Reading The Theory of Nothing
Stephen Paul King
Russell Standish
knows. ISTM that your concerns are about an unjustified digitisation
of reality.
In saying recording, I'm not assuming that the recording is digital,
nor that the "single predetermined worldline" is digital either. The
argument also works for continuous universes, and analog recordings of
those processes within that universe.
I should also comment that Bruno's "movie graph" is an analogue recording
too.
On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 09:54:21PM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote:
> Hi Russell and Bruno,
>
> I’ve been slowly reading “The Theory of Nothing” by Russell K. Standish and stumbled over the following sentence (that has Bruno’s discussion of the Movie Graph Argument and Maudlin’s Olympia and Klara in the context): “All physical processes occupying single predetermined world lines must be equivalent to a recording of the process.” pg. 144.
>
> 1) Does this statement not seem only consistent with a purely
> Newtonian definition of a process such that the “single predetermined
> world line”? How is the fact that our physical world is demonstrably
> only approximately Newtonian not require us to rethink this statement?
> I contend that there is a lot of rubbish ideas being taken seriously
> by serious thinkers in fundamental studies. One is that the Planck
> constant implies that Nature’s behaviors only exists in integer
> multiples of this constant. Such an assumption leads to nonsense such
> as the idea that space-time is granular at small size/high energy
> scales. This idea has observable consequences that have been observed
> to not be the case. Resent observations of ultra high energy gamma ray
> photons have shown that space-time is smooth even at those scales in
> direct violation of the nonsense’s predictions. Are we not using
> empirical evidence to guide our considerations?
>
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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Stephen Paul King
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Russell Standish
> Hi Russell,
>
> But does this only make the problem worse? The quantity of
> information that would have to be specified in analogue recordings
> would be at least some power greater than the information necessary to
> specify the finite bit digital version!
I don't think the information content of an analogue recording is even
well defined, without specifying a coarse graining. But I don't see
how that is related to the Maudlin / Movie Graph argument. I'm open to
be convinced otherwise, though.
I would like to be wrong on this, but ISTM that the Newtonian picture of the universe demands infinite computational resources to implement the Laplace Demon. I am trying to make sense of the Bekenstein bound and an idea in resent discussion by David Deutsch in his On Optimism speech – a speech that I wish all persons would watch and comprehend.
> I do overthink things. My lovely and brilliant wife often points
this out to me.
:)
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view. Related to this see: http://dare.uva.nl/document/134446 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3972 . In our search to define a generic non-anthropocentric notion of an observer, I think that this notion of a lower bound on observable differences may help us see a better outline of the idea that we are looking for.
>
It could be. Maybe Bruno has an opinion. ISTM that transformations of
implementations that leave observer moments invariant must be below
the substitution level, so you're probably on the right track here.
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
meekerdb
Hi Russell,���� But does this only make the problem worse? The quantity of information that would have to be specified in analogue recordings would be at least some power greater than the information necessary to specify the finite bit digital version! I would like to be wrong on this, but ISTM that the Newtonian picture of the universe demands infinite computational resources to implement the Laplace Demon. I am trying to make sense of the Bekenstein bound and an idea in resent discussion by David Deutsch in his On Optimism speech � a speech that I wish all persons would watch and comprehend.��� I do overthink things. My lovely and brilliant wife often points this out to me. Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an �observer moment� corresponding to �the smallest possible conscious experience� related to Bruno�s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view. Related to this see: http://dare.uva.nl/document/134446
What book is this?
Brent
and http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3972 . In our search to define a generic non-anthropocentric notion of an observer, I think that this notion of a lower bound on observable differences may help us see a better outline of the idea that we are looking for.
�Onward!�Stephen
Stephen Paul King
Hi Russell,
But does this only make the problem worse? The quantity of information that would have to be specified in analogue recordings would be at least some power greater than the information necessary to specify the finite bit digital version! I would like to be wrong on this, but ISTM that the Newtonian picture of the universe demands infinite computational resources to implement the Laplace Demon. I am trying to make sense of the Bekenstein bound and an idea in resent discussion by David Deutsch in his On Optimism speech – a speech that I wish all persons would watch and comprehend.
I do overthink things. My lovely and brilliant wife often points this out to me. Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view. Related to this see: http://dare.uva.nl/document/134446
What book is this?
Brent
Hi Bent,
Stephen Paul King
> Hi Russell,
>
> But does this only make the problem worse? The quantity of
> information that would have to be specified in analogue recordings
> would be at least some power greater than the information necessary to
> specify the finite bit digital version!
I don't think the information content of an analogue recording is even
well defined, without specifying a coarse graining. But I don't see
how that is related to the Maudlin / Movie Graph argument. I'm open to
be convinced otherwise, though.
>I would like to be wrong on this, but ISTM that the Newtonian picture of the universe demands infinite computational resources to implement the Laplace Demon. I am trying to make sense of the Bekenstein bound and an idea in resent discussion by > David Deutsch in his On Optimism speech – a speech that I wish all persons would watch and comprehend.
> I do overthink things. My lovely and brilliant wife often points this out to me.
:)
> Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on > an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view. Related to this see: http://dare.uva.nl/document/134446 and
>
It could be. Maybe Bruno has an opinion. ISTM that transformations of
implementations that leave observer moments invariant must be below
the substitution level, so you're probably on the right track here.
Bruno Marchal
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.
Stephen Paul King
The two are not the
same thing. Consciousness is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is
involves the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the continuous act
of choosing between alternatives (free will).meekerdb
On 29 Apr 2011, at 02:42, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an �observer moment� corresponding to �the smallest possible conscious experience� related to Bruno�s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.
You can easily relate them.
Let us distinguish the 1-OMs from the 3-OMs. The 1-OM are experiences of an individual when his brain is in some computational state S.
I have reservations about this casual identification of "observer moments" and "brain states".� I can accept that a brain can digitally simulated and hence be realized by a succession of states.� But I find it very doubtful that each state corresponds to different "thought" or "observation" much less conscious "thoughts".� Such thoughts are slow things that unfold over time and must be realized by many successive digital-brain states in terms of which they overlap with other thoughts both temporally and spatially.� So digitizing brains doesn't imply that consciousness occurs in discrete time slices.
Brent
We assume comp, of course, �so we can attribute a 1-OM to some such state. The 3-OMs are given by all the equivalent computational states S, S', S'', ... obtained in the universal dovetailing. For example the state of your brain emulated by a program computing the Heisenberg evolution of the Milky Way at the level of strings, or the state of your brain obtained by another program simulating the quantum fluctuation of the void, or the state of your brain obtained by a fortran program emulating a lisp program emulating a prolog program emulating ... emulating the search of the solution of some universal diophantine polynomial, etc. All those programs are emulated by the universal dovetailer, and all the finite pieces of computations obtained by such emulation can be proved to exist in a tiny part of arithmetic. There are aleph_0 such finite piece of computations, and they are all "run" by the UD. The first person glue them into a priori 2^aleph_0 infinite computations.�
For each of them, you can always find in arithmetic a computation which is more fine grained. But you, by the first person indeterminacy, cannot know in which computation you are. Actually you can be said belonging to all of them, and your physical laws are determined by the measure on your continuations of such computations. From this you can see that the highest level of substitution defines the measure on the possible lowest one, which you cannot distinguish, by definition. That is why, if we look at ourselves below that level, we have to be confronted with a strong form of indeterminacy. Boltzman's idea cannot be used at this stage, though, without having a measure on the relative computations, and this prevents a direct use of the notion of entropy. We need more physics for that, but, as I have already explained we have to derive that physics from the numbers and self-reference if we don't want to miss the relationship between the quanta and the qualia offered by the splitting between provable self-reference and true self-reference (G and G* and their intensional variants).
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
On 4/29/2011 8:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 29 Apr 2011, at 02:42, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.
You can easily relate them.
Let us distinguish the 1-OMs from the 3-OMs. The 1-OM are experiences of an individual when his brain is in some computational state S.
I have reservations about this casual identification of "observer moments" and "brain states". I can accept that a brain can digitally simulated and hence be realized by a succession of states. But I find it very doubtful that each state corresponds to different "thought" or "observation" much less conscious "thoughts".
Such thoughts are slow things that unfold over time and must be realized by many successive digital-brain states in terms of which they overlap with other thoughts both temporally and spatially. So digitizing brains doesn't imply that consciousness occurs in discrete time slices.
Brent
We assume comp, of course, so we can attribute a 1-OM to some such state. The 3-OMs are given by all the equivalent computational states S, S', S'', ... obtained in the universal dovetailing. For example the state of your brain emulated by a program computing the Heisenberg evolution of the Milky Way at the level of strings, or the state of your brain obtained by another program simulating the quantum fluctuation of the void, or the state of your brain obtained by a fortran program emulating a lisp program emulating a prolog program emulating ... emulating the search of the solution of some universal diophantine polynomial, etc. All those programs are emulated by the universal dovetailer, and all the finite pieces of computations obtained by such emulation can be proved to exist in a tiny part of arithmetic. There are aleph_0 such finite piece of computations, and they are all "run" by the UD. The first person glue them into a priori 2^aleph_0 infinite computations.
For each of them, you can always find in arithmetic a computation which is more fine grained. But you, by the first person indeterminacy, cannot know in which computation you are. Actually you can be said belonging to all of them, and your physical laws are determined by the measure on your continuations of such computations. From this you can see that the highest level of substitution defines the measure on the possible lowest one, which you cannot distinguish, by definition. That is why, if we look at ourselves below that level, we have to be confronted with a strong form of indeterminacy. Boltzman's idea cannot be used at this stage, though, without having a measure on the relative computations, and this prevents a direct use of the notion of entropy. We need more physics for that, but, as I have already explained we have to derive that physics from the numbers and self-reference if we don't want to miss the relationship between the quanta and the qualia offered by the splitting between provable self-reference and true self-reference (G and G* and their intensional variants).
Bruno
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smi...@zonnet.nl
picture of an OM applies and that then leads to the false notion that
you need to look at a sequence of states. But this is completely false.
Obviously the brain is effectively classical, but classicality from
quantum dynamics is only achived because of decoherence, so the brain
gets entangled with the environment. The same is true, of course, if
you run any classical machine, like your PC.
Now, the computational state of your brain, represented as an
entangled state with the environment, can be written in the suggestive
form:
sum over input of |input, corresponding output>
In fact, the entire computational history will be present in the state,
as it exist at any moment.
This is why I think that in Bruno's program, which apart from the
technical details, involves deriving physics from the theory of
computation, one can jump to quantum mechanics much more
straightforwardly. Also, since decoherence happens in the position
bases, one should be able to derive space-time from first principles
as well. Simply put, if you have well defined computational states, you
should get quantum mechanics plus general relativity free of charge.
Saibal
Citeren Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>>> To post to this group, send email to everything- li...@googlegroups.com.
