to introduce magical (non Turing emulable) property in matter. That is false. Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that 'prescience' or any kind of problem. gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid though. I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. It is a reasoning by a an absurdum reduction. If you agree (with any computationalist) that we cannot attribute prescience to the neurons, then the physical activity of the movie is the same as the physical activity of the movie, so that physical supervenience + comp entails that the consciousness supervenes on the movie (and this is absurd, mainly because the movie does not compute anything). I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical laws don't exist per se, and are merely descriptions of what is already in the physical activity. A computationalist physicalist obviously rejects that view. Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. But that is the point: the counterfactuals are in the math. Not in the physical activity. Bruno, try to read what I write instead of putting in your own meanings to my words. A physical system has mathematically describable properties. Among these are the physical activity and also the counterfactuals. There is no distinction to make on that basis. That is what I was saying. That has nothing whatsoever to do with Platonism. machine ... its next personal state has to be recovered from the statistics on the possible relative continuations. No, nyet, non, and hell no. That is merely your view, which I obviously reject and which has nothing to recommend it - especially NOT computationalism, your erroneous claims to the contrary. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
2010/3/2 Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com: I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. Just so that I can be sure I've understood what you're saying here: The physical laws you refer to above would be deemed to mediate whatever physical activity is required to realise any (and all) logically possible execution paths implicit in the relevant computations. And if so, the computationalist theory of mind would amount to the claim that consciousness supervenes only on realisations capable of instantiating this complete range of underlying physical activity (i.e. factual + counterfactual) in virtue of relevant physical laws. IOW, there would always be a fully efficacious physical mechanism - of some kind - underlying the computational one. Under this interpretation, the idea would be that the absence of such physical arrangements for realising counterfactual execution paths would disqualify a mechanism as being efficacious in producing consciousness. I'm not entirely clear, however, why you say: Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical laws don't exist per se, and are merely descriptions of what is already in the physical activity. A computationalist physicalist obviously rejects that view. In the case of a mechanism with the appropriate arrangements for counterfactuals - i.e. one that in principle at least could be re-run in such a way as to elicit the counterfactual activity - the question of whether the relevant physical law is causal, or merely inferred, would appear to be incidental. Is the metaphysical status of physical law deemed in some way to be relevant to consciousness? David I finally figured out what was happening to my emails: the spam filter got overly agressive and it was sending some of the list posts to the spam folder, but letting others into the inbox. The post I'm replying to now was one that was hidden that way. --- On Sun, 2/14/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. OK. I was talking in a context which is missing. You can also conclude in the prescience of the neurons for example. The point is that if you assume the physical supervenience thesis, you have to abandon comp and/or to introduce magical (non Turing emulable) property in matter. That is false. Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that 'prescience' or any kind of problem. gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid though. I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. It is a reasoning by a an absurdum reduction. If you agree (with any computationalist) that we cannot attribute prescience to the neurons, then the physical activity of the movie is the same as the physical activity of the movie, so that physical supervenience + comp entails that the consciousness supervenes on the movie (and this is absurd, mainly because the movie does not compute anything). I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical activity only. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka counterfactuals). There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical
RE: problem of size '10
From: stath...@gmail.com Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:23:55 +1100 Subject: Re: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 23 February 2010 04:45, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. How we know what is being computed in this virtual environment? Ordinarily the answer to this is that we wrote the program and so we provide the interpretation of the calculation *in this world*. But it seems that in these thought experiments we are implicitly supposing that the simulation is inherently providing it's own interpretation. Maybe, so; but I see no reason to have confidence that this inherent interpretation is either unique or has anything to do with the interpretation we intended. I suspect that this simulated consciousness is only consciousness *in our external interpretation*. Brent In that case, aren't you saying that there is no objective answer to whether a particular physical process counts as an implementation of a given computation, and that absolutely any process can be seen as implementing any computation if outside observers choose to interpret it that way? That's basically the conclusion Chalmers was trying to avoid in his Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton paper at http://consc.net/papers/rock.html which discussed the implementation problem. One possible answer to this problem is that implementations *are* totally subjective, but this would seem to rule out the possibility of there ever being any sort of objective measure on computations (unless you imagine some privileged observers who are themselves *not* identified with computations and whose interpretations are the only ones that 'count') which makes it hard to solve things like the white rabbit problem that's been discussed often on this list. Jesse It seems to me that perhaps the main reason for assuming that counterfactual behaviour in the brain is needed for consciousness is that otherwise any physical system implements any computation, or equivalently every computation is implemented independently of any physical reality that may or may not exist, and this would be a terrible conclusion for materialists. Well, this is the conclusion I'm trying to avoid with my idea about defining causal structure in terms of logical implications between propositions about events and the laws governing them. I think this idea could avoid the conclusion that any physical system implements any computation, but also avoid the conclusion that implementations of computations need to be defined in terms of counterfactuals. Were you reading the discussion I was having about this with Jack? If not, the old post where I first brought up the idea to Bruno is at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.htmland a more recent post from my discussion with Jack where I give a simple illustration of how it's supposed to work is at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg18335.html If you see any major problems with this idea, let me know! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
