Dreaming On
David Nyman
machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
THE APHORISMS
We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
- can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
itself).
So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
insight stands.
It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
again, any such identification could only be via some singular
correlative synthesis.
Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
- expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
or context: that context being our mutual ontology.
Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
*everything* is.
Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
claims.
Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
not their genesis.
To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
constructed.
Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
come to know a world in a present and personal manner.
Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
hanging in the void.
Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
ontological finality. It has not been completely clear (to me)
whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).
However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
doctor.
COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e. empirical tests
could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.
Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
ontological and epistemological issues.
This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view. As has
been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
nowhere. Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
rather than nowhere.
Kim Jones
cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
Sorry to be dumb,
Kim
Brian Tenneson
RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.
Cheers
Brian
Colin Hales
David Nyman wrote:
Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I hope this will be helpful for future discussion. THE APHORISMS We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind. What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams. Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see itself).
(a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the awake scientist!)
and
(b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science of a noumenon)
....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is unapproachable) is not justified.
The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind stuff' is wrong. ALL of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that resulting in mind. The assumption in your statement is that we need something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first person.
ask this instead....
What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour) such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears (a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us?
Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not.
:-)
col
Bruno Marchal
The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
"ontological" physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
first person from it.
>
>
> To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
> specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
> mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
> constructed.
Once comp is assumed, and UDA understood, including step 8, we get an
explicit mathematical specification of the dreamers (which will be the
universal numbers---to be (re)explained later) and the explanation of
the appearance of the dreams: self-referential gluing (sigma_1)
arithmetical relations.
>
>
> Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
> believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
> come to know a world in a present and personal manner.
Except for the mystery of numbers, which has to remain intact
(mysterious). The first person arise from the difference of the logics
of the points of view. Each point of view is just a different modality
of the self reference. I recall (or anticipate):
p
Bp
Bp & p
Bp & Dp
Bp & Dp & p
With p any arithmetical sentences, Bp the arithmetical sentence of
Gödel (Beweisbar(Godel number of p)), etc. Note that "p" = 0-person.
Bp = 3 person, Bp & p = first person, Bp & Dp = "3-person matter", Bp
& Dp & p = first person matter. This makes 8 hypostases, due to the G/
G* splitting.
The first person view arise from the discrepancy between the logic of
Bp and Bp & p (mainly).
>
>
> Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
> discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
> foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
> invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
> hanging in the void.
It is here that we may differ. All what needs to be subsumed is 0, and
successor axioms, together with addition and multiplication. Assuming
comp (which is a statement about RITSIAR, and in that sense you are
correct), everything (that is: every dreams and the way they glue
together) has to be derived from the way universal numbers reflects
each other.
>
>
> Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
> and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
> ontological finality. It has not been completely clear (to me)
> whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
> the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
> and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).
Comp could be a little more than RITSIAR: it is the fact that RITSIAR
is preserved through a substitution of my parts done at some level.
Comp assumes "yes" for the question, will I *stay* as real as I am
here and now, once I say yes to the doctor and after he has proceeded.
>
>
> However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
> claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
> leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
> doctor.
OK then.
>
>
> COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e.
> empirical tests
> could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
> perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.
>
> Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> ontological and epistemological issues.
This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.
>
>
> This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view. As has
> been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> nowhere. Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> rather than nowhere.
OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.
Bruno
Kim Jones
On 27/07/2009, at 11:40 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
> Hi Kim,
>
> RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.
>
> Cheers
> Brian
>
> Kim Jones wrote:
>>
>> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
>> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
>>
>> Sorry to be dumb,
>>
>> Kim
>>
Much obliged to you Brian. Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation
without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!
cheers,
Kim
David Nyman
> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
> something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
> is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
> of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
> person.
My somewhat poetic references here to mind-stuff or dreams relates, as
in the original post, to one of Bruno's characterisations of the
'world-view' of COMP as the dreams of the machines. Any 'stuff' in
the context of COMP, I take it, would be numbers (I can't help adding
'in some sense') and would of course be the *universal* stuff. As I
think you know from the prior thread, and our previous engagements, I
take a monist view, for what I take to be strong logical grounds, and
I try to apply this to whatever ontological schema is under
consideration. Consequently I can't think 'everything else is sorted
out' until this embraces mind and body as different aspects of an
integrated whole. The sorting out would be what I called a
correlative synthesis, which is what COMP attempts to be. This is not
to say that COMP is per se correct, but that any other schema must
confront the same issues head on - as of course your own approach
attempts to do. Sorry for any confusion, but I think we're still
broadly in agreement, as before :-)
David
> David Nyman wrote:
> > Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> > machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> > helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> > my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
> > hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> > THE APHORISMS
>
> > We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> > What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> > Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> > - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> > itself).
>
> Yes. This is the big issue.
>
> (a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the
> awake scientist!)
> and
> (b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science
> of a noumenon)
>
> ....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the
> appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are
> responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self
> evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is
> unapproachable) is not justified.
>
> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
David Nyman
> Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation
> without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!
D
David Nyman
> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
> "ontological" physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
> first person from it
universe on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executed
by elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in any
manner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'? I've always assumed
the former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;
the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to say
the least.
> > Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> > schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> > problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> > ontological and epistemological issues.
>
> This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.
for any schema that doesn't explicitly generate the dreamers and their
many viewpoints as well as their dream contents. This is the problem
space that must be confronted - as COMP does. My point is that any
approach to the mind-body issues that doesn't tackle this must fail at
the outset. Agreed?
> > This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> > TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view. As has
> > been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> > obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> > nowhere. Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> > rather than nowhere.
>
> OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.
arguments in detail (some of the basic ones - like the teleportation
examples - have direct counterparts in my own intuitive history) the
more they exercise my intuitions in helpful directions. I feel that
there is something intuitively necessary in this generative approach,
and specifically in the way it seeks to resolve the 0-1-3-person
conundrums that - even if it turns out to be unsupportable as a whole
- would remain a core feature of any successor theory.
David
David Nyman
> >> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
> >> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
expression 'real in the sense I am real' was introduced to this list
by Peter Jones some time back, and was contracted to RITSIAR (I think
by me) because it was repeatedly referred to, as is happening again.