Bruno Marchal
From: Bruno MarchalSent: Friday, April 29, 2011 11:45 AMSubject: Re: Reading The Theory of NothingOn 29 Apr 2011, at 02:42, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.You can easily relate them.Let us distinguish the 1-OMs from the 3-OMs. The 1-OM are experiences of an individual when his brain is in some computational state S. We assume comp, of course, so we can attribute a 1-OM to some such state. The 3-OMs are given by all the equivalent computational states S, S', S'', ... obtained in the universal dovetailing. For example the state of your brain emulated by a program computing the Heisenberg evolution of the Milky Way at the level of strings, or the state of your brain obtained by another program simulating the quantum fluctuation of the void, or the state of your brain obtained by a fortran program emulating a lisp program emulating a prolog program emulating ... emulating the search of the solution of some universal diophantine polynomial, etc. All those programs are emulated by the universal dovetailer, and all the finite pieces of computations obtained by such emulation can be proved to exist in a tiny part of arithmetic. There are aleph_0 such finite piece of computations, and they are all "run" by the UD. The first person glue them into a priori 2^aleph_0 infinite computations.For each of them, you can always find in arithmetic a computation which is more fine grained. But you, by the first person indeterminacy, cannot know in which computation you are. Actually you can be said belonging to all of them, and your physical laws are determined by the measure on your continuations of such computations. From this you can see that the highest level of substitution defines the measure on the possible lowest one, which you cannot distinguish, by definition. That is why, if we look at ourselves below that level, we have to be confronted with a strong form of indeterminacy. Boltzman's idea cannot be used at this stage, though, without having a measure on the relative computations, and this prevents a direct use of the notion of entropy. We need more physics for that, but, as I have already explained we have to derive that physics from the numbers and self-reference if we don't want to miss the relationship between the quanta and the qualia offered by the splitting between provable self-reference and true self-reference (G and G* and their intensional variants).Bruno[SPK]Thank you very much for this comment. I have two comments in response:1) Does not this relation, between substitution level and distinguishability level, hinge on the ability of a generic observer to make the distinction between what it is experiencing as opposed to and contrasted from what it is not (which is then defined as an 1-OM)? Is not the act of making a distinction a dynamic action that cannot be reduced to a static relation?
I strongly believe that we do not have a solution of the hard problem of consciousness because we refuse to see the obvious fact that consciousness is not a static condition.
Simply embedding a self-map within a static bit-string (via abstract Gödelization) is insufficient for reasons that Russell discusses in Theory of Nothing (the TIME postulate).
Consciousness requires a flow to allow for a continuous updating of the self-mapping (modelizing) that is irreducible to a unique monotonic function for similar reasons that a machine can never know exactly what process it is supervening upon!
What I am saying is that you are repeatedly stated this fact but it seems that you do not see the meaning of the words!At some point in these discussion we will have to come to grips with this property of observers: the ability to distinguish dynamically. I think that the results of the act of making distinctions (X) are the logical structures (G and G*) that you have explored in depth, but implies a X causes (G, G*) relation that is asymmetric for it tells us that G, G* supervene on X. How please note that X is, in my thinking, a process, not a static structure. My belief is that even with an ensemble of static structures does not equal a dynamic process. There must exist something that “breaths fire” into the ensemble.
2) You have discussed how the UD runs on something, but I have never been able to put my mental finger on what it is.
Even after reading SANE04 several times and asking many questions on this List... Every time that I see a discussion that makes sense of the UD as a process that can be associated with something that is a process, like a concrete or physical universe, that connects to observable phenomena like thermodynamics, you make this claim (or equivalent) that “comp forbids to associate inner experiences with the physical processing related to the computations corresponding (with comp) to those experiences.” You seem to demand that since there does not exist a bijective (one to one and onto) map between a particular inner experience (1-OM) and some (particular thermodynamic law compliant) process X that can act as a concrete instantiation of some computation S, that X does not exist.
Is this correct? It is an oxymoron to say that the UD “runs on the walls of Platonia” when we have explicitly forbidden Platonia from having anything like walls! Ideas require concrete implementations to be “real”.
The idea (the philosophic aspect at least) that I am exploring is exactly related to the “physics” that we need to recover something consistent with Boltzman’s idea but so far it requires that the measure is emergent from interactions between 1-OMs in a way that is not static and timeless. To do this we need a notion of concurrency and some notion of time (not the sequence of events notion of time, but the flow of one event into another). Now, I agree with you that there can be no ontologically primitive time because as there cannot be a single monotonic universal ordering of events when those events include even just those for all possible OM. OTOH, there can exist a fundamental notion of change that can have aspects (projections?) in finite 1-OMs that when counted with some form of local measure will generate a local clock aspect of time. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092My only difficulty with your ideas is that you use the semantics of Becoming to argue for its antithesis. Why do you do this? What is your motivation?
Is it your goal to prove the existence of a universal measure for all OMs?
Why is not a local relative (not global or universal) measure not sufficient?
Pratt’s residuation can be used to define the logical abstract aspect of such a local measure but his idea has not been fleshed out sufficiently to derive the particular form of this local measure, but other people are working on equivalent ideas that may overcome this shortcoming.Onward!Stephen
PS, to Russell: I think that you are conflating consciousness with self-awareness in section 9.5 of your book. <wlEmoticon-sadsmile[1].png> The two are not the same thing. Consciousness is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is involves the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the continuous act of choosing between alternatives (free will).
Bruno Marchal
On 01 May 2011, at 16:08, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
> I think that in this discussion one is assuming that the classical
> picture of an OM applies and that then leads to the false notion
> that you need to look at a sequence of states. But this is
> completely false. Obviously the brain is effectively classical, but
> classicality from quantum dynamics is only achived because of
> decoherence, so the brain gets entangled with the environment. The
> same is true, of course, if you run any classical machine, like your
> PC.
>
> Now, the computational state of your brain, represented as an
> entangled state with the environment, can be written in the
> suggestive form:
>
> sum over input of |input, corresponding output>
>
> In fact, the entire computational history will be present in the
> state, as it exist at any moment.
That makes sense. The same can be argued directly with comp. It
follows from the usual reasoning.
>
>
> This is why I think that in Bruno's program, which apart from the
> technical details, involves deriving physics from the theory of
> computation, one can jump to quantum mechanics much more
> straightforwardly.
OK, but with the mind-body problem as motivation, we have to derive
physics from computation in a specific way, so as to be able to have
both the quanta and the qualia (and thus by using the self-reference
logics).
> Also, since decoherence happens in the position bases, one should
> be able to derive space-time from first principles as well.
As we should!
> Simply put, if you have well defined computational states, you
> should get quantum mechanics plus general relativity free of charge.
Not free of electrical charge, I hope!
Bruno
meekerdb
> I think that in this discussion one is assuming that the classical
> picture of an OM applies and that then leads to the false notion that
> you need to look at a sequence of states. But this is completely
> false. Obviously the brain is effectively classical, but classicality
> from quantum dynamics is only achived because of decoherence, so the
> brain gets entangled with the environment. The same is true, of
> course, if you run any classical machine, like your PC.
>
> Now, the computational state of your brain, represented as an
> entangled state with the environment, can be written in the suggestive
> form:
>
> sum over input of |input, corresponding output>
>
> In fact, the entire computational history will be present in the
> state, as it exist at any moment.
I don't see how that can be. Simply from an informational perspective,
the computational history can have a lot more bits than the digitized
brain can store as a state - at least as a classical system. I think
you must be including all the information that exists in the environment
due to interaction with the brain. This of course has been spreading
out from the brain at the speed of light; so it's not clear to me where
this history starts. With birth? At the big bang? At the last Everett
split? At the last Everett split that corresponds to a different
quasi-classical "thought??
Brent
>
>
> This is why I think that in Bruno's program, which apart from the
> technical details, involves deriving physics from the theory of
> computation, one can jump to quantum mechanics much more
> straightforwardly. Also, since decoherence happens in the position
> bases, one should be able to derive space-time from first principles
> as well. Simply put, if you have well defined computational states,
> you should get quantum mechanics plus general relativity free of charge.
>
> Saibal
>
> Citeren Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
>>
>> On 30 Apr 2011, at 09:09, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/29/2011 8:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 29 Apr 2011, at 02:42, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an
>>>>>> �observer moment� corresponding to �the smallest possible
>>>>>> conscious experience� related to Bruno�s concept of substitution
Stephen Paul King
From: Bruno MarchalSent: Friday, April 29, 2011 11:45 AMSubject: Re: Reading The Theory of NothingOn 29 Apr 2011, at 02:42, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Please allow me to ask another question. Is the notion of an “observer moment” corresponding to “the smallest possible conscious experience” related to Bruno’s concept of substitution level? ISTM that both act like the idea of a coarse graining on an ensemble that is used to define the entropy of a system in that all of the members of the ensemble that are indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.You can easily relate them.Let us distinguish the 1-OMs from the 3-OMs. The 1-OM are experiences of an individual when his brain is in some computational state S. We assume comp, of course, so we can attribute a 1-OM to some such state. The 3-OMs are given by all the equivalent computational states S, S', S'', ... obtained in the universal dovetailing. For example the state of your brain emulated by a program computing the Heisenberg evolution of the Milky Way at the level of strings, or the state of your brain obtained by another program simulating the quantum fluctuation of the void, or the state of your brain obtained by a fortran program emulating a lisp program emulating a prolog program emulating ... emulating the search of the solution of some universal diophantine polynomial, etc. All those programs are emulated by the universal dovetailer, and all the finite pieces of computations obtained by such emulation can be proved to exist in a tiny part of arithmetic. There are aleph_0 such finite piece of computations, and they are all "run" by the UD. The first person glue them into a priori 2^aleph_0 infinite computations.For each of them, you can always find in arithmetic a computation which is more fine grained. But you, by the first person indeterminacy, cannot know in which computation you are. Actually you can be said belonging to all of them, and your physical laws are determined by the measure on your continuations of such computations. From this you can see that the highest level of substitution defines the measure on the possible lowest one, which you cannot distinguish, by definition. That is why, if we look at ourselves below that level, we have to be confronted with a strong form of indeterminacy. Boltzman's idea cannot be used at this stage, though, without having a measure on the relative computations, and this prevents a direct use of the notion of entropy. We need more physics for that, but, as I have already explained we have to derive that physics from the numbers and self-reference if we don't want to miss the relationship between the quanta and the qualia offered by the splitting between provable self-reference and true self-reference (G and G* and their intensional variants).Bruno[SPK]Thank you very much for this comment. I have two comments in response:1) Does not this relation, between substitution level and distinguishability level, hinge on the ability of a generic observer to make the distinction between what it is experiencing as opposed to and contrasted from what it is not (which is then defined as an 1-OM)? Is not the act of making a distinction a dynamic action that cannot be reduced to a static relation?
I strongly believe that we do not have a solution of the hard problem of consciousness because we refuse to see the obvious fact that consciousness is not a static condition.
Simply embedding a self-map within a static bit-string (via abstract Gödelization) is insufficient for reasons that Russell discusses in Theory of Nothing (the TIME postulate).
Consciousness requires a flow to allow for a continuous updating of the self-mapping (modelizing) that is irreducible to a unique monotonic function for similar reasons that a machine can never know exactly what process it is supervening upon!
What I am saying is that you are repeatedly stated this fact but it seems that you do not see the meaning of the words!At some point in these discussion we will have to come to grips with this property of observers: the ability to distinguish dynamically. I think that the results of the act of making distinctions (X) are the logical structures (G and G*) that you have explored in depth, but implies a X causes (G, G*) relation that is asymmetric for it tells us that G, G* supervene on X. How please note that X is, in my thinking, a process, not a static structure. My belief is that even with an ensemble of static structures does not equal a dynamic process. There must exist something that “breaths fire” into the ensemble.
2) You have discussed how the UD runs on something, but I have never been able to put my mental finger on what it is.
Even after reading SANE04 several times and asking many questions on this List... Every time that I see a discussion that makes sense of the UD as a process that can be associated with something that is a process, like a concrete or physical universe, that connects to observable phenomena like thermodynamics, you make this claim (or equivalent) that “comp forbids to associate inner experiences with the physical processing related to the computations corresponding (with comp) to those experiences.” You seem to demand that since there does not exist a bijective (one to one and onto) map between a particular inner experience (1-OM) and some (particular thermodynamic law compliant) process X that can act as a concrete instantiation of some computation S, that X does not exist.
Is this correct? It is an oxymoron to say that the UD “runs on the walls of Platonia” when we have explicitly forbidden Platonia from having anything like walls! Ideas require concrete implementations to be “real”.