Last post didn't show up in email. Seems random. --- On Tue, 2/23/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: -even if there was a one-to-one relationship between distinct computations and distinct observer-moments with distinct qualia, very similar computations could produce very similar qualia, Sure. So you want to know if there are different (though similar in certain ways) computations that would produce _identical_ consciousness? I'd say yes, and see below. Some cases are obvious - e.g. simulating a brain + other stuff and varying the other stuff, which does change the computation. I think though that you are trying to get at something a little more subtle, so I'll go further. In my MCI paper (arxiv.org/abs/0709.0544), I note that One computation may simulate some other computation and give rise to conscious experience only because it does so. In this case it would be unjustified double counting to allow the implementations of both computations to contribute to the measure. This problem is easily avoided by only considering computations which give rise to consciousness in a way that is not due merely to simulation of some other conscious computation. Such a computation is a fundamental conscious computation (FCC). So what you really want to know is whether different FCCs could give rise to the same consciousness. Again I would say yes. you're not really saying that the Earth computation *taken as a whole* is associated with multiple qualia. It's as if we associated distinct qualia with distinct sets- Again I think you are trying to get at FCCs. So now you want to know if a single FCC can give rise to multiple observers. That one is a bit harder but I suspect it could. Well, the idea is that to determine what causal structures are contained in a given universe (whether a physical universe or a computation), we adopt the self-imposed rule that we *only* look at a set of propositions concerning events that actually occurred Aside from that though, the counterfactuals you mention are of a very limited kind, just involving negations of propositions about events that actually occurred. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I thought that the way you (and Chalmers) wanted to define implementations of computations using counterfactuals involved a far richer set of counterfactuals about detailed alternate histories of what could have occurred if the inputs were different. Yes - computations are defined using a full spectrum of counterfactual behaviors. I would certainly not change that definition as it is the simplest way to describe the dynamics of the system. However, I think there could be some common ground between what you want to do and my approach. As I wrote in the MCI paper (p. 21), ... if a computer is built that ‘derails’ for the wrong input, that does not mean the computer does not implement any computations. It is true that it will not implement the same CSSA as it would if it did not suffer from the derailment issue, but it will still implement some CSSA which is related to the normal one. This new CSSA may be sufficient to give rise to consciousness. Now, I think your approach is equivalent to the following conjecture: Factual Implications Conjecture (FIC): If different computations have the same logical implication relationships among states (and conjuctions of states) that actually occur in the actual run, then they give rise to the same type of consciousness regardless of their dynamics for other (counterfactual) situations. I'm not sure the FIC holds in all cases but it does seem plausible at least for many cases. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 23 February 2010 04:45, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. How we know what is being computed in this virtual environment? Ordinarily the answer to this is that we wrote the program and so we provide the interpretation of the calculation *in this world*. But it seems that in these thought experiments we are implicitly supposing that the simulation is inherently providing it's own interpretation. Maybe, so; but I see no reason to have confidence that this inherent interpretation is either unique or has anything to do with the interpretation we intended. I suspect that this simulated consciousness is only consciousness *in our external interpretation*. Brent In that case, aren't you saying that there is no objective answer to whether a particular physical process counts as an implementation of a given computation, and that absolutely any process can be seen as implementing any computation if outside observers choose to interpret it that way? That's basically the conclusion Chalmers was trying to avoid in his Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton paper at http://consc.net/papers/rock.html which discussed the implementation problem. One possible answer to this problem is that implementations *are* totally subjective, but this would seem to rule out the possibility of there ever being any sort of objective measure on computations (unless you imagine some privileged observers who are themselves *not* identified with computations and whose interpretations are the only ones that 'count') which makes it hard to solve things like the white rabbit problem that's been discussed often on this list. Jesse It seems to me that perhaps the main reason for assuming that counterfactual behaviour in the brain is needed for consciousness is that otherwise any physical system implements any computation, or equivalently every computation is implemented independently of any physical reality that may or may not exist, and this would be a terrible conclusion for materialists. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: problem of size '10
My last post worked (I got it in my email). I'll repost one later and then post on the measure thread - though it's still a very busy time for me so maybe not today. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: OK, so you're suggesting there may not be a one-to-one relationship between distinct observer-moments in the sense of distinct qualia, and distinct computations defined in terms of counterfactuals? Distinct computations might be associated with identical qualia, in other words? Sure. Otherwise, there'd be little point in trying to simulate someone, if any detail could change everything. What about the reverse--might a single computation be associated with multiple distinct observer-moments with different qualia? Certainly. For example, a sufficiently detailed simulation of the Earth would be associated with an entire population of observers. You say Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true, but that's not enough information--the notion of causal structure I was describing involved not just the truth or falsity of propositions, but also the logical relationships between these propositions given the axioms of the system. OK, I see what you're saying, Jesse. I don't think it's a good solution though. First, you are implicitly including a lot of counterfactual information already, which is the reason it works at all. B implies A is logically equivalent to Not A implies Not B. I'll use ~ for Not, -- for implies, and the axiom context is assumed. A,B are Boolean variables / bits. So if you say A -- B B -- A that's the same as saying A -- B ~A -- ~B which is the same as saying B = A. Your way is just a clumsy way to provide some of the counterfactual information, which is often most consisely expressed as equations. So if you think you have escaped counterfactuals, I disagree. The next problem is that for a larger number of bits, you won't express the full dynamics of the system. For example with 10 bits, there are more possible combinations than your system will have statements. I guess you see that as a feature rather than a bug - after all, it's what allows you to ignore inert machinery. I don't like it but perhaps that's a matter a taste. Now, that may work OK for bits, but it really seems to lose a lot for more general systems. For example, suppose A,B,C are trits, or perhaps qubits, or real numbers such as positions. Your logical implications remain limited to Boolean statements. Do you really want to disregard so much of the system's dynamics? I see no reason to do so when using counterfactuals in the usual way works just fine. I consider any initial value problem to be a computation, including those that use differential equations. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: problem of size '10
Aaargh, I see from looking at my last message to Jack Mallah at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg18314.htmlthat hotmail completely ignored the paragraph breaks I put in between the numbered items on the list of propositions, making the lists extremely hard to read. I'll try resending from my gmail account and hopefully it'll work better! Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:41:38 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: RE: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Jesse, how do you access the everything list? I ask because I have not recieved my own posts in my inbox, nor have others such as Bruno replied. I use yahoo email. I may need to use a different method to prevent my posts from getting lost. They do seem to show up on Google groups though. There was never a problem until recently, so I'll see if this one works. I just get the messages in my email--if you want to give a link to one of the emails that didn't show up in your inbox, either from google groups or from http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/maillist.html , then I can check if that email showed up in my own inbox, since I haven't deleted any of the everything-list emails for a few days. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... The link between qualia and computations is, of course, hard to know anything about. But it seems to me quite likely that qualia would be insensitive to the sort of changes in computations that you are talking about. Such modified computations could give rise to the same (or nearly the same) set of qualia for the 'inert device' runs as unmodified ones would have. I am not saying that this must always be the case, since if you take it too far you could run into Maudlin-type problems, but in many cases it would make sense. OK, so you're suggesting there may not be a one-to-one relationship between distinct observer-moments in the sense of distinct qualia, and distinct computations defined in terms of counterfactuals? Distinct computations might be associated with identical qualia, in other words? What about the reverse--might a single computation be associated with multiple distinct observer-moments with different qualia? If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all You do need counterfactuals to define implementations. Consider the computation c(t+1) = a(t) AND b(t), where a,b,c, are bits. Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true. Without counterfactuals, how would you distinguish the above from another computation such as c(t+1) = a(t)? Even worse, suppose that c(t+1) is true no matter what. a(t) and b(t) happen to be true. Is the above computation implemented? You say Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true, but that's not enough information--the notion of causal structure I was describing involved not just the truth or falsity of propositions, but also the logical relationships between these propositions given the axioms of the system. For example, if we are looking at three propositions A, B, and C in the context of an axiomatic system, we can ask whether or not the axioms (which might represent the laws of physics, or the internal rules of a turing machine) along with propositions A and B (which could represent specific physical facts such as initial conditions, or facts about particular cells on the turing machine's tape at a particular time) can together be used to prove C, or whether they are insufficient to prove C. The causal structure for a given set of propositions could then be defined in terms of all possible combinations of logical implications for those propositions, like this: 1. Axioms + A imply B: true or false? 2. Axioms + A imply C: true or false? 3. Axioms + B imply
Re: problem of size '10
Aaargh, I see from looking at my last message to Jack Mallah at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg18314.htmlthat hotmail completely ignored the paragraph breaks I put in between the numbered items on the list of propositions, making the lists extremely hard to read. I'll try resending from my gmail account and hopefully it'll work better! Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:41:38 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: RE: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Jesse, how do you access the everything list? I ask because I have not recieved my own posts in my inbox, nor have others such as Bruno replied. I use yahoo email. I may need to use a different method to prevent my posts from getting lost. They do seem to show up on Google groups though. There was never a problem until recently, so I'll see if this one works. I just get the messages in my email--if you want to give a link to one of the emails that didn't show up in your inbox, either from google groups or from http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/maillist.html , then I can check if that email showed up in my own inbox, since I haven't deleted any of the everything-list emails for a few days. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... The link between qualia and computations is, of course, hard to know anything about. But it seems to me quite likely that qualia would be insensitive to the sort of changes in computations that you are talking about. Such modified computations could give rise to the same (or nearly the same) set of qualia for the 'inert device' runs as unmodified ones would have. I am not saying that this must always be the case, since if you take it too far you could run into Maudlin-type problems, but in many cases it would make sense. OK, so you're suggesting there may not be a one-to-one relationship between distinct observer-moments in the sense of distinct qualia, and distinct computations defined in terms of counterfactuals? Distinct computations might be associated with identical qualia, in other words? What about the reverse--might a single computation be associated with multiple distinct observer-moments with different qualia? If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all You do need counterfactuals to define implementations. Consider the computation c(t+1) = a(t) AND b(t), where a,b,c, are bits. Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true. Without counterfactuals, how would you distinguish the above from another computation such as c(t+1) = a(t)? Even worse, suppose that c(t+1) is true no matter what. a(t) and b(t) happen to be true. Is the above computation implemented? You say Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true, but that's not enough information--the notion of causal structure I was describing involved not just the truth or falsity of propositions, but also the logical relationships between these propositions given the axioms of the system. For example, if we are looking at three propositions A, B, and C in the context of an axiomatic system, we can ask whether or not the axioms (which might represent the laws of physics, or the internal rules of a turing machine) along with propositions A and B (which could represent specific physical facts such as initial conditions, or facts about particular cells on the turing machine's tape at a particular time) can together be used to prove C, or whether they are insufficient to prove C. The causal structure for a given set of propositions could then be defined in terms of all possible combinations of logical implications for those propositions, like this: 1. Axioms + A imply B: true or false? 2. Axioms + A imply C: true or false? 3. Axioms + B imply
Re: problem of size '10
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote:
My last post worked (I got it in my email). I'll repost one later and then
post on the measure thread - though it's still a very busy time for me so
maybe not today.
--- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote:
OK, so you're suggesting there may not be a one-to-one relationship
between distinct observer-moments in the sense of distinct qualia, and
distinct computations defined in terms of counterfactuals? Distinct
computations might be associated with identical qualia, in other words?
Sure. Otherwise, there'd be little point in trying to simulate someone, if
any detail could change everything.
If by change everything you mean radical differences in the qualia, that
wasn't really what I was suggesting--even if there was a one-to-one
relationship between distinct computations and distinct observer-moments
with distinct qualia, very similar computations could produce very similar
qualia, so if you produced a good enough simulation of anyone's brain then
the simulation's experience could be nearly identical to that of the
original brain (and of course the simulation's experience would start to
diverge from the original brain's anyway as they'd receive different sensory
input)
What about the reverse--might a single computation be associated with
multiple distinct observer-moments with different qualia?
Certainly. For example, a sufficiently detailed simulation of the Earth
would be associated with an entire population of observers.
But isn't that just breaking up the computation into various
sub-computations and saying that each sub-computation has distinct
experiences? In this case you're not really saying that the Earth
computation *taken as a whole* is associated with multiple qualia. It's as
if we associated distinct qualia with distinct sets--the set {{}, {{}}}
might be associated with different qualia than the set {} which is contained
within it, but that's not the same as saying that the set {{}, {{}}} is
*itself* associated with multiple distinct qualia.
You say Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true, but that's not
enough information--the notion of causal structure I was describing involved
not just the truth or falsity of propositions, but also the logical
relationships between these propositions given the axioms of the system.
OK, I see what you're saying, Jesse. I don't think it's a good solution
though.
First, you are implicitly including a lot of counterfactual information
already, which is the reason it works at all. B implies A is logically
equivalent to Not A implies Not B. I'll use ~ for Not, -- for
implies, and the axiom context is assumed. A,B are Boolean variables /
bits. So if you say
A -- B
B -- A
that's the same as saying
A -- B
~A -- ~B
which is the same as saying B = A. Your way is just a clumsy way to
provide some of the counterfactual information, which is often most
consisely expressed as equations. So if you think you have escaped
counterfactuals, I disagree.