The original sense was that we already intuitively grasp what
'reality' in this sense is - i.e. starting with personal reality, or
simply the 'first person' - and that if we allow these intuitions to
get lost in, or hopelessly mangled by, any schema purporting to tell
us what is 'really real', then we're getting fooled in some deeply
perverse way. That's why I've been badgering Bruno - as Peter also
did - about whether the 'number realm', as specified by COMP, is to be
conceived as being real in this sense: because COMP is based on the
notion that we *are* in some sense numbers, or derived from numbers
and their relations. So if numbers in the COMP sense don't meet this
criterion of RITSIAR, then (according to me) we couldn't possibly do
so either, and I'm saying that nobody in their 'right mind' should be
prepared to accept this. However, I'm reasonably satisfied by Bruno's
recent remarks: he does respond to the issues more or less as set out
here.
David
Bruno Marchal
On 27 Jul 2009, at 14:57, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 27 July, 09:31, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
>> "ontological" physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
>> first person from it
>
> Do you mean to say that we can't recover the 1-person from a physical
> universe on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executed
> by elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in any
> manner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'? I've always assumed
> the former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;
> the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to say
> the least.
It is the former. Typical counter-example are provided by most dualist
religions, but they have to be anti-comp.
Even with comp, you can always add a physical ontology, but you cannot
use it to explain any correlation between consciousness and what
happen in that physical ontological universe. Comp makes the
physicalist assumption devoid of any explanation power. I think you
have correct intuition about this.
>
>
>>> Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
>>> schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the
>>> same
>>> problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
>>> ontological and epistemological issues.
>>
>> This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.
>
> Yes, I should have said 'otherwise intractable' - meaning intractable
> for any schema that doesn't explicitly generate the dreamers and their
> many viewpoints as well as their dream contents. This is the problem
> space that must be confronted - as COMP does. My point is that any
> approach to the mind-body issues that doesn't tackle this must fail at
> the outset. Agreed?
Agreed.
>
>
>>> This has profound implications for virtually all current
>>> cosmological
>>> TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view. As
>>> has
>>> been observed in other writings, our understanding remains
>>> profoundly
>>> obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view
>>> from
>>> nowhere. Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
>>> rather than nowhere.
>>
>> OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.
>
> I'm still trying! I must say that the more I think about your
> arguments in detail (some of the basic ones - like the teleportation
> examples - have direct counterparts in my own intuitive history) the
> more they exercise my intuitions in helpful directions. I feel that
> there is something intuitively necessary in this generative approach,
> and specifically in the way it seeks to resolve the 0-1-3-person
> conundrums that - even if it turns out to be unsupportable as a whole
> - would remain a core feature of any successor theory.
I think so.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
>
> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>
>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>> machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>
>> THE APHORISMS
>>
>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>
>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>
>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>> itself).
>>
>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>> insight stands.
It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>>
>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>> correlative synthesis.
>>
>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone claim that
the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
untoward effects.
Brent
David Nyman
> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone claim that
> the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
> untoward effects.
To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
define them - of the material object in question. So now you have two
options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
dilemma).
This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper. It's
aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.
AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
problem.
David
David Nyman
>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>> insight stands.
>
> It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
is all too easy to see that mind and brain are *correlated*: my point
was that such correlation can't be conceived as a simple one-to-one
mind-material identity of any sort without doing violence to mind as
an uneliminable primary reality. I think the problem here is with the
all too easy - but flatly wrong - analogy of 'the same thing under two
different descriptions', because here we need to be concerned not with
mere description but with apparently incommensurable modes of
existence: nobody, I take it, could seriously claim that the
manifestly radical ontological dichotomy between 'material-existence'
and 'mind-existence' is exhausted merely by description.
Because - and with justification - for many quotidian and scientific
purposes we focus on the 'material' characterisation of our shared
'externalised' reality, it is fatally easy to lose sight of the fact
that any reification of the material description ineluctably invokes
dualism in the face of the indubitable existence of the mental realm.
This hidden dualism is therefore implicit - except for eliminativists
- in any material account of mind. The ultimate capitulation - a la
Dennett - is to screw up your eyes and throw out mind to retrieve
monistic materialism. It is by contrast reasonable to posit that both
be subsumed in the ontology of a singular synthetic category in which
the *correlated appearances* of mind and matter could be shown to
emerge in some mutually coherent manner. COMP of course is one
candidate for such a synthesis. Actually, I haven't yet seen any
others (oops - pace Colin).
David
Colin Hales
Intentionality and Computationalism: A Diagonal Argument
Laureano Luna Cabanero, Department of Philosophy, IES Francisco Marin, Siles, Spain, and Christopher G. Small, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo, Canada
Computationalism is the claim that all possible thoughts are computations, i.e. executions of algorithms. The aim of the paper is to show that if intentionality is semantically clear, in a way defined in the paper, then computationalism must be false. Using a convenient version of the phenomenological relation of intentionality and a diagonalization device inspired by Thomson's theorem of 1962, we show there exists a thought that cannot be a computation.
-----------------------------------------------------
How good an argument it is I don't know ..... I am in the process of getting my hands on the paper.
Meanwhile, if any of you folks can get it sooner I'd be very interested.
BTW I have recently submitted my own refutation of COMP to a journal...it superficially resembles a more practical version of the above. Basically.....a computationalist-based artificial scientist cannot propose/debate, let alone test, computationalism as a 'law of nature'. Confusing/self-referential but has teeth as an argument.
Q. How many times does it take for dogma X to be refuted before projects totally dependent on the truth of dogma X get their outcome projections/expectations reviewed?
cheers
colin hales
Brent Meeker
> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com>
>
>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone claim that
>> the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>> untoward effects.
>
> Yes indeed. But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
> To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
> state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
> define them - of the material object in question. So now you have two
> options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
> material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
> ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
> non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
> I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
> different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
> dilemma).
matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
and dynamics. We then regard molecules and stars and planets, etc, as
consisting of these things. It is not legitimate to object, for example, that
weather is *just* an added on description or else requires an addition to the
ontology. It's a description at a different level. Similarly, material changes
in the brain may be described as mental events also. Compare a computer running
some AI program. The events have a description in terms of electrons and gates
and also in terms of decisions and computations. That was pretty much Bertrand
Russell's theory of neutral monads - there's only one kind of thing but they can
be described in mental-causal terms or material-causal terms.
>
> This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
> physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper. It's
> aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
> the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
> argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
> Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
> substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
> be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.
make sense out of a computation that computes everything. What is this measure?
and what does it actually predict. As I said before, an *everything*
hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
rather than that. Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> I think that's a misuse of "ontology". When we discuss the atomic theory of
> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
> and dynamics.
below. But you keep introducing the term in the sense of definition
2. I'd noticed it before on David's previous "dream" thread.
Ontology
1. That department of the science of metaphysics which investigates
and explains the nature and essential properties and relations of all
beings, as such, or the principles and causes of being.