The idea (the philosophic aspect at least) that I am exploring is exactly related to the “physics” that we need to recover something consistent with Boltzman’s idea but so far it requires that the measure is emergent from interactions between 1-OMs in a way that is not static and timeless. To do this we need a notion of concurrency and some notion of time (not the sequence of events notion of time, but the flow of one event into another). Now, I agree with you that there can be no ontologically primitive time because as there cannot be a single monotonic universal ordering of events when those events include even just those for all possible OM. OTOH, there can exist a fundamental notion of change that can have aspects (projections?) in finite 1-OMs that when counted with some form of local measure will generate a local clock aspect of time. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092My only difficulty with your ideas is that you use the semantics of Becoming to argue for its antithesis. Why do you do this? What is your motivation?
Is it your goal to prove the existence of a universal measure for all OMs?
Why is not a local relative (not global or universal) measure not sufficient?
Pratt’s residuation can be used to define the logical abstract aspect of such a local measure but his idea has not been fleshed out sufficiently to derive the particular form of this local measure, but other people are working on equivalent ideas that may overcome this shortcoming.Onward!StephenPS, to Russell: I think that you are conflating consciousness with self-awareness in section 9.5 of your book. <wlEmoticon-sadsmile[1].png> The two are not the same thing. Consciousness is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is involves the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the continuous act of choosing between alternatives (free will).
Stephen Paul King
Stephen Paul King
Hi Brent,
meekerdb
It does not exist "ontologically", but still exist (and is unavoidable) epistemologically. X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations. The self-reference logics show that such an enterprise makes sense. And from this we get a coherent, conceptually simple, theory of both quanta and qualia. It is as close as it is possible to a solution of the "hard problem of consciousness" (that is the mind-body problem).
�[SPK] You define existence in a way that is very different from how I define it. For me �to exist� is a pure ontological 3p. I consider existence as purely possible necessity. This makes any epistemological existence supervenient upon its possible necessity in the ontological sense. �To exist� is distinct from �to be manifest� or �to be knowable� or �to be provable� or any other 1p predication.
First we have experiences and then we make a model of what exists.� Epistemology precedes ontology.
Brent
meekerdb
with its own big bang, inflation etc. in each split for each observer on that branch. Remember, for instance, how time does not exist in the 3p?
Brent
Stephen Paul King
It does not exist "ontologically", but still exist (and is unavoidable) epistemologically. X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations. The self-reference logics show that such an enterprise makes sense. And from this we get a coherent, conceptually simple, theory of both quanta and qualia. It is as close as it is possible to a solution of the "hard problem of consciousness" (that is the mind-body problem).
[SPK] You define existence in a way that is very different from how I define it. For me “to exist” is a pure ontological 3p. I consider existence as purely possible necessity. This makes any epistemological existence supervenient upon its possible necessity in the ontological sense. “To exist” is distinct from “to be manifest” or “to be knowable” or “to be provable” or any other 1p predication.
First we have experiences and then we make a model of what exists. Epistemology precedes ontology.
Brent
Pfft, naïve realism...
Bruno Marchal
1) Does not this relation, between substitution level and distinguishability level, hinge on the ability of a generic observer to make the distinction between what it is experiencing as opposed to and contrasted from what it is not (which is then defined as an 1-OM)? Is not the act of making a distinction a dynamic action that cannot be reduced to a static relation?I don't see why. A dynamic relation which cannot be seen statically seems to use some magic, which would contradict both the 3-determinism of QM, or the classical logic of elementary arithmetic.[SPK] Yes, but what you are stating is the known problem of 3-determinism for QM and classical logic. QM’s measurement problem exists because it has not been understood correctly. People keep trying to force QM into a Boolean square hole and come back saying ‘no one can understand QM; when we know already that its logical structure is not limited to [0,1] valuations. QM logic spans over the complex numbers! Karl Svozil have researched this fact in great depth. You also need to take into consideration the concurrency problem; See http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/PP-2008-34.text.pdf and Toward a Dynamic Logic of Questions
I strongly believe that we do not have a solution of the hard problem of consciousness because we refuse to see the obvious fact that consciousness is not a static condition.On the contrary, the beauty of incompletness is that it justifies why consciousness is felt as dynamical, and in a sense, *is* intrinsically dynamical (to be sure, this is a rare things put in doubt by salvia divinorum which seems to accept a notion of static consciousness, but then ...).[SPK] Yes, it justifies it but only as a static case. It is like a reducing your life to a stack of frozen snapshots of your live with no information about the point of view from which those snapshots where taken nor the wider context fo the lives of others that your existence has affected and that has affects upon you.
BTW, Salvia Div. induces a form of memory ataxia, like anterograde amnesia, thus the experience of static consciousness. Please be careful with it. Experimenting with altered states of consciousness is very important because our models of consciousness need to apply to all of these special cases. have you ever read any of John C. Lilly’s books? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly
Simply embedding a self-map within a static bit-string (via abstract Gödelization) is insufficient for reasons that Russell discusses in Theory of Nothing (the TIME postulate).That is a 3-time notion. I postulate it also, through the Peano arithmetic postulate. It is the remaining necessarily mystery.[SPK] Let us explore it further! Please try to read http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092
Consciousness requires a flow to allow for a continuous updating of the self-mapping (modelizing) that is irreducible to a unique monotonic function for similar reasons that a machine can never know exactly what process it is supervening upon!That makes sense at the epistemological level.[SPK] OK, but epistemology is 1p. This follows because qualia is strictly 1p. My point is that our 3p (ontological) pronouncements must not disallow the 1p propositions. We can show that time does not exist at 3p, but we can recover it in 1p.
What I am saying is that you are repeatedly stated this fact but it seems that you do not see the meaning of the words!At some point in these discussion we will have to come to grips with this property of observers: the ability to distinguish dynamically. I think that the results of the act of making distinctions (X) are the logical structures (G and G*) that you have explored in depth, but implies a X causes (G, G*) relation that is asymmetric for it tells us that G, G* supervene on X. How please note that X is, in my thinking, a process, not a static structure. My belief is that even with an ensemble of static structures does not equal a dynamic process. There must exist something that “breaths fire” into the ensemble.That seems to me like saying that we are OK with modern science, but that we still need a God for explaining where all come from. But assuming comp, the God we need is no more than arithmetical truth. It explains well why machine will be befuddled abaout time and becoming, as they cannot avoid those notion due to their internal perspectives.[SPK] I am not saying anything that contradicts your statements about machine theology. But we cannot forget the scaffolding that allowed us to build our beautiful castle up high in the air! (metaphorically speaking)
2) You have discussed how the UD runs on something, but I have never been able to put my mental finger on what it is.It is a tiny part of arithmetic.[SPK] As you understand it. Our problem is that we cannot peer into your mind and understand what you are understanding without, literally, becoming you.
This is something that is captures in the bisimulation idea that I have exploring. While arithmetic truths do not “need” any particular form of implementation, they do require some form of implementation. What you are saying is that since comp does not need any particular form of implementation, is does not need to be implemented at all. That is a profound mistake.
Think of an idea that cannot be named or written or modeled in any way. Can you know of it at all? No.
Why not? Chalmers and others have written of this in terms of conceivability. The fact that you can conceive of a number is AN IMPLEMENTATION of the number!
Even after reading SANE04 several times and asking many questions on this List... Every time that I see a discussion that makes sense of the UD as a process that can be associated with something that is a process, like a concrete or physical universe, that connects to observable phenomena like thermodynamics, you make this claim (or equivalent) that “comp forbids to associate inner experiences with the physical processing related to the computations corresponding (with comp) to those experiences.” You seem to demand that since there does not exist a bijective (one to one and onto) map between a particular inner experience (1-OM) and some (particular thermodynamic law compliant) process X that can act as a concrete instantiation of some computation S, that X does not exist.It does not exist "ontologically", but still exist (and is unavoidable) epistemologically. X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations. The self-reference logics show that such an enterprise makes sense. And from this we get a coherent, conceptually simple, theory of both quanta and qualia. It is as close as it is possible to a solution of the "hard problem of consciousness" (that is the mind-body problem).[SPK] You define existence in a way that is very different from how I define it.
For me “to exist” is a pure ontological 3p.
I consider existence as purely possible necessity. This makes any epistemological existence supervenient upon its possible necessity in the ontological sense. “To exist” is distinct from “to be manifest” or “to be knowable” or “to be provable” or any other 1p predication.
Is this correct? It is an oxymoron to say that the UD “runs on the walls of Platonia” when we have explicitly forbidden Platonia from having anything like walls! Ideas require concrete implementations to be “real”.0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... are concrete enough. With comp ideas are numbers, and the "fire" comes from the laws of addition and multiplication.You can postulate more, but you cannot use more, so by occam, it is preferable to not postulate more, because it introduce unnecessary complications.[SPK] They are only concrete because they are potentially conceptual,
this make your ability to conceive number dependent on physical examples of o-ness, 1-ness, 2-ness, etc.
Absent the possibility of implementation they are worse than meaningless. This also applies to addition and multiplication.
The idea (the philosophic aspect at least) that I am exploring is exactly related to the “physics” that we need to recover something consistent with Boltzman’s idea but so far it requires that the measure is emergent from interactions between 1-OMs in a way that is not static and timeless. To do this we need a notion of concurrency and some notion of time (not the sequence of events notion of time, but the flow of one event into another). Now, I agree with you that there can be no ontologically primitive time because as there cannot be a single monotonic universal ordering of events when those events include even just those for all possible OM. OTOH, there can exist a fundamental notion of change that can have aspects (projections?) in finite 1-OMs that when counted with some form of local measure will generate a local clock aspect of time. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092My only difficulty with your ideas is that you use the semantics of Becoming to argue for its antithesis. Why do you do this? What is your motivation?I study the logical consequence of assuming that I can survive through a digital substitution, and I am glad to see that it explains where time and space come from, without making the qualia disappear (unlike 1500 years of naturalism).[SPK] And I overflow with joy at that fact! But you must admit that as a finite being capapble of only one point of view at a time, that you have a blind spot just as all other finite entities. Our modelizations are forever incomplete. We are theories in flesh, we cannot make claims that we are just theories. The flesh is required to communicate.
Is it your goal to prove the existence of a universal measure for all OMs?Certainly not. The measure is only relative. Cf the assa/rssa discussions on this list.[SPK] OK, then why is the measure not obvious?
Why is not a local relative (not global or universal) measure not sufficient?It has to be sufficient, or comp is false. there is no absolute measure, but the relative measure is absolute. This is like QM.[SPK] See Hitoshi’s paper.
Pratt’s residuation can be used to define the logical abstract aspect of such a local measure but his idea has not been fleshed out sufficiently to derive the particular form of this local measure, but other people are working on equivalent ideas that may overcome this shortcoming.Onward!StephenPS, to Russell: I think that you are conflating consciousness with self-awareness in section 9.5 of your book. <wlEmoticon-sadsmile[1].png> The two are not the same thing. Consciousness is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is involves the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the continuous act of choosing between alternatives (free will).That is weird, because I think that with respect to the current stage of the mind body problem, to distinguish awareness and consciousness is a bit like distinguishing 1000 $ and 1004 $. But it remains important to distinguish awareness and self-awareness (or consciousness and self-consciousness).[SPK] I think that we are talking past each other here. Try to hear what I am saying, not just your own words.
Russell Standish
> >>PS, to Russell: I think that you are conflating consciousness
> >>with self-awareness in section 9.5 of your book. <wlEmoticon-
> >>sadsmile[1].png> The two are not the same thing. Consciousness
> >>is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is involves
> >>the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the
> >>continuous act of choosing between alternatives (free will).
I missed this comment earlier. It surprised me, as I do not conflate
the two (self awareness requires consciousness, but consciousness
without self-awareness is at least conceivable).