Well, the idea is that to determine what causal structures are contained in
a given universe (whether a physical universe or a computation), we adopt
the self-imposed rule that we *only* look at a set of propositions
concerning events that actually occurred in that universe, not at other
propositions concerning events that didn't occur in that universe. Then the
only causal structures contained in this universe are the ones that can be
found in the logical relations between this restricted set of propositions.
Aside from that though, the counterfactuals you mention are of a very
limited kind, just involving negations of propositions about events that
actually occurred. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I thought that the way
you (and Chalmers) wanted to define implementations of computations using
counterfactuals involved a far richer set of counterfactuals about
detailed alternate histories of what could have occurred if the inputs were
different. For example, if the computation were a simulation of my brain
receiving sensory input from the external world, and it so happened that
this sensory input involved me seeing my desk and computer in front of me,
then your type of proposed solution to the implementation problem would
require considering how the simulation would have responded if it had
instead been fed some very different sensory input such as the sudden
appearance of a miniature dragon flying out of my computer monitor. In your
proposal, two computers running identical brain simulations and being fed
identical sensory inputs can only be considered implementations of the same
computation if it's true that they both *would* respond the same way to
totally different inputs, in other words. Is this understanding correct or
have I got it wrong?
The next problem is that for a larger number of bits, you won't express the
full dynamics of the system.
RE: problem of size '10
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:48:28 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert (I suppose because of the butterfly effect, the mere presence of the device would eventually affect my brain activity, but we can imagine replacing the device with a subroutine in a deterministic program simulating my brain in a deterministic virtual environment, with the subroutine only being activated and influencing the simulation if certain simulated neurons fire in a precise sequence). According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all (there was some additional discussion in the followup posts on that thread, linked at the bottom of that mail-archive.com page). The basic idea was to treat the physical world as a formal axiomatic system, the axioms being laws of physics and initial conditions, the theorems being statements about physical events at later points in spacetime; then causal structure could be defined in terms of the patterns of logical relations between theorems, like given the axioms along with theorems A and B, we can derive theorem C. Since all theorems concern events that actually did happen, counterfactuals would not be involved, but we could still perhaps avoid the type of problem Chalmers discussed where a rock can be viewed as implementing any possible computation. If you do have time to look over the idea and you see some obvious problems with it, let me know... Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
Jesse Mazer wrote: Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:48:28 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert (I suppose because of the butterfly effect, the mere presence of the device would eventually affect my brain activity, but we can imagine replacing the device with a subroutine in a deterministic program simulating my brain in a deterministic virtual environment, with the subroutine only being activated and influencing the simulation if certain simulated neurons fire in a precise sequence). It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. How we know what is being computed in this virtual environment? Ordinarily the answer to this is that we wrote the program and so we provide the interpretation of the calculation *in this world*. But it seems that in these thought experiments we are implicitly supposing that the simulation is inherently providing it's own interpretation. Maybe, so; but I see no reason to have confidence that this inherent interpretation is either unique or has anything to do with the interpretation we intended. I suspect that this simulated consciousness is only consciousness *in our external interpretation*. Brent According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all (there was some additional discussion in the followup posts on that thread, linked at the bottom of that mail-archive.com page). The basic idea was to treat the physical world as a formal axiomatic system, the axioms being laws of physics and initial conditions, the theorems being statements about physical events at later points in spacetime; then causal structure could be defined in terms of the patterns of logical relations between theorems, like
RE: problem of size '10
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:42:17 -0800 From: meeke...@dslextreme.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 Jesse Mazer wrote: Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:48:28 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert (I suppose because of the butterfly effect, the mere presence of the device would eventually affect my brain activity, but we can imagine replacing the device with a subroutine in a deterministic program simulating my brain in a deterministic virtual environment, with the subroutine only being activated and influencing the simulation if certain simulated neurons fire in a precise sequence). It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. How we know what is being computed in this virtual environment? Ordinarily the answer to this is that we wrote the program and so we provide the interpretation of the calculation *in this world*. But it seems that in these thought experiments we are implicitly supposing that the simulation is inherently providing it's own interpretation. Maybe, so; but I see no reason to have confidence that this inherent interpretation is either unique or has anything to do with the interpretation we intended. I suspect that this simulated consciousness is only consciousness *in our external interpretation*. Brent In that case, aren't you saying that there is no objective answer to whether a particular physical process counts as an implementation of a given computation, and that absolutely any process can be seen as implementing any computation if outside observers choose to interpret it that way? That's basically the conclusion Chalmers was trying to avoid in his Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton paper at http://consc.net/papers/rock.html which discussed the implementation problem. One possible answer to this problem is that implementations *are* totally subjective, but this would seem to rule out the possibility of there ever being any sort of objective measure on computations (unless you imagine some privileged observers who are themselves *not* identified with computations and whose interpretations are the only ones that 'count') which makes it hard to solve things like
RE: problem of size '10
Jesse, how do you access the everything list? I ask because I have not recieved my own posts in my inbox, nor have others such as Bruno replied. I use yahoo email. I may need to use a different method to prevent my posts from getting lost. They do seem to show up on Google groups though. There was never a problem until recently, so I'll see if this one works. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... The link between qualia and computations is, of course, hard to know anything about. But it seems to me quite likely that qualia would be insensitive to the sort of changes in computations that you are talking about. Such modified computations could give rise to the same (or nearly the same) set of qualia for the 'inert device' runs as unmodified ones would have. I am not saying that this must always be the case, since if you take it too far you could run into Maudlin-type problems, but in many cases it would make sense. If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all You do need counterfactuals to define implementations. Consider the computation c(t+1) = a(t) AND b(t), where a,b,c, are bits. Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true. Without counterfactuals, how would you distinguish the above from another computation such as c(t+1) = a(t)? Even worse, suppose that c(t+1) is true no matter what. a(t) and b(t) happen to be true. Is the above computation implemented? This gets even worse when you allow time-dependent mappings, which make a lot of intuitive sense in many practical cases. Now c=1 can mean c is true at time t+1, but so can c=0 under a different mapping. All of these problems go away when you require correct counterfactual behavior. You might wonder about time dependent mappings. If a(t)=1, b(t)=1, and c(t+1) = 0, can that implement the computation, considering a,b as true and c=0 as c is true? Only if c(t+1) _would have been 1_ (thus, c is false) if a(t) or b(t) had been zero. Clearly, due to the various and time-dependent mappings, there are a lot of computations that end up equivalent. But the point is that real distinctions remain. No matter what mappings you choose, as long as counterfactual behaviors are required, there is NO mapping that would make a AND b equivalent to a XOR b. If you drop the counterfactual requirement, that is no longer the case. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. It's not essential, just convenient for thought experiments. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. No. Input/output is not the solution for that; restrictions on mappings is. See my MCI paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0544 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