2. A systematic arrangement of all of the important categories of
objects or concepts which exist in some field of discourse, showing
the relations between them. When complete, an ontology is a
categorization of all of the concepts in some field of knowledge,
including the objects and all of the properties, relations, and
functions needed to define the objects and specify their actions. A
simplified ontology may contain only a hierarchical classification (a
taxonomy) showing the type subsumption relations between concepts in
the field of discourse. An ontology may be visualized as an abstract
graph with nodes and labeled arcs representing the objects and
relations. Note: The concepts included in an ontology and the
hierarchical ordering will be to a certain extent arbitrary, depending
upon the purpose for which the ontology is created. This arises from
the fact that objects are of varying importance for different
purposes, and different properties of objects may be chosen as the
criteria by which objects are classified. In addition, different
degrees of aggregation of concepts may be used, and distinctions of
importance for one purpose may be of no concern for a different
purpose.
Rex Allen
Another example of your somewhat non-standard "definition 2" usage:
> First of all I think epistemology precedes ontology. We first get
> knowledge of some facts and then we create an ontology as part
> of a theory to explain these facts.
Bruno Marchal
The difficulty I have with COMP is in step 8, where some measure is invoked to
make sense out of a computation that computes everything.
What is this measure?
and what does it actually predict.
As I said before, an *everything*
hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
rather than that. Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.
Bruno Marchal
On 28 Jul 2009, at 05:56, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent
> Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think that's a misuse of "ontology". When we discuss the atomic
>> theory of
>> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including
>> their couplings
>> and dynamics.
>
>
> I think most of us are using "ontology" in the sense of definition 1,
> below. But you keep introducing the term in the sense of definition
> 2. I'd noticed it before on David's previous "dream" thread.
>
> Ontology
>
> 1. That department of the science of metaphysics which investigates
> and explains the nature and essential properties and relations of all
> beings, as such, or the principles and causes of being.
>
> 2. A systematic arrangement of all of the important categories of
> objects or concepts which exist in some field of discourse, showing
> the relations between them.
Good point. I use always "ontology" in the first sense.
Bruno
David Nyman
> It is not legitimate to object, for example, that
> weather is *just* an added on description or else requires an addition to the
> ontology.
using ontology can be confusing and it would be more helpful to talk
in terms of descriptive categories instead. Moving on, the examples
you give illustrate the point I'm making perfectly. Under the
standard usage I certainly agree that we don't need to add to the
ontology to understand what we mean by weather, because we all know
it's just another way of referring to the underlying material
entities. There are arbitrarily many ways of describing the behaviour
of any physical collection. For example, 'computer program' is just
another way of describing the electronic behaviour of a physical
computer 'at a different level', but this is merely optional.
Removing 'weather' or 'program' from the situation *makes no
difference* to what is happening: this is the acid test. Consequently
you may say if you want that mind - in the relevant behavioural or
functional sense (could we but find it) - might in principle be
rendered as a description of physical brain events 'at a different
level'. Removing a mere 'mind-description' of this sort from the
physical brain events would again make no difference. This of course
is Dennett's whole line of attack, but then he goes and uses it as a
hammer to hit himself in the head.
But there's the rub: we already know that removing the *mind itself*,
uniquely in all these examples, results in removing *ourselves* from
the situation; and this makes all the difference in the world. This
should tell us infallibly that we are not dealing with a merely
optional descriptive category referring to some primarily material
entity. To get out of this trap we have no alternative but to reverse
the quotidian assumption of the primacy of a material monism, because
it is betraying us: mind is given; the precise status of matter is
still moot at this stage of the analysis. Any coherently monistic
account must begin with these facts as the primary ontological clue,
as indeed you go on to remark:
> That was pretty much Bertrand
> Russell's theory of neutral monads - there's only one kind of thing but they can
> be described in mental-causal terms or material-causal terms.
recognition by the master of category theory that the two different
*appearances* (not descriptions - a crucial distinction) of mind and
matter imply a monism based, not on an empty 'identity' postulated on
the ad hoc assumption of the primacy of either, but on 'something
else' that is not reducible to one or the other. Hence 'neutral',
though not quite so neutral as to lose its ability to manifest in
these radically divergent appearances. However, he advanced no
detailed theory, to the best of my belief, of how this could go. As
it happens, COMP is an effort to provide such a theory, and moreover
one to which the understanding of why it cannot be complete is
intrinsic: although it seeks to justify why 'qualia' must exist, and
why 1-person experience must occur in terms of them, it remains
(necessarily) mysterious - in the Wittgensteinian sense - on what they
*are*.
David
John Mikes
David Nyman
Hi John
> I really do not expect from you to give adequate replies to all these
> questions - it would make the grandkids of our grandkits scientifically
> unemployed but you have unusual solutions and ideas and it may be
> interesting to tape your mind..
task, as others before me, to witheringly expose the specific
inadequacies of my replies to any and all questions. To know less and
less with ever greater clarity is the journey and precisely-delineated
ignorance is the ultimate goal. In that spirit......
> "Mind is what brain does" (although I find it a pars pro toto)
> I am questioning "does". Would we restrict it to our ongoing image of
> physiology, meaning: the brain does physical 'energy' consuming electrical
> changes by (physico/chemical) impact and by physiological changes (such as
> diffeences in blood-stream performance, chemical syntheses and migration of
> molecules) - or do we assign activities of some brain-image beyond today's
> anatomical biology?
until we find another schema in which to re-express a new set of
'ultimates' for the purpose. You've seen the various ways I've tried
to pump people's intuitions about this, but it may be that how one
feels about it is ultimately characterologically influenced rather
than logically compulsive. However, I believe that we need a new
picture and a different language before the
physical-chemical-biological story you refer to above, and the
experiential, intentional narrative that we ignore at the cost of our
minds, can ever be reconciled satisfactorily. On this basis, my
interest in COMP is not because I know it to be correct, but rather
that it is the beginning of an attempt to recast the investigation in
these terms, which is VERY hard to discover elsewhere. In this regard
I should again note that Colin is working on his own approach on a
different basis but very much in the same spirit.
> 1. What instigates the 'function' (called mindwork) - ostentibly with
> connection to our 'material-figment' BRAIN,
what can coherently be said to exist, and within this the whole debate
on materialism, panpsychism, mind-body hard problems, causal closure
of the physical, etc. by a simple expediency which then struck me as
obviously true (how about that?). To re-state:
1) Is there some logically prior requirement for anything to be said
to exist? Reflect: 'something existing' necessitates presence not
absence.