Section 9.5 is about evolutionary explanations of self-awareness and
free will, so is not about the more general phenomenon of
consciousness at all. However, maybe you thought I was conflating the two
in the very last sentence: "I can conclude in agreement with Dennett that
consciousness is an extremely rare property ion the animal
kingdom". If this were only based on section 9.5, then this would be
overreaching conclusions from the mirror test and Macchiavellian
theory. But I also base the comment on the anthropic "ants are not
conscious argument" (section 5.4), which is about the more general
concept of consciousness, not just self-awareness, and also the Occam
catastrophe argument (page 84) leads to a (tentative) conclusion that
self-awareness is actually required for consciousness after all. It is
one of the more contentious conclusions of the book, so I'm happy for
that to be pulled apart and debated,
Stephen Paul King
1) Does not this relation, between substitution level and distinguishability level, hinge on the ability of a generic observer to make the distinction between what it is experiencing as opposed to and contrasted from what it is not (which is then defined as an 1-OM)? Is not the act of making a distinction a dynamic action that cannot be reduced to a static relation?I don't see why. A dynamic relation which cannot be seen statically seems to use some magic, which would contradict both the 3-determinism of QM, or the classical logic of elementary arithmetic.[SPK] Yes, but what you are stating is the known problem of 3-determinism for QM and classical logic. QM’s measurement problem exists because it has not been understood correctly. People keep trying to force QM into a Boolean square hole and come back saying ‘no one can understand QM; when we know already that its logical structure is not limited to [0,1] valuations. QM logic spans over the complex numbers! Karl Svozil have researched this fact in great depth. You also need to take into consideration the concurrency problem; See http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/PP-2008-34.text.pdf and Toward a Dynamic Logic of Questions
I strongly believe that we do not have a solution of the hard problem of consciousness because we refuse to see the obvious fact that consciousness is not a static condition.On the contrary, the beauty of incompletness is that it justifies why consciousness is felt as dynamical, and in a sense, *is* intrinsically dynamical (to be sure, this is a rare things put in doubt by salvia divinorum which seems to accept a notion of static consciousness, but then ...).
[SPK] Yes, it justifies it but only as a static case. It is like a reducing your life to a stack of frozen snapshots of your live with no information about the point of view from which those snapshots where taken nor the wider context of the lives of others that your existence has affected and that has affects upon you.
BTW, Salvia Div. induces a form of memory ataxia, like anterograde amnesia, thus the experience of static consciousness. Please be careful with it. Experimenting with altered states of consciousness is very important because our models of consciousness need to apply to all of these special cases. have you ever read any of John C. Lilly’s books? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly
Simply embedding a self-map within a static bit-string (via abstract Gödelization) is insufficient for reasons that Russell discusses in Theory of Nothing (the TIME postulate).That is a 3-time notion. I postulate it also, through the Peano arithmetic postulate. It is the remaining necessarily mystery.[SPK] Let us explore it further! Please try to read http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092
Consciousness requires a flow to allow for a continuous updating of the self-mapping (modelizing) that is irreducible to a unique monotonic function for similar reasons that a machine can never know exactly what process it is supervening upon!That makes sense at the epistemological level.[SPK] OK, but epistemology is 1p. This follows because qualia is strictly 1p. My point is that our 3p (ontological) pronouncements must not disallow the 1p propositions. We can show that time does not exist at 3p, but we can recover it in 1p.
What I am saying is that you are repeatedly stated this fact but it seems that you do not see the meaning of the words!At some point in these discussion we will have to come to grips with this property of observers: the ability to distinguish dynamically. I think that the results of the act of making distinctions (X) are the logical structures (G and G*) that you have explored in depth, but implies a X causes (G, G*) relation that is asymmetric for it tells us that G, G* supervene on X. How please note that X is, in my thinking, a process, not a static structure. My belief is that even with an ensemble of static structures does not equal a dynamic process. There must exist something that “breaths fire” into the ensemble.That seems to me like saying that we are OK with modern science, but that we still need a God for explaining where all come from. But assuming comp, the God we need is no more than arithmetical truth. It explains well why machine will be befuddled abaout time and becoming, as they cannot avoid those notion due to their internal perspectives.[SPK] I am not saying anything that contradicts your statements about machine theology. But we cannot forget the scaffolding that allowed us to build our beautiful castle up high in the air! (metaphorically speaking)
2) You have discussed how the UD runs on something, but I have never been able to put my mental finger on what it is.It is a tiny part of arithmetic.[SPK] As you understand it. Our problem is that we cannot peer into your mind and understand what you are understanding without, literally, becoming you.
This is something that is captures in the bisimulation idea that I have exploring. While arithmetic truths do not “need” any particular form of implementation, they do require some form of implementation. What you are saying is that since comp does not need any particular form of implementation, is does not need to be implemented at all. That is a profound mistake.
Think of an idea that cannot be named or written or modeled in any way. Can you know of it at all? No.
Why not? Chalmers and others have written of this in terms of conceivability. The fact that you can conceive of a number is AN IMPLEMENTATION of the number!
Even after reading SANE04 several times and asking many questions on this List... Every time that I see a discussion that makes sense of the UD as a process that can be associated with something that is a process, like a concrete or physical universe, that connects to observable phenomena like thermodynamics, you make this claim (or equivalent) that “comp forbids to associate inner experiences with the physical processing related to the computations corresponding (with comp) to those experiences.” You seem to demand that since there does not exist a bijective (one to one and onto) map between a particular inner experience (1-OM) and some (particular thermodynamic law compliant) process X that can act as a concrete instantiation of some computation S, that X does not exist.It does not exist "ontologically", but still exist (and is unavoidable) epistemologically. X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations. The self-reference logics show that such an enterprise makes sense. And from this we get a coherent, conceptually simple, theory of both quanta and qualia. It is as close as it is possible to a solution of the "hard problem of consciousness" (that is the mind-body problem).[SPK] You define existence in a way that is very different from how I define it.
For me “to exist” is a pure ontological 3p.
I consider existence as purely possible necessity. This makes any epistemological existence supervenient upon its possible necessity in the ontological sense. “To exist” is distinct from “to be manifest” or “to be knowable” or “to be provable” or any other 1p predication.
Is this correct? It is an oxymoron to say that the UD “runs on the walls of Platonia” when we have explicitly forbidden Platonia from having anything like walls! Ideas require concrete implementations to be “real”.0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... are concrete enough. With comp ideas are numbers, and the "fire" comes from the laws of addition and multiplication.You can postulate more, but you cannot use more, so by occam, it is preferable to not postulate more, because it introduce unnecessary complications.[SPK] They are only concrete because they are potentially conceptual,
this make your ability to conceive number dependent on physical examples of o-ness, 1-ness, 2-ness, etc.
Absent the possibility of implementation they are worse than meaningless. This also applies to addition and multiplication.
The idea (the philosophic aspect at least) that I am exploring is exactly related to the “physics” that we need to recover something consistent with Boltzman’s idea but so far it requires that the measure is emergent from interactions between 1-OMs in a way that is not static and timeless. To do this we need a notion of concurrency and some notion of time (not the sequence of events notion of time, but the flow of one event into another). Now, I agree with you that there can be no ontologically primitive time because as there cannot be a single monotonic universal ordering of events when those events include even just those for all possible OM. OTOH, there can exist a fundamental notion of change that can have aspects (projections?) in finite 1-OMs that when counted with some form of local measure will generate a local clock aspect of time. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092My only difficulty with your ideas is that you use the semantics of Becoming to argue for its antithesis. Why do you do this? What is your motivation?I study the logical consequence of assuming that I can survive through a digital substitution, and I am glad to see that it explains where time and space come from, without making the qualia disappear (unlike 1500 years of naturalism).[SPK] And I overflow with joy at that fact! But you must admit that as a finite being capapble of only one point of view at a time, that you have a blind spot just as all other finite entities. Our modelizations are forever incomplete. We are theories in flesh, we cannot make claims that we are just theories. The flesh is required to communicate.
Is it your goal to prove the existence of a universal measure for all OMs?Certainly not. The measure is only relative. Cf the assa/rssa discussions on this list.[SPK] OK, then why is the measure not obvious?
Why is not a local relative (not global or universal) measure not sufficient?It has to be sufficient, or comp is false. there is no absolute measure, but the relative measure is absolute. This is like QM.[SPK] See Hitoshi’s paper.
Pratt’s residuation can be used to define the logical abstract aspect of such a local measure but his idea has not been fleshed out sufficiently to derive the particular form of this local measure, but other people are working on equivalent ideas that may overcome this shortcoming.Onward!StephenPS, to Russell: I think that you are conflating consciousness with self-awareness in section 9.5 of your book. <wlEmoticon-sadsmile[1].png> The two are not the same thing. Consciousness is purely passive. Self-awareness is active in that is involves the continuous modeling (passive consciousness) with the continuous act of choosing between alternatives (free will).That is weird, because I think that with respect to the current stage of the mind body problem, to distinguish awareness and consciousness is a bit like distinguishing 1000 $ and 1004 $. But it remains important to distinguish awareness and self-awareness (or consciousness and self-consciousness).[SPK] I think that we are talking past each other here. Try to hear what I am saying, not just your own words.
Stephen Paul King
Umm, no. It was not just the last sentence. I would like to expand on your thought process that lead to the conclusion. AFAIK, my idea of bare consciousness does not involve any form of selection (other than the 1p appearance of collapse of superpositions) and should apply to even a quark! I am taking an idea from Chalmers and pushing it to see where and if it breaks down; “that consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties, and that there may be lawlike rules which he terms "psychophysical laws" that determine which physical systems are associated with which types of qualia.”
John Mikes
--
Stephen Paul King
Hi Russell,
Allow me to add something to this. In tracking down more of Nagel’s papers to read, I found this review of Galen Strawson’s book Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics : http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n21/thomas-nagel/the-i-in-me
In it the idea of “thin subject” is discussed and critiqued by Nagel. From what I can tell so far the idea of consciousness that I am exploring is similar to this “thin subject” notion. Here is a quote from Strawson that illustrates the idea of a thin subject:
“When I consider myself in the whole-human-being way I fully endorse the conventional view that there is in my case – that I am – a single subject of experience – a person – with long-term diachronic continuity. But when I experience myself as an inner mental subject and consider the detailed character of conscious experience, my feeling is that I am – that the thing that I most essentially am is – continually completely new.” (my italics)
Nagel’s comment on this is:
“I do not understand what it would be like to live like this, to feel ‘that there simply isn’t any “I” or self that goes on through (let alone beyond) the waking day, even though there’s obviously and vividly an “I” or self at any given time.’ If Strawson experiences guilt or shame for episodes in the past, it must be very different from mine.
However, this strange phenomenology of impermanence makes palatable to him the equally strange metaphysics to which his arguments drive him. Because the diachronic unity of the self, like its synchronic unity, must be a purely experiential unity, he is led to the conclusion that the self is a ‘thin subject’ – something that exists only if experience exists of which it is the subject. Further, this thing cannot be distinguished from its properties, and those properties are exhausted by the experience, which is in turn identical with the experience’s contents. (Strawson maintains that no object can be distinguished from its properties – another piece of radical metaphysics.) The result is that the self which exists at any time is simply a unified experiential process or episode. In light of materialism, the self can be presumed also to be a neural process: ‘a synergy of neural activity which is either a part of or (somehow) identical with the synergy that constitutes the experience as a whole’. But even though it has physical features, it is single, and therefore a self, only in virtue of its experiential unity. Finally, by the standards of diachronic unity appropriate for the thin subject of an experiential process that is indistinguishable from its content, there is no reason to think any self outlasts the lived present of experience – let alone that it lasts as long as a human life.”