Jesse Mazer wrote: Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:42:17 -0800 From: meeke...@dslextreme.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 Jesse Mazer wrote: Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:48:28 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert (I suppose because of the butterfly effect, the mere presence of the device would eventually affect my brain activity, but we can imagine replacing the device with a subroutine in a deterministic program simulating my brain in a deterministic virtual environment, with the subroutine only being activated and influencing the simulation if certain simulated neurons fire in a precise sequence). It seems that these thought experiments inevitably lead to considering a digital simulation of the brain in a virtual environment. This is usually brushed over as an inessential aspect, but I'm coming to the opinion that it is essential. Once you have encapsulated the whole thought experiment in a closed virtual environment in a digital computer you have the paradox of the rock that computes everything. How we know what is being computed in this virtual environment? Ordinarily the answer to this is that we wrote the program and so we provide the interpretation of the calculation *in this world*. But it seems that in these thought experiments we are implicitly supposing that the simulation is inherently providing it's own interpretation. Maybe, so; but I see no reason to have confidence that this inherent interpretation is either unique or has anything to do with the interpretation we intended. I suspect that this simulated consciousness is only consciousness *in our external interpretation*. Brent In that case, aren't you saying that there is no objective answer to whether a particular physical process counts as an implementation of a given computation, and that absolutely any process can be seen as implementing any computation if outside observers choose to interpret it that way? That's basically the conclusion Chalmers was trying to avoid in his Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton paper at http://consc.net/papers/rock.html which discussed the implementation problem. One possible answer to this problem is that implementations *are* totally subjective, but this would seem to rule out the possibility of there ever being any sort of objective measure on computations (unless you imagine some privileged observers who are themselves *not* identified with computations and whose interpretations are the only ones that 'count') which makes it hard to solve things like the white rabbit problem
RE: problem of size '10
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:41:38 -0800 From: jackmal...@yahoo.com Subject: RE: problem of size '10 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Jesse, how do you access the everything list? I ask because I have not recieved my own posts in my inbox, nor have others such as Bruno replied. I use yahoo email. I may need to use a different method to prevent my posts from getting lost. They do seem to show up on Google groups though. There was never a problem until recently, so I'll see if this one works. I just get the messages in my email--if you want to give a link to one of the emails that didn't show up in your inbox, either from google groups or from http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/maillist.html , then I can check if that email showed up in my own inbox, since I haven't deleted any of the everything-list emails for a few days. --- On Mon, 2/22/10, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Jack, to me the idea that counterfactuals would be essential to defining what counts as an implementation has always seemed counterintuitive for reasons separate from the Olympia or movie-graph argument. The thought-experiment I'd like to consider is one where some device is implanted in my brain that passively monitors the activity of a large group of neurons, and only if it finds them firing in some precise prespecified sequence does it activate and stimulate my brain in some way, causing a change in brain activity; otherwise it remains causally inert According to the counterfactual definition of implementations, would the mere presence of this device change my qualia from what they'd be if it wasn't present, even if the neurons required to activate it never actually fire in the correct sequence and the device remains completely inert? That would seem to divorce qualia from behavior in a pretty significant way... The link between qualia and computations is, of course, hard to know anything about. But it seems to me quite likely that qualia would be insensitive to the sort of changes in computations that you are talking about. Such modified computations could give rise to the same (or nearly the same) set of qualia for the 'inert device' runs as unmodified ones would have. I am not saying that this must always be the case, since if you take it too far you could run into Maudlin-type problems, but in many cases it would make sense. OK, so you're suggesting there may not be a one-to-one relationship between distinct observer-moments in the sense of distinct qualia, and distinct computations defined in terms of counterfactuals? Distinct computations might be associated with identical qualia, in other words? What about the reverse--might a single computation be associated with multiple distinct observer-moments with different qualia? If you have time, perhaps you could take a look at my post http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html where I discussed a vague idea for how one might define isomorphic causal structures that could be used to address the implementation problem, in a way that wouldn't depend on counterfactuals at all You do need counterfactuals to define implementations. Consider the computation c(t+1) = a(t) AND b(t), where a,b,c, are bits. Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true. Without counterfactuals, how would you distinguish the above from another computation such as c(t+1) = a(t)? Even worse, suppose that c(t+1) is true no matter what. a(t) and b(t) happen to be true. Is the above computation implemented? You say Suppose that a(t),b(t),and c(t) are all true, but that's not enough information--the notion of causal structure I was describing involved not just the truth or falsity of propositions, but also the logical relationships between these propositions given the axioms of the system. For example, if we are looking at three propositions A, B, and C in the context of an axiomatic system, we can ask whether or not the axioms (which might represent the laws of physics, or the internal rules of a turing machine) along with propositions A and B (which could represent specific physical facts such as initial conditions, or facts about particular cells on the turing machine's tape at a particular time) can together be used to prove C, or whether they are insufficient to prove C. The causal structure for a given set of propositions could then be defined in terms of all possible combinations of logical implications for those propositions, like this: 1. Axioms + A imply B: true or false?2. Axioms + A imply C: true or false?3. Axioms + B imply A: true or false?4. Axioms + B imply C: true or false?5. Axioms + C imply A: true or false?6. Axioms + C imply B: true or false?7. Axioms + A + B imply C: true or false?8. Axioms + A + C imply B: true or false?9. Axioms + B + C imply A: true or false? For example, one
RE: problem of size '10