2) What is the relation between presence and "I"' as I discover
myself? Reflect: "I" discover myself to be present.
3) Conjunction of 1) and 2): There is presence and it is reflexive.
This constitutes what can be said to exist, and discovers it to be
personal (i.e. there is an "I" associated with it).
4) Is there some logically prior requirement to my 'knowing' anything?
Reflect: this and that must be distinguishable. In terms of the
foregoing, this necessitates reflexive encounter (i.e.
self-differentiation) This necessarily unites the senses of
'perceive', 'intend' and 'act'.
5) Conjunction of 1) - 4) "I" discover myself to be present through
reflexive encounter. I've called this 'getting-a-grip-on-Oneself.
This move now collapses being, knowing, perceiving, intending and
acting.
That's it. But now we have all the prerequisites for not only
mindwork, but also matter-energy work, by this (as it seems to me)
simple recognition of a present and differentiable personal synthesis.
More: this very recognition now seems (to me at least) to be the
logically compelling prerequisite for any meaningful sense of
existence whatsoever. From this simplicity, by differentiation we can
achieve mental and material multiplicity without limit, sans any
crazy-making ontological separation of mind and body. The hard part
is the specifics of the correlation.
> 2. What keeps it running (and please, save me from the marvel of physicists
> the call 'energy' - but nobody knows what it is)
> 3. Who tells the process to buzz off, it is done,
patterns of self-encounter. Fundamentally, these patterns are not to
be distinguished into mind or matter, and this is crucial from the
necessary though limited perspective of causation, because it makes an
indivisible unity of perception, intention, and action central to the
logic of the story. Nonetheless it will be a requirement of local
narratives in the 'traditions' either of physiology or phenomenology
to deploy the appropriate metaphors plausibly and to give intuitively
graspable answers to your the questions.
> 4. How does the 'product' incorporate into the rest of it?
> (BTW these questions arise in 'functions','reactions',processes as well, if
> we think beyond Physix Textbook 101).
IOW, we exist as mini-mes within perspectival horizons that limit us
to mindworlds that nonetheless continue seamlessly in relation beyond
those horizons. The mindworld by the arguments presented above
constitutes both our being and our knowledge. There is not (cannot
logically be) any observer and hence (unfortunately for Copenhagen
interpretations) no observation. Reflect on the neonate: no
differentiation of self and other has yet occurred. But through a
sort of inferred video game system of feedback, the "I" polarises to a
complementary subjective pole, forcing the rest of the mindworld to
the objective 'externalised' extreme, wherein characterisations of
'functions', 'reactions', 'processes' in terms of causality are
distinctively 'active' rather than 'intentional'. Hence you may see
how all reality and all delusion stem from this survival reaction.
> 5. Is a "thought" a product of the mind-process? if so, where does it settle
> to become consciously acknowledged for us... (for WHOM???)
is a distinguishable modality of our mindworld - IOW a distinguishable
aspect at once of our being and our knowing. And for whom? Well,
I've been badgering Bruno on this very topic more than somewhat, but
again my line is that the 'whom' is the reflexively present global "I"
derived above, limited to mini-mes by perspectival horizons and pushed
to a subjective pole by the inexorable requirements of a
biological/evolutionary narrative. You're entitled to claim on this
basis, as mini-me at any rate, that you are merely the master of all
you survey, but that couldn't be the case if in fact you weren't at
the same time heir to the whole ball of wax.
David
Brent Meeker
...
>
> In my various ramblings, I've tried to cut the whole Gordian knot of
> what can coherently be said to exist, and within this the whole debate
> on materialism, panpsychism, mind-body hard problems, causal closure
> of the physical, etc. by a simple expediency which then struck me as
> obviously true (how about that?). To re-state:
>
> 1) Is there some logically prior requirement for anything to be said
> to exist? Reflect: 'something existing' necessitates presence not
> absence.
> 2) What is the relation between presence and "I"' as I discover
> myself? Reflect: "I" discover myself to be present.
What do you make of Hume's observation, "When I enter most intimately into what
I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat
or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch
myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the
perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so
long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist." ?
Brent
David Nyman
> What do you make of Hume's observation, "When I enter most intimately into what
> I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat
> or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch
> myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the
> perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so
> long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist." ?
for half my countryman's eloquence. Fair enough, if you want to
restrict the sense of "I" to reflective self-consciousness, then it
indeed manifests variously and intermittently. But actually, this is
the clue that points to the underlying ontology out of which
self-consciousness emerges. The self-conscious "I" manifests so to
speak as waves that rise out of the ocean: waves come in many shapes,
but they all need the ocean to manifest, and sometimes they're there,
other times they're not. But whether manifested as waves or no, the
ocean remains. This gives us the clue that the self-conscious "I" is
a particular manifestation of a permanent ontological category:
moreover, as a monist, I take pains to show that this category is the
only one we need lay claim to.
In this, I diverge from Kant's analysis that we know via appearance,
but can know nothing of the entity in itself. Rather my view is that
we simply *are* Kant's ding an sich, in terms of the logic I've set
out. This analysis points to the double collapse of two apparent
dichotomies: that (wrongly) implied between being and knowing, to be
resolved in the tension between global and partial states-of-being;
and that (wrongly) implied in the shift from unknowing to knowing
(i.e. 'matter' shading into 'mind') to be resolved through a
reconceived understanding of the self-reflecting organisation and
dynamics of a complexly differentiated monistic existent.
As I said in my post to Bruno, my way of pondering this is by a sort
of inhabitation of the system I'm seeking to understand. In this
case, I intuit myself to arise in the differentiated manifestation of
a *singular*, present, self-encountering global entity: what I termed
getting-a-grip-on-Oneself. 'Self' in the sense I'm using it is
crucial in two ways. First, if one is positing a single comprehensive
entity - intrinsic to the notion of 'universe' - it can make no sense
to posit it in relation to anything else: nothing else exists. Any
internal relations among differentiables in this context are
consequently *exclusively* reflexive, self-relating, or
self-encountering. Second, following directly from the preceding
sense, any such entity intrinsically possesses self-intimacy: it is
reflexive in the sense of reflecting, referencing, or possessing
access to, itself. Knowledgeable, if you like.
At first glance, this latter might appear to be a super-added
requirement to 'bare existence', but IMO this is fatally mistaken and
indeed the most deeply obscured aspect of the root existential
misconception. In point of fact, I believe virtually all the
confusions we self-inflict with respect to what might be said to
'exist' stem from not recognising existence-for-self as primary: all
other senses of exist can be seen under analysis to parasitise on this
sense; conversely, lose sight of it and 'existence' is banished
instantly to the phantom status of an abstracted Cheshire Cat's grin.