I think that Nagel’s is misunderstanding Strawson’s idea! I think that Strawson is correct, but the idea of thin subjectivity is more like something that can be integrated into what Nagel is wanting. Just as the area under a curve can be considered as being built up (via summation) of a sequence of 1d line segment under a point that is part of a curve
If this idea of bare consciousness, ala Chalmer’s consideration, is to work (and apply even to quarks!) then something like Strawson’s idea here has to follow. This does have some support in Pratt’s discussions, the idea is that as the Logical algebra evolves it collapses into a singleton as its truth valuations are altered, thus it must be continuously reconstructed from scratch because of the destruction created by this alteration! The idea is that the consciousness is implicit in the relation between logical algebra and its Stone dual (some topological space). Pratt wrote in http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf :
“Set^op is equivalent to the category of complete
atomic Boolean algebras
(CABA’s). But the free CABA generated by the set X is
the power set 2^2^X.
Hence the Boolean operations of each arity X, X empty,
finite, or infinite,
consist of all functions from 2^X to 2. This is the
maximum possible language
compatible with CABA homomorphisms; not only is
every arity represented but
every operation of that arity. Furthermore
the equational theory of CABA’s is
maximally consistent in the sense that
no new equation can be added without
collapsing the entire algebra to a
singleton. A CABA as the ultimate know-it-all
is as mental as any object
of traditional concrete mathematics can be.”
The idea here seems to be (and I am completely projecting my own thinking on Pratt’s words!) that for each CABA (or weaker version) to evolve it must have some form of updating, such that it can maintain some non-zero truth value relative to its bisimulations with other logical structures. If we have to add a new equation (new information => new predicates) to the maximally consistent structure (necessary for it to be “true” in all bisimulations of it!) then it must act like the phoenix of legend. To immolate itself and be born continuously anew from the fire of its destruction.
If we are going to think of a mind as a logical structure then many minds –> many logical structures. As each mind interacts, it must change into a form that can incorporate the new information gained and its so doing it must be reconstructed anew. The “body” of a mind is, ala Wolfram, its best model (topos) and the mind, of a given body, its its best logical representation (Logical algebra). This loops us back to my question regarding Bruno’s substitution level and your OM level! Do you see what I men?
Now, think of many minds evolving this way, how do we think of synchronizations between them?
Onward!
Stephen (going out on the crack pot edge!)
Bruno Marchal
Hi Bruno,From: Bruno MarchalSent: Monday, May 02, 2011 2:08 PMSubject: Re: Max Substitution level = Min Observer Moment?On 02 May 2011, at 00:23, Stephen Paul King wrote:
1) Does not this relation, between substitution level and distinguishability level, hinge on the ability of a generic observer to make the distinction between what it is experiencing as opposed to and contrasted from what it is not (which is then defined as an 1-OM)? Is not the act of making a distinction a dynamic action that cannot be reduced to a static relation?I don't see why. A dynamic relation which cannot be seen statically seems to use some magic, which would contradict both the 3-determinism of QM, or the classical logic of elementary arithmetic.[SPK] Yes, but what you are stating is the known problem of 3-determinism for QM and classical logic. QM’s measurement problem exists because it has not been understood correctly. People keep trying to force QM into a Boolean square hole and come back saying ‘no one can understand QM; when we know already that its logical structure is not limited to [0,1] valuations. QM logic spans over the complex numbers! Karl Svozil have researched this fact in great depth. You also need to take into consideration the concurrency problem; See http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/PP-2008-34.text.pdf and Toward a Dynamic Logic of QuestionsThe classicality of comp explains why the notion of observation by machine has to be quantum logic and non boolean logic.It explains time space in the same way. It is arithmetic (boolean) seen from inside (non boolean).[SPK] This makes no sense to me at all! It is as if you are claiming that Boolean a explain Heyting algebras. How does a more restricted and special case act to allow the more general form? Svozil’s work shows conclusively that quantum logics cannot be embedded into classical logics and classical logics can be multiply embedded into a single quantum logic. How does an inside view of a classical logic (Boolean) obtain a more general logic (Heyting, for example).
I have considered how on could embed a fragment of a quantum logic into a Boolean logic to show how to model selection on the outer quantum logic, but ... You confuse the heck out of me!
I strongly believe that we do not have a solution of the hard problem of consciousness because we refuse to see the obvious fact that consciousness is not a static condition.On the contrary, the beauty of incompletness is that it justifies why consciousness is felt as dynamical, and in a sense, *is* intrinsically dynamical (to be sure, this is a rare things put in doubt by salvia divinorum which seems to accept a notion of static consciousness, but then ...).[SPK] Yes, it justifies it but only as a static case. It is like a reducing your life to a stack of frozen snapshots of your live with no information about the point of view from which those snapshots where taken nor the wider context of the lives of others that your existence has affected and that has affects upon you.Not at all. Either you confuse a description of a computation with a computation, or you put yourself at the place of God. Comp, on the contrary ask us to not do that error for the machine themselves. it is a vaccine against reductionism. Even the machine's life cannot be reduced to the description of its computation. In comp term, you are using a G* equivalence (p <-> Bp for p sigma_1); which is true, but not provable at the G level.And I am not saying that comp is true, just studying the consequence. Would I say that comp is true, I would do the confusion you suspect. But I do not say that comp is true.[SPK] I am using the reasoning from Wolfram that the best model of a system’s evolution is the evolution of the system itself. So in a sense, yes there is a point where the description of a computation is indistinguishable from the computation.
This seems to be consistent with your “level of substitution” in the sense that it is the point at which the specifics of implementation are irrelevant. That does not require omniscience, I hope!
Betting that comp is true and expecting the payoff each and every time is hard to distinguish from “saying that comp is true”...
I am interested in what happens when we have many instantiations of G; how do machines communicate with each other in your thinking. A 1p plurality alone is insufficient as such is the trivial case since concurrency is not even considered.
BTW, Salvia Div. induces a form of memory ataxia, like anterograde amnesia, thus the experience of static consciousness. Please be careful with it. Experimenting with altered states of consciousness is very important because our models of consciousness need to apply to all of these special cases. have you ever read any of John C. Lilly’s books? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._LillyI read "les simulacres de Dieu", a french translation of one of his book. It was not too bad.[SPK] Ah, Simulations of God. A good one!Simply embedding a self-map within a static bit-string (via abstract Gödelization) is insufficient for reasons that Russell discusses in Theory of Nothing (the TIME postulate).That is a 3-time notion. I postulate it also, through the Peano arithmetic postulate. It is the remaining necessarily mystery.[SPK] Let us explore it further! Please try to read http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092I cannot read a paper for each sentence you say. Please make a straight argument.[SPK] OK, I am citing sources. But please read this paper. Hitoshi discusses how the Nothing (equivalent to the Totality of existence) is Inconsistent, similar to Hal Ruhl’s idea. He goes on to show how this can be considered as a logical system that has a “stationary” oscillating truth valuation. This can be used as a way to model Becoming at a primitive level. We recover notions of time only at a finite “local” level where we have a local relative measure to at as a gauge of the Becoming. The key idea is to separate the notions of change from the notion of measure when considering time.
Consciousness requires a flow to allow for a continuous updating of the self-mapping (modelizing) that is irreducible to a unique monotonic function for similar reasons that a machine can never know exactly what process it is supervening upon!That makes sense at the epistemological level.[SPK] OK, but epistemology is 1p. This follows because qualia is strictly 1p. My point is that our 3p (ontological) pronouncements must not disallow the 1p propositions. We can show that time does not exist at 3p, but we can recover it in 1p.OK. This is a theorem of arithmetic (assuming comp, the classical theory of knowledge, etc.)[SPK] OK, but all we can know or prove of 3p obtains from 1p,
but the existence of 3p is independent of 1p.
All we can say, absent of the conditions of observation, is that something, even Nothing, exists. Existence is not a property that can depends on observability by machine or any other(unless we are stuborn naïve realists).
What I am saying is that you are repeatedly stated this fact but it seems that you do not see the meaning of the words!At some point in these discussion we will have to come to grips with this property of observers: the ability to distinguish dynamically. I think that the results of the act of making distinctions (X) are the logical structures (G and G*) that you have explored in depth, but implies a X causes (G, G*) relation that is asymmetric for it tells us that G, G* supervene on X. How please note that X is, in my thinking, a process, not a static structure. My belief is that even with an ensemble of static structures does not equal a dynamic process. There must exist something that “breaths fire” into the ensemble.That seems to me like saying that we are OK with modern science, but that we still need a God for explaining where all come from. But assuming comp, the God we need is no more than arithmetical truth. It explains well why machine will be befuddled abaout time and becoming, as they cannot avoid those notion due to their internal perspectives.[SPK] I am not saying anything that contradicts your statements about machine theology. But we cannot forget the scaffolding that allowed us to build our beautiful castle up high in the air! (metaphorically speaking)
2) You have discussed how the UD runs on something, but I have never been able to put my mental finger on what it is.It is a tiny part of arithmetic.[SPK] As you understand it. Our problem is that we cannot peer into your mind and understand what you are understanding without, literally, becoming you.Not at all. You need only to study a bit of arithmetic. I use the term in the standard sense. There is no "philosophy", except the "theological point' of imagining oneself with an digital brain.And in AUDA, "becoming you" becomes the usual Gödel arithmetization of Löian theories or machines.[SPK] OK, but we are looping back to the part of your idea that I agree with.This is something that is captures in the bisimulation idea that I have exploring. While arithmetic truths do not “need” any particular form of implementation, they do require some form of implementation. What you are saying is that since comp does not need any particular form of implementation, is does not need to be implemented at all. That is a profound mistake.This is UDA step 8 (the movie graph argument), or just step seven + a stronger form of OCCAM. Where is the mistake?[SPK] The leap from the need for implementation to the claim that the implementations do not exist.
Think of an idea that cannot be named or written or modeled in any way. Can you know of it at all? No.Consciousness, God, Truth, things like that.[SPK] Those are named. We are able to represent ineffable ideas, I claim, only because we have the ability to implement representations. This is the essence of the representations theorems that I keep yelling about. You seem to want to banish the Stone (or more general) topological spaces from existence!
The fact that we can symbolically represent a concept cannot be cut from the physicality of being able to make a mark on the paper, chalkboard, etc. .
Why not? Chalmers and others have written of this in terms of conceivability. The fact that you can conceive of a number is AN IMPLEMENTATION of the number!I can conceive busy-beaver(999), but that is hardly an implementation of that number.[SPK] Sure, but if we follow that idea strictly then we cannot say that a number string is “running the UD”.
Again, ‘the best model of a system is the system itself’ is involved here. While your conception of busy-beaver(999) is hardly doing anything that one would qualify as generating an output indistinguishable from the implementation of busy-beaver(999) on a UTM but it does qualify as a communicable referent of a busy-beaver(999). This is semiotic theory stuff, have you studied it?
Let me work another more simple example of the idea here. We say that unicorns do not exist, and yet we have many representations of unicorns. At what point is a never physically observed as a mono-horned Equine but multiply represented entity in pictures and words soundly claimed to “not exist”? This is obviously an inconsistent line of thinking, thus it is unsound to claim that the thought of a number is not an implementation of that number!
Since when are we using the test of physical actuality to determine the “existence” of an entity?
I thought we had moved past that naïveté, after all we think of numbers as existing ‘independent of physical implementation’.