--- On Mon, 2/15/10, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On reading the first page of your paper a thought occurred to me. What actually happens in the case of progressive Alzheimer’s disease is a bit different from the idea that I get from the discussion. Hi Stephen. Certainly, Alzheimer's disease is not the same as the kind of partial brains that I talk about in my paper, which maintain the same inputs as they would have within a full normal brain. Are you really considering “something” that I can realistically map to my own 1st person experience or could it be merely some abstract idea. That brings in the 'hard problem' discussion, which has been brought up on this list recently and which I have also been thinking about recently. I won't attempt to answer it right now. I will say that ALL approaches (eliminativism, reductionism, epiphenomenal dualism, interactionist dualism, and idealism) seem to have severe problems. 'None of the above' is no better as the list seems exhaustive. In any case, if my work sheds light on only some of the approaches that is still progress. BTW, I replied to Bruno and the reply appeared on Google groups but I don't think I got a copy in my email so I am putting a copy of what I posted here: --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. Jack Mallah wrote: It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am agnostic on Platonism. This contradicts your definition of computationalism given in your papers. I quote your glossary: Computationalism: The philosophical belief that consciousness arises as a result of implementation of computations by physical systems. It's true that I didn't mention Platonism in that glossary entry (in the MCI paper), which was an oversight, but not a big deal given that the paper was aimed at physicists. The paper has plenty of jobs to do already, and championing the possibility of the Everything Hypothesis was not the focus. On p. 14 of the the MCI paper I wrote A computation can be implemented by a physical system which shares appropriate features with it, or (in an analogous way) by another computation. If a computation exists in a Platonic sense, then it could implement other computations. On p. 46 of the paper I briefly discussed the All-Universes Hypothesis. That should leave no doubt as to my position. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: problem of size '10
Hi Jack, On reading the first page of your paper a thought occurred to me. What actually happens in the case of progressive Alzheimer's disease is a bit different from the idea that I get from the discussion. It could be that there is a problem with the unstated premise that consciousness is a quantity/quality that can be increased or decreased, like the volume of the music that I'm listening to as I write this. I have a family member that cares for the elderly and there is a consistent pattern of phenomena associated with the degradation of the brain that does not resemble anything like that which is considered as consciousness. This question equally applies to D. Chalmers. Are you really considering something that I can realistically map to my own 1st person experience or could it be merely some abstract idea. I remember the joke about spherical cows, could this be happening here? Seriously! Onward! Stephen From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 11:39 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: problem of size '10 On 11 Feb 2010, at 17:14, Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: A little thin brain would produce a zombie? Even if size affects measure, a zombie is not a brain with low measure; it's a brain with zero measure. So the answer is obviously no - it would not be a zombie. Stop abusing the language. We know that small terms in the wavefunction have low measure. I would not call these terms 'zombies'. Many small terms together can equal or exceed the measure of big terms. MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. You may read the archives, for new recent presentation or my papers, and eventually point on something you don't understand. snip -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. Jack Mallah wrote: It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am agnostic on Platonism. This contradicts your definition of computationalism given in your papers. I quote your glossary: Computationalism: The philosophical belief that consciousness arises as a result of implementation of computations by physical systems. It's true that I didn't mention Platonism in that glossary entry (in the MCI paper), which was an oversight, but not a big deal given that the paper was aimed at physicists. The paper has plenty of jobs to do already, and championing the possibility of the Everything Hypothesis was not the focus. On p. 14 of the the MCI paper I wrote A computation can be implemented by a physical system which shares appropriate features with it, or (in an analogous way) by another computation. If a computation exists in a Platonic sense, then it could implement other computations. On p. 46 of the paper I briefly discussed the All-Universes Hypothesis. That should leave no doubt as to my position. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 13 Feb 2010, at 19:48, Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. What is false is your statement that The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation. So your argument is not valid. OK. I was talking in a context which is missing. You can also conclude in the prescience of the neurons for example. The point is that if you assume the physical supervenience thesis, you have to abandon comp and/ or to introduce magical (non Turing emulable) property in matter. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. What do you mean? I guess you mean: COMP + phys. supervenience entails that a movie can replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. OK. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I may be OK with your point, but I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. Just the physical supervenience (to show it absurd by 'reductio'). I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. It is a reasoning by a an absurdum reduction. If you agree (with any computationalist) that we cannot attribute prescience to the neurons, then the physical activity of the movie is the same as the physical activity of the movie, so that physical supervenience + comp entails that the consciousness supervenes on the movie (and this is absurd, mainly because the movie does not compute anything). Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. But that is the point: the counterfactuals are in the math. Not in the physical activity. That is why comp forces the computational supervenience. But then the appearance of the physical world(s) will eventually be in need to be recover from the mathematical computation. Jack Mallah wrote: It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am agnostic on Platonism. This contradicts your definition of computationalism given in your papers. I quote your glossary: Computationalism: The philosophical belief that consciousness arises as a result of implementation of computations by physical systems. It's true that I didn't mention Platonism in that glossary entry (in the MCI paper), which was an oversight, but not a big deal given that the paper was aimed at physicists. The paper has plenty of jobs to do already, and championing the possibility of the Everything Hypothesis was not the focus. I don't follow you. The point is not the everything hypothesis, just that the movie graph makes consciousness supervene on the computations (in their usual mathematical meaning) and not on the physical activity, which has to be redefine from the structures of the many computations. On p. 14 of the the MCI paper I wrote A computation can be implemented by a physical system which shares appropriate features with it, or (in an analogous way) by another computation. If a computation exists in a Platonic sense, then it could implement other computations. But here you don't distinguish the first and third person points of view. No universal (mathematical) machine can know which computations bear it, and its next personal state has to be recovered from the statistics on the possible relative continuations. Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 Feb 2010, at 17:14, Jack Mallah wrote: --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: A little thin brain would produce a zombie? Even if size affects measure, a zombie is not a brain with low measure; it's a brain with zero measure. So the answer is obviously no - it would not be a zombie. Stop abusing the language. We know that small terms in the wavefunction have low measure. I would not call these terms 'zombies'. Many small terms together can equal or exceed the measure of big terms. MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid deduction. I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which step, and provide a justification. You may read the archives, for new recent presentation or my papers, and eventually point on something you don't understand. What you call computationalism is a form of physicalist computationalism. Not true. It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am agnostic on Platonism. This contradicts your definition of computationalism given in your papers. I have no more clue about your assumptions, nor what you mean by computation. I quote your glossary: Computationalism: The philosophical belief that consciousness arises as a result of implementation of computations by physical systems. (my emphasis) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 11 Feb 2010, at 06:46, Jack Mallah wrote: It's been a very busy week. I will reply to the measure thread (which is actually more important) but that could be in a few days. --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: What about if half of your neurons were 1/2 their normal size, and the other half were twice their normal size? How would this be predicted to effect your measure? If it had any effect - and as I said, I don't think it would in a QM universe - I guess it would decrease the measure of part of your brain and increase that of the other part. That may sound weird but it's certainly possible for one part of a parallel computation to have more measure than the rest which can be done by duplicating only that part of the brain. See my paper on partial brains: http://cogprints.org/6321/ --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Do you think that simply doubling up the size of electronic components (much easier to do than making brains bigger) would double measure? The effect should be the same for brains or electronics. You could then flick the switch and alternate between two separate but parallel circuits or one circuit. Would flicking the switch cause a doubling/halving of measure? If the circuits don't interact, then it is two separate implementations, and measure would double. If they do interact, we are back to 'big components' which as I said could go either way. Would it be tantamount to killing one of the consciousnesses every time you did it? Basically. Killing usually implies an irreversible process; otherwise, someone is liable to come along and flick the switch back, so it's more like knocking someone out. If the measure is halved and then you break the switch so it can't go back, that would be, yes. --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Does the size of the components affects the computation? Other than measure, the implemented computation would be the same, at least for the cases that matter. So, the behavior would not change, but the consciousness would be different? A little thin brain would produce a zombie? I don't assume the quantum stuff. It is what I want to understand. I gave an argument showing that if we assume computationalism, then we have to derive physics from (classical) computer science Of course I know about your argument. It's false. I guess you mean invalid. What is invalid in the reasoning? Have you follow the last year new exposition on this list MGA (Movie Graph Argument). I have understood eventually that we don't need to use the counterfactual analysis à-la-Maudlin. MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation, but this forces to confuse a computation (relation between numbers, or combinators) and a description of a computation (like a Gödel number of a (finite) piece of a computation). Those things are related, but different. You wrote convincing posts on the implementation problem. I thought, and still think, that you understood that there is no obvious way to attribute a computation to a physical process. With strict criteria we get nothing, with weak criteria even a rock thinks. The implementation problem is: Given a physical or mathematical system, does it implement a given computation? As you say, if the answer is always yes - as it is on a naive definition of implementation - then computationalism can not work. This was an important problem - which I presented a solution for in my '07 MCI paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0544 What you call computationalism is a form of physicalist computationalism. The Movie graph argument show it is inconsistent with yes doctor + Church thesis and yes doctor follows from the physicalist computationalism assumption. And as you know, physicalist computationalism raises the implementation problem. So I now consider it a solved problem, using my CSSA framework. The solution presented there does need a bit of refinement and I plan to write up a separate paper to present it more clearly and hopefully get some attention for it, but the main ideas are there. But that's only half the story. There is still the measure problem: Given that a system does implement some set of computations, what is the measure for each? Without the answer to that, you can't predict what a typical observer would see. This problem remains unsolved (though I do have proposals in the paper) and relates to the problem of size. The measure is determined relatively by the universal machine by the set of the maximal consistent extensions of its beliefs. The Gödel-Löb- Solovay logics of self-reference provides the math, and explains how the coupling consciousness realities emerges from the numbers. -- Bruno Marchal
Re: problem of size '10
--- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: A little thin brain would produce a zombie? Even if size affects measure, a zombie is not a brain with low measure; it's a brain with zero measure. So the answer is obviously no - it would not be a zombie. Stop abusing the language. We know that small terms in the wavefunction have low measure. I would not call these terms 'zombies'. Many small terms together can equal or exceed the measure of big terms. MGA is more general (and older). The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: http://cogprints.org/6321/ What you call computationalism is a form of physicalist computationalism. Not true. It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am agnostic on Platonism. The measure is determined relatively by the universal machine by the set of the maximal consistent extensions of its beliefs. Also not true. That's just your idea for how it should be done, which stems from your false beliefs in QTI. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
It's been a very busy week. I will reply to the measure thread (which is actually more important) but that could be in a few days. --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: What about if half of your neurons were 1/2 their normal size, and the other half were twice their normal size? How would this be predicted to effect your measure? If it had any effect - and as I said, I don't think it would in a QM universe - I guess it would decrease the measure of part of your brain and increase that of the other part. That may sound weird but it's certainly possible for one part of a parallel computation to have more measure than the rest which can be done by duplicating only that part of the brain. See my paper on partial brains: http://cogprints.org/6321/ --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Do you think that simply doubling up the size of electronic components (much easier to do than making brains bigger) would double measure? The effect should be the same for brains or electronics. You could then flick the switch and alternate between two separate but parallel circuits or one circuit. Would flicking the switch cause a doubling/halving of measure? If the circuits don't interact, then it is two separate implementations, and measure would double. If they do interact, we are back to 'big components' which as I said could go either way. Would it be tantamount to killing one of the consciousnesses every time you did it? Basically. Killing usually implies an irreversible process; otherwise, someone is liable to come along and flick the switch back, so it's more like knocking someone out. If the measure is halved and then you break the switch so it can't go back, that would be, yes. --- On Thu, 1/28/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Does the size of the components affects the computation? Other than measure, the implemented computation would be the same, at least for the cases that matter. I don't assume the quantum stuff. It is what I want to understand. I gave an argument showing that if we assume computationalism, then we have to derive physics from (classical) computer science Of course I know about your argument. It's false. You wrote convincing posts on the implementation problem. I thought, and still think, that you understood that there is no obvious way to attribute a computation to a physical process. With strict criteria we get nothing, with weak criteria even a rock thinks. The implementation problem is: Given a physical or mathematical system, does it implement a given computation? As you say, if the answer is always yes - as it is on a naive definition of implementation - then computationalism can not work. This was an important problem - which I presented a solution for in my '07 MCI paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0544 So I now consider it a solved problem, using my CSSA framework. The solution presented there does need a bit of refinement and I plan to write up a separate paper to present it more clearly and hopefully get some attention for it, but the main ideas are there. But that's only half the story. There is still the measure problem: Given that a system does implement some set of computations, what is the measure for each? Without the answer to that, you can't predict what a typical observer would see. This problem remains unsolved (though I do have proposals in the paper) and relates to the problem of size. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 28 January 2010 12:46, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main measure again '10 thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my absolute measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of classical water waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro-electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the Doomsday argument - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? Do you think that simply doubling up the size of electronic components (much easier to do than making brains bigger) would double measure? For example, you could make the copper tracks on a circuit board twice as thick, put two transistors in parallel rather than one, double the surface area as well as the separation of the plates in the capacitors, and so on. It would take a bit of design effort, but you could make a circuit where every component was doubled up and connected by a wire bridge with a switch, and all the switches controlled by one master switch. You could then flick the switch and alternate between two separate but parallel circuits or one circuit. Would flicking the switch cause a doubling/halving of measure? Would it be tantamount to killing one of the consciousnesses every time you did it? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On 28 Jan 2010, at 02:46, Jack Mallah wrote: I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main measure again '10 thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my absolute measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. Does the size of the components affects the computation? My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. I don't assume the quantum stuff. It is what I want to understand. I gave an argument showing that if we assume computationalism, then we have to derive physics from (classical) computer science if we want to note annihilate the chance to progress on the consciousness/reality riddle. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of classical water waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro- electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the Doomsday argument - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? You wrote convincing posts on the implementation problem. I thought, and still think, that you understood that there is no obvious way to attribute a computation to a physical process. With strict criteria we get nothing, with weak criteria even a rock thinks. But comp, well as I understand it, attributes consciousness to computations, in the digital sense made precise by mathematicians. In that case we get a theory of mind, indeed, the theory of what the universal machines (computers, interpreters, ...) are able to prove, and bet, about themselves and anything else. We just don't try to ascribe consciousness to anything material or observable. It is a mathematical phenomenon which appears when a universal machine observes itself. It accelerates with two universal machines in front of each other, and admit innumerable n-couplings. Digital Mechanism makes Kant right, I think, that time and space belongs to the category of mind, with mind being arithmetic as viewed from the average universal machine inside. It is idealism, but it is realism too, with respect to the elementary aritmetical truth, including computer science and computer's computer science. And so, it is precise and testable, thanks to the hard work of Gödel, Löb and many others. To understand this you have to be agnostic, not just about the Creator, but also about the Creation. I hope yo are not religious on materialism or physicalism. Arithmetic, through comp, determines a (very vast and intricate) web of relative consistent (n-person) histories, and it is an open problem if that web coheres enough to determine a unique, in which sense?, physical reality. It is probably simpler to (re)define physics as invariant for the universal computable base. Computer scientists say machine independent. No doubt we share deep computations, which are made stable below our substitution level by multiplications on the reals, or some ring. Comp is Church thesis, mainly, and the idea that we are Turing emulable. Bruno Marchal
Re: problem of size '10
I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main measure again '10 thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my absolute measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of classical water waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro-electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the Doomsday argument - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: problem of size '10
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm replying to this bit seperately since Bruno touched on a different issue than the others have. My reply to the main measure again '10 thread will follow under the original title. --- On Wed, 1/27/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I would also not say yes to a computationalist doctor, because my consciousness will be related to the diameter of the simulated neurons, or to the redundancy of the gates, etc. (and this despite the behavior remains unaffected). This entails also the existence of zombie. If the neurons are very thin , my absolute measure can be made quasi null, despite my behavior remains again non affected. What about if half of your neurons were 1/2 their normal size, and the other half were twice their normal size? How would this be predicted to effect your measure? What about beings who have higher resolution senses, and thus a greater possibility for variation in senses due to the higher number of possible states? This relates to what I call the 'problem of size', namely: Does the size of the components affect the measure? The answer is not obvious. It is an interesting question I hadn't considered. Given the relative state interpretation, how large is the system really? Is it bounded by one's skull, one's nerve cells, one's light cone? My belief is that, given that it is all made of quantum stuff, the size will not matter - because the set of quantum variables involved actually doesn't change if you leave some of them out of the computer - they are still parameters of the overall system. But there is an important and obvious way in which size does matter - the size of the amplitude of the wavefunction, the square of which is proportional to measure according to the Born Rule. I would say that if we really had a classical world and made a computer out of classical water waves, the measure might be proportional to the square of the amplitude of those waves. I don't know - I have different proposals for how the actual Born Rule comes about, and depending on how it works, it could come out either way. I don't think there is any experimental evidence that size matters. But some might disagree. If they do, there are a few points they could make: - Maybe big brains have more measure. This could help explain why we are men and not mice. But the mice are mice, and would admit as much if you asked one and it could respond. We're also not whales. - Maybe in the future, people will upload their brains into micro-electronic systems. If those have small measure, it could explain the Doomsday argument - if the future people have low measure, it makes sense that we are not in that era. Maybe we are already in that era. Also given we would be effectively immortal, in the long run, the experiences of uploaded minds should greatly outweigh organic ones, if they engage in game-worlds for leisure. - Maybe neural pathways that recieve more reinforcement get bigger and give rise to more measure. This could result in increased effective probablility to observe more coincidences in your life than would be expected by chance. Now, coincidences often are noticed by us and we tend to think there are many. I think this has more to do with psychology than physics - but who knows? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