The power of this insight is that we can immediately grasp that
knowing, or epistemology, is simply a modality of being, or ontology.
Furthermore this collapse, or reduction, also explicitly collapses the
mind-matter, sense-action dichotomies of relation into a single
indivisible category. If you're left nonetheless with the feeling
that something 'dual' remains, you're right: the irreducible duality
of whole and part, whose paradoxical nature I have previously
indicated. But this is just to situate appropriately the mystery
ineradicable from any mortal conception.
This multi-stage reduction allows us to achieve Chalmers' holy grail
of causal closure by encapsulating it in a unified monism, thus neatly
sidestepping his so-called 'hard' problem and all the monstrosities
and zombies it foreshadows. BTW, he is queasily aware of this, and
confesses sneaking sympathy with the panpsychists, though the idea of
outing himself as one triggers incurable philosophical nausea.
Fortunately, he has no need to barf just yet, which is just as well
because panpsychism too is implicitly dualist. Were the epithet not
already colonised, I suppose we could simply call this position
'existentialist', once we had cleared up the misconceptions about
existence. I suppose in a sense it's neutral monism, properly
understood. But it's all too easy to lose one's hold on the
intrinsically present and reflexive aspects in the 'neutrality' of
that formulation.
A note on method: I don't hold with Colin McGinn that a coherent grasp
of mentality is unreachable by human powers, except, of course, in the
limit. However, I find that the problems in adequately expressing a
(moderately) non-standard view involves so many burdens of extraneous
sense attaching to nearly all the terms available to hand as to make
the task itself very taxing. There is I suppose the option of
inventing a totally new vocabulary, but I would despair of holding
anyone's attention in the attempt (and probably not even my own).
David
John Mikes
David Nyman
Hi John
Well, I'm equally moved that you have the motivation and interest to
read what I write! I'm uncomfortably aware that I often dump quite a
lump of verbiage at once, so do let me know whenever anything is
obscure. There's a narrow path between saying too much and too little
that's hard to tread. But essentially, I'm just proposing a context
in which you or I or anyone might think about just the kind of deeper
questions you pose, to see if they might possibly appear any less
paradoxical this way - or at least, to situate the remaining paradoxes
less discomfitingly! All I would ever ask - and of course this works
both ways - is your willingness to climb inside my model with an
attitude of "hmm.. what if?", take a look around from that
perspective, interrogate it by rethinking your queries in terms of it,
if that's possible, and then climb out again - none the worse, I
trust, for the experiment. Beyond this, only more questions, but with
luck perhaps a little differently shaped.
I'm off to Scotland at the weekend for a few days of hiking (taking my
Goretex!) so I probably won't be present much on the list during that
period, but I'll take a glance if I get an opportunity (i.e. if Mrs N
lets me anywhere near a computer).
David
Rex Allen
It seems to me that the primary meaning of "to exist" is "to be conscious".
But what causes conscious experience? Well, I'm beginning to think
that nothing causes it. Our conscious experience is fundamental,
uncaused, and irreducible.
Why do we think that our conscious experience must be caused? Maybe
this isn't a valid assumption. Maybe we are being led astray by the
apparent nature of the macroscopic material world that we perceive?
So on the surface this view of consciousness as fundamental may sound
a bit off-putting, but I think it's not so radical compared to
competing theories.
From a materialist perspective, what caused the universe (or
multiverse) to exist?
From a religious perspective, what caused God to exist?
From a platonic perspective, what caused the Numbers to exist?
And, of course, if anyone offers an answer to the above, the obvious
next question would be "what caused THAT to exist?".
This drive to reduce our consciousness into smaller parts, I think is
maybe misguided.
I think that there may be a problem with the idea that we must explain
conscious experience in terms of the things that we perceive, or
things that we infer from what we perceive. Consciousness is the
conduit through which we experience the world, BUT I think it's a
mistake to conclude that consciousness is a product of what is
experienced.
Maybe consciousness is fundamental, uncaused, and irreducible.
However, what we are conscious OF is reducible and representable. A
crucial difference.
Take the brain. I haven't verified it myself, but I'm willing to
believe that the structure and function of the brain is closely
correlated with the mind. My brain represents the contents of my
conscious experience. The activity of the brain over time maps to the
the contents of my conscious experience over time. Fine. But the brain
is not the cause of my conscious experience. A brain is something that
one is conscious OF, and thus has a secondary, derivative type of
existence.
I can think about my brain, so it is something that I am conscious of,
and so it exists in that sense. To the extent that I can examine and
experiment on someone else's brain, that is also a perceived
experience. But again, all of these things could happen in a dream, or
hallucination, or to a brain-in-a-vat, or to someone in a computer
simulation.
That something is perceived is no guarantee that it has an existence
on par with, or superior to, that which does the perceiving.
Similarly, science. I'm willing to believe that quantum mechanics and
relativity both describe my observations very well. But this is just
the fitting of various mathematical formulas and narratives to what we
are conscious of. There's no deeper meaning to science than that. It
doesn't tell us about what fundamentally exists. It provides us with
stories that fit what our experiences: "IF you were made from
subatomic particles in a physical universe, THIS system of particles
and forces is consistent with your current observations."
Science is basically us trying to make sense of a dream.
So in this view, consciousness is very simple. What's complicated is
fitting "explanatory" scientific theories to what is observed, and
identifying and understanding causal structures (e.g., a brain, a
machine, whatever) whose evolving state can be interpreted as
representing a series of "connected" or "related" instances of
consciousness. But the observed physical system is NOT conscious, it
just represents the contents of someone's conscious experience.
So initially this view seems somewhat...solipsistic (?), but
ultimately I think it really isn't much more radical than any other
theory on the table. For instance, any deterministic scientific theory
entails that we have the experience of making choices without making
actual choices (in the free will sense). And so does any
indeterminstic theory that is based on bottom-up causation.
Beyond that, all theories eventually boil down to having to having to
take some set of fundamental entities and laws as unexplained,
unsupported brute facts. So whether it's one level down or twelve
levels down, at some point they end up saying "and these things just
exist, created from nothing, supported by nothing".
So, no matter which way we go, reality doesn't match our common-sense
expectations. I think this view makes the fewest assumptions, and
ultimately seems no more fantastical than any other theory on offer.