Even after reading SANE04 several times and asking many questions on this List... Every time that I see a discussion that makes sense of the UD as a process that can be associated with something that is a process, like a concrete or physical universe, that connects to observable phenomena like thermodynamics, you make this claim (or equivalent) that “comp forbids to associate inner experiences with the physical processing related to the computations corresponding (with comp) to those experiences.” You seem to demand that since there does not exist a bijective (one to one and onto) map between a particular inner experience (1-OM) and some (particular thermodynamic law compliant) process X that can act as a concrete instantiation of some computation S, that X does not exist.It does not exist "ontologically", but still exist (and is unavoidable) epistemologically. X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations. The self-reference logics show that such an enterprise makes sense. And from this we get a coherent, conceptually simple, theory of both quanta and qualia. It is as close as it is possible to a solution of the "hard problem of consciousness" (that is the mind-body problem).[SPK] You define existence in a way that is very different from how I define it.It is standard.[SPK] Well maybe the “standard” form that you are using is in error!
Again, I am not the first to point of that the existence of an entity, real or imagined, concrete or abstract is independent of the properties of the entity in the sense of not informing of the entity. It is prior even to the naming of the entity! ‘Existence is not a predicate’.
"The point here is that to say that “X can exist, but the UDA shows that it would be without any explanatory purpose: we cannot attach consciousness to it, so we have no choice, for explaining the appearance of X, to "reduce" it to number relations”" is to ignore the fact that the UDA itself must be communicated to other minds or at least be communicable in principle,
thus the UD cannot be existentially independent of some form of implementation,
at least in the sense that if the UD is a logic
that it has a stone topological space as its dual.All I am asking is that you consider that the stone dual of a logic has equal existential ‘weigh”.
I am not asking for some notion of primitive physicality!
For me “to exist” is a pure ontological 3p.At the ontological level, for me too. That is why I use the first order existential of any Turing universal theory, like Peano or Robinson arithmetic. The other existence are treated by their corresponding hypostases.[SPK] No problem!I consider existence as purely possible necessity. This makes any epistemological existence supervenient upon its possible necessity in the ontological sense. “To exist” is distinct from “to be manifest” or “to be knowable” or “to be provable” or any other 1p predication.Without example, this could means anything. With comp, there is just no choice.[SPK] See above explanations.
Is this correct? It is an oxymoron to say that the UD “runs on the walls of Platonia” when we have explicitly forbidden Platonia from having anything like walls! Ideas require concrete implementations to be “real”.0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... are concrete enough. With comp ideas are numbers, and the "fire" comes from the laws of addition and multiplication.You can postulate more, but you cannot use more, so by occam, it is preferable to not postulate more, because it introduce unnecessary complications.[SPK] They are only concrete because they are potentially conceptual,What does that mean, and in which theory.[SPK] My theory at least! Ill-defined as my dyslexia addled mind may be, but that is a counter-example none the less! How else can I even hallucinate that I am writing posts and transmitting them that seem to evoke responses later in time? Something like a prior potential for this to occur must exist!
this make your ability to conceive number dependent on physical examples of o-ness, 1-ness, 2-ness, etc.The point is that with comp, physicalness is no more primitive and ontological, it is epistemological.[SPK] And what does “epistemological” mean"? “Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
Absent the possibility of implementation they are worse than meaningless. This also applies to addition and multiplication.
The idea (the philosophic aspect at least) that I am exploring is exactly related to the “physics” that we need to recover something consistent with Boltzman’s idea but so far it requires that the measure is emergent from interactions between 1-OMs in a way that is not static and timeless. To do this we need a notion of concurrency and some notion of time (not the sequence of events notion of time, but the flow of one event into another). Now, I agree with you that there can be no ontologically primitive time because as there cannot be a single monotonic universal ordering of events when those events include even just those for all possible OM. OTOH, there can exist a fundamental notion of change that can have aspects (projections?) in finite 1-OMs that when counted with some form of local measure will generate a local clock aspect of time. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0212092My only difficulty with your ideas is that you use the semantics of Becoming to argue for its antithesis. Why do you do this? What is your motivation?I study the logical consequence of assuming that I can survive through a digital substitution, and I am glad to see that it explains where time and space come from, without making the qualia disappear (unlike 1500 years of naturalism).[SPK] And I overflow with joy at that fact! But you must admit that as a finite being capapble of only one point of view at a time, that you have a blind spot just as all other finite entities. Our modelizations are forever incomplete. We are theories in flesh, we cannot make claims that we are just theories. The flesh is required to communicate.Flesh is completely explained, conceptually, in comp+classical theory of knowledge. I am not sure to see where you are going to.[SPK] But your narrative insufficiently informs us of how the treat the “other minds” problem. 1-person plurality is sound within a solipsism.
By itself a 1p can have or be associated by itself to multiple and different thoughts, no?
Is it your goal to prove the existence of a universal measure for all OMs?Certainly not. The measure is only relative. Cf the assa/rssa discussions on this list.[SPK] OK, then why is the measure not obvious??[SPK] What is the measure problem, exactly, that you see?
Perhaps you think that I propose some new theory, but I don't. My game consists in taking seriously a weak version of digital mechanism, or computationalism, and study the consequences.We might be talking past each other because you don't see that my point is technical, and thus very modest also. IF comp is true, then Plato's metaphysics is right and Aristotle metaphysics (not his logic!) is wrong. That's all.
[SPK] I would really like to see you extend your result. In its present form it is a beautiful model of a solipsist mind.
It is the insufficiency of it that bothers me. It gives others a place to start, but should not be considered the end of the narrative.
I have no wish to defend Aristotle’s metaphysics, but I will critique Plato for his diminishment of the concept of the physical. We can rehabilitate Plato and Platonia, but not at the price of denying the reality of the experienciable world.
Russell Standish
> Umm, no. It was not just the last sentence. I would like to
> expand on your thought process that lead to the conclusion. AFAIK, my
> idea of bare consciousness does not involve any form of selection
> (other than the 1p appearance of collapse of superpositions) and
> should apply to even a quark!
Selection only plays a part in the derivation of quantum mechanics
(PROJECTION postulate). It doesn't play any role in the non-consious
ants argument.
> I am taking an idea from Chalmers and pushing it to see where and if
it breaks down; “that consciousness is a fundamental property
ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical
properties, and that there may be lawlike rules which he terms
"psychophysical laws" that determine which physical systems are
associated with which types of qualia.”
I have no idea what this means :).
>
> As I see it any entity that has continuation in time has
> consciousness. I know that I run the risk of crack-pottery, but
> let’s go back over the Ant’s are not Conscious” argument. Your
> argument follows the form of the Doomsday argument, which I have
> serious doubts about per QTI, but setting that aside, why does
> not the complexity of the organism not factor into the
> consideration about the presence or absence of qualia in ants?
Why should it?
> AFAIK, Bruno has argued effectively that amoeba are conscious...
Not that I know of. IIUC, he maintains a position of agnosticism on
the subject.
> The
> factor that I think that the argument ignores (as does the Doomsday
> argument) is the ability to communicate and the level of complexity
> that can be communicated.
Why is this factor relevant? Is this the "reference class should be
those entities capable of doing anthropic arguments" rebuttal - which
I haven't found to be particularly convincing?
> When we consider the question “what is our expected body mass if
> we are randomly sampled from the reference class of conscious beings?”
> are we covertly selecting only that subsample of entities that we
> would consider as conscious, say per a Turing test, like ourselves?
No, only those conscious entities that have a body mass.
> What would be an appropriate Turing test for an ant? How does body
> mass inform us of the possession of qualia?
A priori, it doesn't.
> > Surely very small body mass limits the number of brain states that
> we can claim supervene mentality, but what is that considering? Are we
> missing something perhaps in thinking that only a certain size brain
> or number of interconnected neurons supervenes consciousness?
No such assumptions should be or were made.
> I think we might be making the inverse of Searle’s mistake of the Chinese room!
> I think that we need to nail down exactly what we mean by “consciousness”. The definition of “possesses qualia” is only the first step. I need to read Nagel's papers some more ...
For the non-conscious ants argument, consiousness is equated with the
anthropic reference class. No other properties of consiousness is
required. Of course, there are some who argue that the anthropic
argument reference class is some subset of conscious entities (eg
those able to understand athropic arguments), but short of someone
providing a convincing argument that this is the case, I feel
justified in assuming that the anthropic reference class is the whole
set of conscious entities.
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
>
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Russell Standish
> Russell,
>
> this is my personal way of thinking in realization of the continual
> epistemic enrichment what earlier authors missed. I do not vouch for
> correctness of my ideas, they are like a level in an advancement I found
> followable in view of the latest epistemic additions in a continuously
> changing world(view).
> Self-awareness is definitely at the level of human complexity.
There is evidence of self-awareness in a handful of other species,
including most of the great apes, bottlenose dolphins and asian
elephants. Many of these same species appear capable of developing
rudimentary language capability.
I would not be surprised to see a number of other species also show
evidence of self-awareness in time - including some birds, and maybe
even some cephalopods. However, I am also equally sure that most
species are incapable of it - too many species fail the tests we pose
of them.
Russell Standish
>
> Stephen (going out on the crack pot edge!)
>
I have to confess I completely got lost as to what the whole
Strawson-Nagel debate was about, and still very vague about your ideas.
But I don't want to discourage you. Keep at it - maybe eventually some
formulation will make sense to me. I found a lot of things fell into
place about Bruno's ideas in his book "Le secret de l'amibe", which I
had found puzzling earlier. Somehow, the context made more sense, but
then it was the third time he'd written a book on the subject.
Also keep at criticising my ideas - any well-focussed criticism of
those will get my attention :).
meekerdb
David Nyman
>
> Brent
On the other hand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beCYGm1vMJ0
David ;-)
Stephen Paul King
Bruno Marchal
On the other hand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beCYGm1vMJ0
John Mikes
meekerdb
> Thanks, Russell,
> I am gladly standing corrected about our fellow smart animals.
> HOWEVER:
> We speak about a "self-awareness" as we, humans identify it in our
> human terms and views.
> Maybe other animals have different mental capabilities we cannot
> pursue or understand, as adjusted to their level of complexity usable
> in their 'menatality'. It may - or may not - be only according to
> their number of neurons as our conventional sciences teach. Or some
> may use senses we are deficient in, maybe totally ignorant about. (We
> have a deficient smelling sense as compared to a dog and missing
> orientation's senses of some birds, fish, turtle)
> In our anthropocentric boasting we believe that only our human
> observations are 'real'.
> Thanks for setting me straight
> John.
Not only do other species have different perceptual modalities; even
within the "self-awareness" there are different kinds. Referring to my
favorite example of the AI Mars rover, such a rover has awareness of
it's position on the planet. It has awareness of it's battery charge
and the functionality of various subsystems. It has awareness of its
immediate goal (climb over that hill) and of some longer mission
(proceed to the gully and take a soil sample). It's not aware of where
these goals arise (as humans are not aware of why they fall in love).
It's not aware of it's origins or construction. It's not a social
creature, so it's not aware of it's position in a society or of what
others may think of it.
I expect that when we have understood consciousness we will see that it
is a complex of many things, just as when we came to understand life we
found that it is a complex of many different processes.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
Life and consciousness are different notion with respect to the notion
of explanation we can find from them. In case of life, we can reduce a
third person describable phenomenon to another one (for example we can
argue that biology is in principle reduced to chemistry, which is
reduced to physics). For consciousness there is an hard problem, which
is the mind-body problem, and most people working on the subject agree
that it needs another sort of explanation. Then comp shows that
indeed, part of that problem, is that if we use the "traditional"
mechanistic rationale, we inherit the need of reducing physics to
number theory and intensional number theory, with a need to explicitly
distinguish first person and third person distinction. In a sense, the
"hard problem" of consciousness leads to an "hard problem of
matter" (the first person measure problem). Of course, I do think that
mathematical logic put much light on all of this, especially the self-
reference logics. Indeed, it makes the problem a purely mathematical
problem, and it shows quanta to be a particular case of qualia. So we
can say that comp has already solved the conceptual problem of the
origin of the coupling consciousness/matter, unless someone can shows
that too much white rabbits remains predictible and that normalization
of them is impossible, in which case comp is refuted.