1Z
On 27 July, 14:17, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 July, 12:25, Kim Jones <kimjo...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> > >> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
> > >> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
>
> On a (slightly) more serious note, to the best of my recollection the
> expression 'real in the sense I am real' was introduced to this list
> by Peter Jones some time back, and was contracted to RITSIAR (I think
> by me) because it was repeatedly referred to, as is happening again.
"Please allow me to introduce myself ..."
David Nyman
> [[sound of footsteps]]]
>
> "Please allow me to introduce myself ..."
Van Helsing (retd.)
David Nyman
> It seems to me that the primary meaning of "to exist" is "to be conscious".
>
> But what causes conscious experience? Well, I'm beginning to think
> that nothing causes it. Our conscious experience is fundamental,
> uncaused, and irreducible.
>
> Why do we think that our conscious experience must be caused? Maybe
> this isn't a valid assumption. Maybe we are being led astray by the
> apparent nature of the macroscopic material world that we perceive?
>
> So on the surface this view of consciousness as fundamental may sound
> a bit off-putting, but I think it's not so radical compared to
> competing theories.
picking the bones out of 'Panpsychism in the West' by David Skrbina
which is a pretty comprehensive review of the surprisingly large
number of thinkers who've actually held - or hold - some version of
this view; and that's just in the West.
However, I actually think we can do better than this. The extraneous
baggage attaching to 'mental' vocabulary really gets in the way of
clarity if we attempt to phrase it as you have. It's open to anyone
reading what you say above to accept or reject based on the contents
of *their* 'consciousness portmanteau'. But perhaps we don't have to
go this far: maybe we can say something more restricted which
surprisingly turns out to be more radical. Without repeating the
whole analysis here, my view is that the heart of the matter lies in a
rigorous redefinition of the semantics of 'exist' and its cognates.
These different senses get chucked about in such a variety of
ontological and epistemological guises that one is often at a loss to
know what any particular use is attempting to pick out in the world.
So my point is simply: let's start from the understanding that to
exist is just and only what it is to exist-for-oneself: the defining
characteristic of existence is 'taking everything personally'. The
standard put-down at this point is something like 'well how personally
do you suppose an electron takes itself?' to which the riposte is
simply 'precisely as personally as it needs to exist'.
Of course one might also ask 'how materially do you suppose an
electron take itself?' and answer 'precisely as materially as it needs
to exist'. But in granting a 'material' ontology to ourselves and the
electron, we are immediately at a loss for somewhere to locate the
personal unless we add a second ontological category for it to
inhabit: and then any hope we might have a workable notion of
interaction is irretrievably dashed.
So now you may legitimately enquire: fair enough, but how do we get
consciousness out of 'taking everything personally?' Well, it depends
what you mean by..... But no, it does - really. This is already the
'easy problem' (tee hee) in that once you see that you're at large in
a context that takes everything personally - but no more than it takes
to exist-for-itself - you can work on your theories of 'consciousness'
with some expectation that somebody will be there to take it
personally when those great thoughts and feelings emerge. It's a bit
like (in fact exactly like) the way we construct 'material' models in
the confident expectation that NOBODY will be there to take it
personally when all those great 'processes' and 'structures' emerge.
But now we can see - as you point out below - that these 'material'
entities can really only be elements of our personal
existence-for-ourselves. Sure, we believe they refer to something
beyond their representational role, but that something else is taking
things personally in another part of the forest. And if they do not
thus refer? Well, then they're just zombies.
> Take the brain. I haven't verified it myself, but I'm willing to
> believe that the structure and function of the brain is closely
> correlated with the mind. My brain represents the contents of my
> conscious experience. The activity of the brain over time maps to the
> the contents of my conscious experience over time. Fine. But the brain
> is not the cause of my conscious experience. A brain is something that
> one is conscious OF, and thus has a secondary, derivative type of
> existence.
which actually got him thinking about the relationships inherent in
the above scenario, thus: there's a game taking place on a screen
(explicate order) being acted on by (but not itself acting on) a
program (implicate order), which in turn is being acted on by (but not
acting on) the feedback from a player (super-implicate order). In
this analogy, the brain-body-world is akin to the on-screen
representation, which in fact emerges from, and is under the control
of, an underlying set of orderings that seamlessly incorporate both
player and game. Subject and object then emerge as a heuristic
distinction in the guise of complementary poles abstracted from
feedback relationships.
> I can think about my brain, so it is something that I am conscious of,
> and so it exists in that sense. To the extent that I can examine and
> experiment on someone else's brain, that is also a perceived
> experience. But again, all of these things could happen in a dream, or
> hallucination, or to a brain-in-a-vat, or to someone in a computer
> simulation.
> But the brain
> is not the cause of my conscious experience. A brain is something that
> one is conscious OF, and thus has a secondary, derivative type of
> existence.
existence-for-oneself. The contents of consciousness are precisely
what we are taking personally, else they couldn't exist for us. We
co-habit with them. But they don't just sit there: they connect
seamlessly beyond our personal horizons, which is how we get to
justify the belief that they refer to something - as we tend to say -
outside our selves. But that 'outside' of course isn't outside at
all; it's just as 'inside' as we are, taking things just as personally
as it needs to exist, just like us. The external world we see so
clearly is a reflection of the inside-out surfaces of our mindworlds.
> Similarly, science. I'm willing to believe that quantum mechanics and
> relativity both describe my observations very well. But this is just
> the fitting of various mathematical formulas and narratives to what we
> are conscious of. There's no deeper meaning to science than that. It
> doesn't tell us about what fundamentally exists. It provides us with
> stories that fit what our experiences: "IF you were made from
> subatomic particles in a physical universe, THIS system of particles
> and forces is consistent with your current observations."
to take things personally. The great value of COMP, I think, is that
it pumps the intuition that we can't take persons for granted: they
don't just map directly onto our representations, which I guess we
should have expected, because god knows they don't look like anything
that could be us. Of course a computational narrative may turn out
not to be the way to go, but I strongly suspect that we still await a
revolution in - well not physics, but..what? being-science? (gawd) -
that will be in a primary sense generative of persons prior to the
generation of appearances. IOW, there probably has to be some sort of
fundamentally implicate-explicate-superexplicate thingamijig going on
out there - er, I mean in here.
> Science is basically us trying to make sense of a dream.
>
> So in this view, consciousness is very simple. What's complicated is
> fitting "explanatory" scientific theories to what is observed, and
> identifying and understanding causal structures (e.g., a brain, a
> machine, whatever) whose evolving state can be interpreted as
> representing a series of "connected" or "related" instances of
> consciousness. But the observed physical system is NOT conscious, it
> just represents the contents of someone's conscious experience.
> So initially this view seems somewhat...solipsistic (?), but
> ultimately I think it really isn't much more radical than any other
> theory on the table. For instance, any deterministic scientific theory
> entails that we have the experience of making choices without making
> actual choices (in the free will sense). And so does any
> indeterminstic theory that is based on bottom-up causation.
only know yourself: but that 'self', properly understood, extends
beyond merely perspectival horizons, to everything that is. This is
the perennial philosophy, and in this case, perennial because
unavoidable. And as for 'deterministic', if we want to deploy
causation in our narratives - and I don't see why we shouldn't - then
existence-for-self gives you a conveniently monistically-collapsed
version of the causal nexus that indivisibly unites perception,
intention and action. Since they're indivisible, they only work in
concert, and hence you can't get causal closure until the sense
necessary in context gains expression. As to 'first' causes, I think
we've reached the end of the semantic road. If you want, you can can
elect to be a mathematical Prospero and conjure us from the deep by
tautological force majeure, or you can accept the mystery of our
contingent 'necessity'. Take your pick.
> Beyond that, all theories eventually boil down to having to having to
> take some set of fundamental entities and laws as unexplained,
> unsupported brute facts. So whether it's one level down or twelve
> levels down, at some point they end up saying "and these things just
> exist, created from nothing, supported by nothing".
>
> So, no matter which way we go, reality doesn't match our common-sense
> expectations. I think this view makes the fewest assumptions, and
> ultimately seems no more fantastical than any other theory on offer
of convictions'. I like it.
David
1Z
On 27 July, 18:17, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 27 Jul 2009, at 14:57, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 27 July, 09:31, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
> >> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
> >> "ontological" physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
> >> first person from it
>
> > Do you mean to say that we can't recover the 1-person from a physical
> > universe on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executed
> > by elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in any
> > manner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'? I've always assumed
> > the former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;
> > the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to say
> > the least.
>
> It is the former. Typical counter-example are provided by most dualist
> religions, but they have to be anti-comp.
> Even with comp, you can always add a physical ontology, but you cannot
> use it to explain any correlation between consciousness and what
> happen in that physical ontological universe.
the consciousness resulting from the computation and the brain
activity
are correlated.
As usual, when you say "comp" you mean "comp+plat".
1Z
On 28 July, 00:34, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
> customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
> functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
> basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
> relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
> problem.
preferable to materialism, it doesn't get off the ground.
1Z
On 28 July, 01:30, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>:
> >>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> >>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> >>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> >>> insight stands.
>
> > It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
> > correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>
> Yes, sorry - am I REALLY being so unclear? Obviously, as you say, it
> is all too easy to see that mind and brain are *correlated*: my point
> was that such correlation can't be conceived as a simple one-to-one
> mind-material identity of any sort without doing violence to mind as
> an uneliminable primary reality. I think the problem here is with the
> all too easy - but flatly wrong - analogy of 'the same thing under two
> different descriptions', because here we need to be concerned not with
> mere description but with apparently incommensurable modes of
> existence: nobody, I take it, could seriously claim that the
> manifestly radical ontological dichotomy between 'material-existence'
> and 'mind-existence' is exhausted merely by description.
Why should anyone believe in an ontological gap that isn't backed by
an explanatory gap?
> Because - and with justification - for many quotidian and scientific
> purposes we focus on the 'material' characterisation of our shared
> 'externalised' reality, it is fatally easy to lose sight of the fact
> that any reification of the material description ineluctably invokes
> dualism in the face of the indubitable existence of the mental realm.
about any dualism. any more than the simultaneous existence
of cabbages and kings. Dualism requires an ontological divide--not
a mere difference of kind--and an ontological divide requires
explanatory irreducibility.
David Nyman
> Cart before the horse:
> Why should anyone believe in an ontological gap that isn't backed by
> an explanatory gap?
> The mere existence of the mental implies nothing whatsoever
> of cabbages and kings.
Well, I don't disagree with that, although I'm not quite sure what you
intend by the dismissive 'mere'. Our disagreements haven't usually
been about the necessity of dualism, which I think we both abjure, but
rather whether mind is an abstraction from from matter or vice versa.
I'm not sure we'll ever agree on that.
> Dualism requires an ontological divide--not
> a mere difference of kind--and an ontological divide requires
> explanatory irreducibility.
of the mental (not to struggle over terminology) is indubitable, which
makes the direction of abstraction mandatory if we want to save
monism. Unless one denies reality to the mental (i.e. eliminativism)
I'm saying that further insistence on a material ontology in the usual
sense is an implicit commitment to dualism. Specious relationship
terms such as 'functional equivalence', 'identical to', 'inside of'
and the like just mask this, IMO, and under examination can be seen to
imply two-ness, not one-ness. Further, in addition to its obvious (at
least to me) merit of 'saving the appearances', this narrative seems
to serve the rest of the story at least as handily as the
'externalised reality' version. But I don't imagine we'll ever agree
on this either.
BTW, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by 'the usual sense' of
materialism, because it may be that this is part of any confusion.
This sense is, I take it, the doctrine that reality is 'nothing but'
the material. Stating it this way of course commits you, under
monism, to a purely abstract conception of the mental. The
unsatisfactory nature of this conception feeds the intuition of a
'neutral' (perhaps not the best term) monism which could instantiate a
spectrum of states spanning a mental-material 'dichotomy' now more
apparent than real. Any better?
David
David Nyman
> Unless an argument is put forward for Platonism being
> preferable to materialism, it doesn't get off the ground.
David
Bruno Marchal
On 27 July, 18:17, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:On 27 Jul 2009, at 14:57, David Nyman wrote:On 27 July, 09:31, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an"ontological" physical universal, it is impossible to recover thefirst person from itDo you mean to say that we can't recover the 1-person from a physicaluniverse on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executedby elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in anymanner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'? I've always assumedthe former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to saythe least.It is the former. Typical counter-example are provided by most dualistreligions, but they have to be anti-comp.Even with comp, you can always add a physical ontology, but you cannotuse it to explain any correlation between consciousness and whathappen in that physical ontological universe.
Yes you can:
the physical brain executes the computation, so naturally
the consciousness resulting from the computation and the brain
activity
are correlated.
As usual, when you say "comp" you mean "comp+plat".
1Z
On 30 July, 23:55, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/30 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com>:
> > Cart before the horse:
> > Why should anyone believe in an ontological gap that isn't backed by
> > an explanatory gap?