Bruno
meekerdb
> qualia. So we can say that comp has already solved the conceptual
> problem of the origin of the coupling consciousness/matter, unless
> someone can shows that too much white rabbits remains predictible and
> that normalization of them is impossible, in which case comp is refuted.
>
> Bruno
I don't see that reducing consciousness to mathematics is any different
than reducing it to physics. Aren't you are still left with "the hard
problem" which now becomes "Why do these number relations produce
consciousness?". I don't think this "hard problem" is soluble. Rather
what can be solved is how to make devices, like intelligent Mars Rovers
and parts of brains the doctor can insert, which act conscious. And
further to understand which computations correspond to different kinds
of thoughts, such as "awareness of self as a part of society" or
"feeling of guilt" or "I'm in Moscow". When we have that kind of
engineering mastery of AI, the "hard problem" will be seen as a
simplistic, archaic wrong question.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
It is more easy to explain the illusion of matter to an immaterial
consciousness, than to explain the non-illusion of consciousness to
something material.
Consciousness can be explained by fixed point property of number
transformation, in relation to truth, and this explains 99% of
consciousness (belief in a reality) and 100% of the illusion of
matter, which is really the illusion that some particular universal
number plays a particular role.
Each time I demand a physicist to explain what is matter, he can only
give to me an equation relating numbers. With math, it is different,
we have all relation between numbers, and we can understand, by
listening to them, why some relation will take the form of particular
universal number, having very long and deep computations, and why they
will be taken statistically as describing a universe or a multiverses.
> Aren't you are still left with "the hard problem" which now becomes
> "Why do these number relations produce consciousness?".
Not true. The math explains why some number relatively to other
numbers develop a belief in a reality, and it explains why such a
belief separates into a communicable part and a non communicable part.
This is entirely explained by the G/G* splitting and their modal
variant (based on the classical theory of knowledge).
> I don't think this "hard problem" is soluble.
An explanation gap remains, but then those number can understand why
an explanation gap has to remain, for purely logical reason. This
explain why we do feel that there is something non explainable. But it
is 99% explainable, and this includes a complete explanation why there
is, necessarily, a remaining 1% which cannot be explained, but which
can be reduced to our belief in the natural numbers.
In any case, comp forces us to reduce physics to number "psychology",
and this explain conceptually the existence of the physical realm. And
we get a simple and elegant theory of everything: addition and
multiplication.
> Rather what can be solved is how to make devices, like intelligent
> Mars Rovers and parts of brains the doctor can insert, which act
> conscious. And further to understand which computations correspond
> to different kinds of thoughts, such as "awareness of self as a part
> of society" or "feeling of guilt" or "I'm in Moscow". When we have
> that kind of engineering mastery of AI, the "hard problem" will be
> seen as a simplistic, archaic wrong question.
Not at all. If your device is conscious by virtue of doing some right
computation, from the point of view of the device itself, his reality
must be described by a sum on all computations going through its
states, implying that physics must be non local, indeterminist, etc.
This *explains* the quantum without postulating it. And the logic of
such self-referential programs explains also the qualia, and the gap
of explanation for the qualia/consciousness. In fact physics explains
nothing, it just take for granted some special universal number (the
physical law), and reduce everything to it. The math, even just
arithmetic, explains where universal numbers comes from, and how and
why they dream, and why some dreams become sharable and define
physical realities, with their sharable and non sharable parts.
The hard problem is the real fundamental issue. Its comp solution
really explains why they are quanta and qualia, and the laws such
things obey. Physicalism/materialism eventually neglect the person and
its consciousness, or build an unintelligible dualism. Physics does
not even try to understand its own origin, or the origin of the object
it talk about. Physics only build descriptions and scenarios, by
taking a theology for granted (the Aristotelian one).
Bruno
meekerdb
What does it mean for numbers to understand? I take it you mean for
something like a Godel numbering, the numbers represent a theorem about
what can be expressed and what can be proven. But this is a model of
thought and understanding. There may be a gap between it and reality
just as there may be a gap between the models of physics and reality.
One cannot be sure a hitherto successful model is not reality itself -
but such a belief must be provisional at best.
> for purely logical reason. This explain why we do feel that there is
> something non explainable. But it is 99% explainable, and this
> includes a complete explanation why there is, necessarily, a remaining
> 1% which cannot be explained, but which can be reduced to our belief
> in the natural numbers.
> In any case, comp forces us to reduce physics to number "psychology",
> and this explain conceptually the existence of the physical realm. And
> we get a simple and elegant theory of everything: addition and
> multiplication.
>
>
>
>> Rather what can be solved is how to make devices, like intelligent
>> Mars Rovers and parts of brains the doctor can insert, which act
>> conscious. And further to understand which computations correspond
>> to different kinds of thoughts, such as "awareness of self as a part
>> of society" or "feeling of guilt" or "I'm in Moscow". When we have
>> that kind of engineering mastery of AI, the "hard problem" will be
>> seen as a simplistic, archaic wrong question.
>
> Not at all. If your device is conscious by virtue of doing some right
> computation, from the point of view of the device itself, his reality
> must be described by a sum on all computations going through its
> states, implying that physics must be non local, indeterminist, etc.
But what is a "sum of computations"; and it is an assumption that
computation instantiates consciousness (your theology) which seems
parallel to the physicists assumption that the 3p world can be modelled
by physical things. I see your theory as a model too. It may make some
confirmable predictions (not just retrodictions) in which case it will
be a great theory. But I don't think it will do very much for achieving
the kind of engineering mastery I mentioned.
> This *explains* the quantum without postulating it. And the logic of
> such self-referential programs explains also the qualia, and the gap
> of explanation for the qualia/consciousness. In fact physics explains
> nothing, it just take for granted some special universal number (the
> physical law), and reduce everything to it. The math, even just
> arithmetic, explains where universal numbers comes from, and how and
> why they dream, and why some dreams become sharable and define
> physical realities, with their sharable and non sharable parts.
>
> The hard problem is the real fundamental issue. Its comp solution
> really explains why they are quanta and qualia, and the laws such
> things obey. Physicalism/materialism eventually neglect the person and
> its consciousness, or build an unintelligible dualism. Physics does
> not even try to understand its own origin, or the origin of the object
> it talk about. Physics only build descriptions and scenarios, by
> taking a theology for granted (the Aristotelian one).
Physics aims for an invariant, i.e. 3p, model of the world. I don't
know any philosophical minded physicists who think otherwise. That
there is some reality the models refer to - that's metaphysics, not physics.
Brent
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
John Mikes
Which IMO does not agree with Bruno's
Bruno Marchal
Suppose I can answer this in a way that you understand. Then it means
the same things for the numbers. Indeed you are, roughly speaking,
such a number, in some technical sense which can be made precise when
we take comp and computer science into account.
> I take it you mean for something like a Godel numbering, the
> numbers represent a theorem about what can be expressed and what can
> be proven. But this is a model of thought and understanding. There
> may be a gap between it and reality just as there may be a gap
> between the models of physics and reality.
Not in the computationalist theory, that I am assuming. The doctor
does not put a model of your brain in your skull. He put a machine
100% equivalent, and by definition, you survive this substitution.
Sometimes a point of a map does localize its own position. This is
what happen with the comp hypothesis, and the reason why I say that
consciousness is a semantical 'fixed point'.
> One cannot be sure a hitherto successful model is not reality
> itself - but such a belief must be provisional at best.
Well, all theories are belief of that kind. Nobody pretends having
find the "true" theory. My point is logical/technical. IF I am a
machine, then the physical laws, quanta and qualia, have the following
explanation... Moreover we get, at last, an explanation of why there
is physical laws at the start.
>
>> for purely logical reason. This explain why we do feel that there
>> is something non explainable. But it is 99% explainable, and this
>> includes a complete explanation why there is, necessarily, a
>> remaining 1% which cannot be explained, but which can be reduced to
>> our belief in the natural numbers.
>> In any case, comp forces us to reduce physics to number
>> "psychology", and this explain conceptually the existence of the
>> physical realm. And we get a simple and elegant theory of
>> everything: addition and multiplication.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Rather what can be solved is how to make devices, like intelligent
>>> Mars Rovers and parts of brains the doctor can insert, which act
>>> conscious. And further to understand which computations
>>> correspond to different kinds of thoughts, such as "awareness of
>>> self as a part of society" or "feeling of guilt" or "I'm in
>>> Moscow". When we have that kind of engineering mastery of AI, the
>>> "hard problem" will be seen as a simplistic, archaic wrong question.
>>
>> Not at all. If your device is conscious by virtue of doing some
>> right computation, from the point of view of the device itself, his
>> reality must be described by a sum on all computations going
>> through its states, implying that physics must be non local,
>> indeterminist, etc.
>
> But what is a "sum of computations";
UDA step seven gives a pretty precise informal idea, which is made
completely precise in AUDA which use a bit more of theoretical
computer science, and of (real) Platonism under the form of the
classical theory of knowledge (Theaetetus).
> and it is an assumption that computation instantiates consciousness
> (your theology)
This is ambiguous, and strictly speaking false. Consciousness is not
instantiated by one computation, but by an infinity of them. A
relative implementation of computation, relative to universal numbers,
make this consciousness able to manifest itself relatively to that
universal number, with some probability.
> which seems parallel to the physicists assumption that the 3p world
> can be modelled by physical things.
This is tautological. That remains correct, and even justified, in the
mechanist theory, together with the non communicable part
(consciousness, qualia, etc.).
> I see your theory as a model too.
No. The artificial brain is not a model: it is the same as the actual
thing, once you *assume* the theory, by definition of the theory.
> It may make some confirmable predictions (not just retrodictions)
> in which case it will be a great theory.
That might take time, but this is not relevant. The aristotelian
theology fails to explain why physics use math, why we are conscious,
what is a qualia. Then comp explains entirely why it has to fail on
this. Comp just *refutes* Aristotle interpretation of the physical
facts. That's all.
> But I don't think it will do very much for achieving the kind of
> engineering mastery I mentioned.
It will do the same as physics, given that it does not change the
physical science, nor its methodology. It contradicts only the (often
implicit) theology, and it recast the physical reality in a bigger and
more coherent picture. The aristotelian theology needs to model the
brain by infinite analog non computational process, or to eliminate
persons and consciousness.
Comp does not criticize anything physical. It explains it. It refute
ONLY the Aristotelian (materialist) ontology, used by atheists and
christians alike.
>
>> This *explains* the quantum without postulating it. And the logic
>> of such self-referential programs explains also the qualia, and the
>> gap of explanation for the qualia/consciousness. In fact physics
>> explains nothing, it just take for granted some special universal
>> number (the physical law), and reduce everything to it. The math,
>> even just arithmetic, explains where universal numbers comes from,
>> and how and why they dream, and why some dreams become sharable and
>> define physical realities, with their sharable and non sharable
>> parts.
>>
>> The hard problem is the real fundamental issue. Its comp solution
>> really explains why they are quanta and qualia, and the laws such
>> things obey. Physicalism/materialism eventually neglect the person
>> and its consciousness, or build an unintelligible dualism. Physics
>> does not even try to understand its own origin, or the origin of
>> the object it talk about. Physics only build descriptions and
>> scenarios, by taking a theology for granted (the Aristotelian one).
>
> Physics aims for an invariant, i.e. 3p, model of the world.
Comp also. You can even formulate one of the comp conclusion by saying
that physics is invariant for the base theory, or that physics is
invariant for the choice of the phi_i. But comp explains completely
(except for a gap that it meta-explains completely) the qualia, and
provide a precise theory for them, which is testable, because the
quanta are special case of qualia.
> I don't know any philosophical minded physicists who think otherwise.
New discoveries take time to be swallowed. Physicists are not wrong,
they are incomplete with respect of many feature of reality. To put
the person under the rug was a fertile methodological simplification,
but today, we know that it contradicts the fact,
unless you do have an evidence that the brain is an infinite analog
machine (non Turing emulable) or that person and consciousness does
not exist (brr...).
> That there is some reality the models refer to - that's metaphysics,
> not physics.
Comp just contradicts the metaphysics of the physicists (most of them,
currently). It shows that metaphysics is a science (in the Popper
falsifiability sense), and it shows that the Aristotelian metaphysics
is incompatible with the assumption that the brain is functional and
finite.
Once comp is assumed, elementary (first order) arithmetic is the new
physics. Quantum mechanic and the correct GR are theorems in that
theory, independently of the complexity of the task of retrieving
them. But the self-reference logics already explains most of the
quantum weirdness. Aristotelian physics is just a failed hypothesis.
It does not explain why there is a physical universe, nor why there is
a psychological universe, nor anything theological. It simply does not
work. Comp is a progress on physics, like Everett is a progress on
Copenhagen QM. It is the only theory which explains where a universe
come from, and why consciousness exists and how they are related.
Physical reality is the border of a universal mind, and this shows
that the Platonists and neoplatonist get it right, contra Aristotle.
This invites us to reconsider them.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
A stimulating discussion, indeed. I side with Brent in most of his remarks and question SOME of Bruno's in my 'unfounded' agnostic worldview of 'some' complexity of unrestricted everything - beyond our capabilities to grasp.
Which IMO does not agree with Bruno's" I don't think this "hard problem" is soluble."
Looking at the inductive 'evolution' in our epistemology my agnosticism seems more optimistic than this.
Within our present capabilities is missing from the statement, but our capabilities increased constantly - not only by the introduction of 'zero' in math or the Solar system (1st grade cosmology) of Copernicus. I do not restrict the grand kids of the grand kids of our grand kids. I lived through an epoch from right after candlelight with horses into MIR, the e-mail and DNA.I would not guess 'what's next'.To retort Brent's AI-robot I mention a trivial example: I have a light-switch on my wall that is conscious about lighting up the bulbs whenever it gets flipped its button to 'up'.
It does not know that 'I am' doing that, but does what it 'knows'.
The rest is similar, at different levels of complexity - the Mars robot still not coming close to 'my' idea-churning or Bruno's math.And IMO biology is not 'reduced to chemistry (which is reduced to physics)' - only the PART we consider has a (partial?) explanation in those reduced sciences, with neglected other phenomena outside such explanatory restrictions. Just as 'life' is not within biology, which may be closer to it than chemistry. or physics, but genetics is further on and still not 'life'.
Yes, consciousness - the historic word applied by many who did not know what they are talking about and applied it in the sense needed to 'apply' to THEIR OWN theoretical needs - is an artifact not identifiable, unless we reach an agreement "WHAT IT IS" (if it IS indeed).
In my wording the complexity that defines many of the applicable tenets form some PROCESS(es), not a mathematically identifiable expression - nor 'awareness' as in another domain. The 'hard problem' is still open.
We need a new insight.We are hindered by too much mental blockage due to accepted (believed? calculated?) hearsay assumptions and their consequences. We 'guess' what we do not know.
David Nyman
>> What does it mean for numbers to understand?
>
> Suppose I can answer this in a way that you understand. Then it means the
> same things for the numbers.
This seems to me to be a very central point. Chalmers gives very
convincing arguments why an "Aristotelian machine's" expressed
behaviour (including its "thoughts" and "beliefs") are
indistinguishable from a conscious person's - excepting only that it
is not IN FACT conscious (!). This alone should be enough (as indeed
he argues) to demonstrate the inadequacy of such a metaphysics of
matter, unless consciousness itself is to be denied (which, as Deutsch
argues in his most recent book, is just bad explanation). It seems as
if, starting from an Aristotelian perspective, there is no way this
puzzle can be resolved even with the addition of various ad hoc
assumptions (such as Chalmers himself attempts, unsuccessfully IMO);
the assumed primacy of "material processes" inevitably ends in the
vitiation of "mental" explanation, in this view of the matter. To
resolve the puzzle it seems that "material processes" and "mental
processes" (or, one might say, material and mental explanations) must
emerge as deeply correlated aspects of a single narrative. Hence, if
computationalism is to be the explanation for the mental, it must
likewise suffice as that of the material. From this perspective, as
you say, it is then of the essence that any explanation must "mean the
same things for the numbers" as it does for me.
David
>>>>> coupling consciousness/matter, unless someone can shows that too much white
meekerdb
> On 10 May 2011 13:21, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>
>>> What does it mean for numbers to understand?
>>>
>> Suppose I can answer this in a way that you understand. Then it means the
>> same things for the numbers.
>>
> This seems to me to be a very central point. Chalmers gives very
> convincing arguments why an "Aristotelian machine's" expressed
> behaviour (including its "thoughts" and "beliefs") are
> indistinguishable from a conscious person's - excepting only that it
> is not IN FACT conscious (!).
How does he establish that it is not conscious?
> This alone should be enough (as indeed
> he argues) to demonstrate the inadequacy of such a metaphysics of
> matter, unless consciousness itself is to be denied (which, as Deutsch
> argues in his most recent book, is just bad explanation). It seems as
> if, starting from an Aristotelian perspective, there is no way this
> puzzle can be resolved even with the addition of various ad hoc
> assumptions (such as Chalmers himself attempts, unsuccessfully IMO);
> the assumed primacy of "material processes" inevitably ends in the
> vitiation of "mental" explanation, in this view of the matter. To
> resolve the puzzle it seems that "material processes" and "mental
> processes" (or, one might say, material and mental explanations) must
> emerge as deeply correlated aspects of a single narrative. Hence, if
> computationalism is to be the explanation for the mental, it must
> likewise suffice as that of the material.
The problem with computationalism is that "exists => is computed" does not entail
"computed => exists" and if you hypothesize the latter it explains too much.
Brent
David Nyman
>> This seems to me to be a very central point. Chalmers gives very
>> convincing arguments why an "Aristotelian machine's" expressed
>> behaviour (including its "thoughts" and "beliefs") are
>> indistinguishable from a conscious person's - excepting only that it
>> is not IN FACT conscious (!).
>
> How does he establish that it is not conscious?
Sorry if this wasn't clear. In this context, by "Aristotelian
machine" I simply meant Chalmers' zombie. It's unconscious by
stipulation, i.e. he points out that the ascription of first-person
consciousness is inessential to a complete (in principle) account of
its (or indeed our) behaviour in third-person terms.
> The problem with computationalism is that "exists => is computed" does not
> entail "computed => exists" and if you hypothesize the latter it explains
> too much.
The critical issue would indeed seem to be whether when "you
hypothesize the latter it explains too much". If so, then I guess by
Bruno's lights comp would be refuted (i.e the conjunction of CTM and a
"primitive" material TOE).
David
John Mikes
Bruno Marchal
But comp precisely prevents the possibility that "exists => is
computed". For example comp entails the existence of many non
computable functions, incompleteness, etc. That is what theoretical
computer science illustrates (usually by diagonalization).
Now, the reverse, that is, "computed => exists", is trivially true,
with "exists" used in the usual arithmetical sense, like in "prime
numbers exists".
And this entails (and explains) the appearance of the physical
universe, but in a derived and most sophisticated higher order
(epistemological) sense, not in the arithmetical sense (indeed the
physical universe become a non trivial and non computable object,
obeying partially computable laws, etc.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
Hi, Bruno,excuse me for getting lost between you and Brent. You are absolutely right: I did not follow, study and understand those many thousand pages of discussions over the more than a decade on this list, together with the many tenthousand pages (not) learned to understand them. Indeed I am out of the vocabulary.
Here are some little nitpicks I feel I can respond to:you wrote:"? (I guess you are trivializing the notion of consciousness). You might be right, but with comp the light switch is a non well defined object, like any piece of matter. So what you say is not false, but senseless."\I was trying to trivialize Brent's robot, as you identified: 'any piece of matter'. And my example was trivial, in such respect.About my inquiry for consciousness: I questioned "WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?"your reply:"...Indeed, comp does solve the 'hard problem', up to a reduction of physics to a modality of universal machine's self-reference (making the theory testable)."does not enlighten me: "a modality of universal machine's self reference" draws my question:WHAT modality?
HOW does that self reference work?
Testability is not an argument, it may be a way TO an argument. Did the "hard problem" change from its original content which was the topical identification of physical data measurable in our neuronal system? (Mind-Body?)
(Plus: as I recall you were not too concrete about our knowledge of the "universal Machine" either).
LIFE in my views is not biological, biology (and other life sciences) try to get a handle on CERTAIN aspects we select in the generality we may call 'life'.
I think we agreed that there is no such thing as The TRUTH - there are tenets you or me may accept as 'true' in some sense.I think I already sent you my 'draft' about "Science-Religion" about belief systems.
Bruno Marchal
On 11 May 2011, at 00:29, John Mikes wrote:Hi, Bruno,excuse me for getting lost between you and Brent. You are absolutely right: I did not follow, study and understand those many thousand pages of discussions over the more than a decade on this list, together with the many tenthousand pages (not) learned to understand them. Indeed I am out of the vocabulary.Those are redundant explanation of the content of the sane04 paper, which is about 20 pages long.
Here are some little nitpicks I feel I can respond to:you wrote:"? (I guess you are trivializing the notion of consciousness). You might be right, but with comp the light switch is a non well defined object, like any piece of matter. So what you say is not false, but senseless."\I was trying to trivialize Brent's robot, as you identified: 'any piece of matter'. And my example was trivial, in such respect.About my inquiry for consciousness: I questioned "WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?"your reply:"...Indeed, comp does solve the 'hard problem', up to a reduction of physics to a modality of universal machine's self-reference (making the theory testable)."does not enlighten me: "a modality of universal machine's self reference" draws my question:WHAT modality?The modality of Gödel's provability predicate, and its (8) intensional variants (which I used also in my arithmetical intepretation of Platinus/Plato).
HOW does that self reference work?It is a chapter of theoretical computer science.
Testability is not an argument, it may be a way TO an argument. Did the "hard problem" change from its original content which was the topical identification of physical data measurable in our neuronal system? (Mind-Body?)Yes. the mind-body problem is reduced into an explanation of the "illusion of bodies" in the dream by numbers (we *assume* comp, and a dream is an infinity of computations in the universal dovetailing).
(Plus: as I recall you were not too concrete about our knowledge of the "universal Machine" either).Ask precision. But all this is standard theoretical computer science.
LIFE in my views is not biological, biology (and other life sciences) try to get a handle on CERTAIN aspects we select in the generality we may call 'life'.Biology is the science of life. It is not life itself, of course. all science can only grasp tiny aspect of what they are studying.I think we agreed that there is no such thing as The TRUTH - there are tenets you or me may accept as 'true' in some sense.I think I already sent you my 'draft' about "Science-Religion" about belief systems.But I do believe in "The Truth". I don't know it, of course, that is why I propose assumption and reasoning.
meekerdb
Now, the reverse, that is, "computed => exists", is trivially true, with "exists" used in the usual arithmetical sense, like in "prime numbers exists".
Brent
Bruno Marchal
That some functions are not-computable only implies their existence in the sense that they are implied by some axioms.
Now, the reverse, that is, "computed => exists", is trivially true, with "exists" used in the usual arithmetical sense, like in "prime numbers exists".
But it also entails that The World of Warcraft and what I dreamed last night exist.
John Mikes
Bruno"