>
> Why indeed?
> > The mere existence of the mental implies nothing whatsoever
> > about any dualism any more than the simultaneous existence
> > of cabbages and kings.
>
> Well, I don't disagree with that, although I'm not quite sure what you
> intend by the dismissive 'mere'. Our disagreements haven't usually
> been about the necessity of dualism, which I think we both abjure, but
> rather whether mind is an abstraction from from matter or vice versa.
> I'm not sure we'll ever agree on that.
>
> > Dualism requires an ontological divide--not
> > a mere difference of kind--and an ontological divide requires
> > explanatory irreducibility.
>
> Couldn't agree more. However, my starting point is that the existence
> of the mental (not to struggle over terminology) is indubitable, which
> makes the direction of abstraction mandatory if we want to save
> monism.
of A than B doesn't imply any metaphysical fact that B is reducible to
A rather
than vice versa. The epistemic arrow and the metaphysical arrow are
two different arrows. Since we are macroscopic, we are constructed to
have
better access to high-level phenomena such as chairs and rocks than
the
fundamental particles that comprise them.
> Unless one denies reality to the mental (i.e. eliminativism)
> I'm saying that further insistence on a material ontology in the usual
> sense is an implicit commitment to dualism.
mental AND an unbridgeable gap. You keep leaving the gap out.
> Specious relationship
> terms such as 'functional equivalence', 'identical to', 'inside of'
> and the like just mask this, IMO, and under examination can be seen to
> imply two-ness, not one-ness.
'specious' is not criticism
> Further, in addition to its obvious (at
> least to me) merit of 'saving the appearances',
how there was a mindless universe for millions of years before
life evolved, for instance. Idealists usually have to flatly deny that
particular
appearance.
> this narrative seems
> to serve the rest of the story at least as handily as the
> 'externalised reality' version. But I don't imagine we'll ever agree
> on this either.
>
> BTW, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by 'the usual sense' of
> materialism, because it may be that this is part of any confusion.
> This sense is, I take it, the doctrine that reality is 'nothing but'
> the material. Stating it this way of course commits you, under
> monism, to a purely abstract conception of the mental.
is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in physics. it has to be
higher-level
or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax.
But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
mental
from the physical
Bruno Marchal
On 31 Jul 2009, at 10:32, 1Z wrote (to David):
> But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> mental
> from the physical
It is usually called the mind-body problem. There are many good book
on the subject.
My own work is partially a reformulation of that problem (and
partially a beginning of a solution), when taking Mechanism seriously
into account.
Tell us which step in UDA you have a problem of understanding with.
Give us a number between 1 and 8, and a justification. OK?
Bruno
1Z
On 31 July, 10:03, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2009, at 10:32, 1Z wrote (to David):
>
> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> > mental
> > from the physical
>
> It is usually called the mind-body problem. There are many good book
> on the subject.
means having an exat grasp of the problem, not saying in some
vague way that mind and matter are different things.
> My own work is partially a reformulation of that problem (and
> partially a beginning of a solution), when taking Mechanism seriously
> into account.
>
> Tell us which step in UDA you have a problem of understanding with.
> Give us a number between 1 and 8, and a justification. OK?
in granting Platonism. Without Platonism, there is no UDA "just
there".
wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
there is no illusory matter. At best you have an alternative to
materalism-realism,
not a disproof of it.
David Nyman
> Since the mental is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in physics. it has to be
> higher-level or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax.
argument more succinctly! However, my reformulation is inevitably
equally circular (retaining the - presumably intentionally - ironic
use of 'uncontroversially') viz:
"Since the physical is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in
mentality, it has to be
advantage of the second formulation is that 'mentality' (i.e. what is
real in the sense that I am real) is uniquely given - it is the fons
et origo of any inference, and hence justifies its direction in the
second case, whilst annihilating it in the first.
> But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> mental
> from the physical
> For dualism you need materalism AND the
> mental AND an unbridgeable gap. You keep leaving the gap out.
agreeing and the confusion is over semantics. We both require a
justification for reality-in-the-sense-I-am-real. Obviously this
requires an account of shoes and ships and sealing-wax not only on the
basis of our direct knowledge of them in these terms, but also in the
multiplicity of other ways that directly given elements can be
re-ordered - including of course those concerned with the heuristics
of their behaviour, such as whatever version of theoretical physics is
currently in favour. Neither of us believes that a coherent account
in terms of more than one ontological mode of subsistence is either
necessary or possible. But an entity is more than the mere sum of
whatever properties we can abstract from it. So if what you're saying
could be reduced to the claim that there must be a unique ontology
that is consistent with all of the foregoing, and that you prefer to
call it physical, we could agree.
One caveat however - and I think this is at the root of your permanent
disagreement with Bruno. If we are to accept the 'physical' narrative
as the fundamental justification of what it is to be RITSIAR, then the
explanatory entities and relationships deployed for this purpose must
be justified explicitly and exclusively in terms of 'really physical'
entities and relations. Consequently, it is incoherent to postulate
'functional' relationships across such boundaries as constitutive of
anything RITSIAR, because this opens up a veritable infinity of
alternative, arbitrarily abstracted, 'causal' inferences.
Consequently, and - I can't help adding - *obviously*, since we cannot
credit *all* of these abstractions with the needful causal potency, we
are all the more unjustified in privileging any *one* of them.
So Bruno's point, fundamentally, is that if we're going to argue for
functional justification of the mental - in the sense of RITSIAR -
then said functional entities and relations must be postulated to be
'really real'. COMP just axiomatises the functional entities and
relations that are held to be RITSIAR. Bruno is sometimes a little
difficult to pin down on the foundational RITSIAR-ness of the 'number
realm', perhaps because his attention is focused more on what he can
do with it. But if one simply can't stomach the idea that 'platonic
numbers' are what is really real, then fair enough. But then one must
abjure functional-computational justifications for the 'mental':
again, fair enough (it's probably closer to my own prejudice). But
unless you're an eliminativist about the mental, you can't have it
both ways.
> Idealism does not save appearances. It cannot explain
> how there was a mindless universe for millions of years before
> life evolved, for instance. Idealists usually have to flatly deny that
> particular
> appearance.
'idealism' just pumps the intuition that there have to be sort of
bright images everywhere independent of 'minds'. The problem here is
that we're stuck with folk vocabulary that drags in extraneous notions
left, right and centre causing an implosion of the imagination. We
need to fix this, and I have a couple of suggestions. The first was
in my reply to Rex, where I suggest, in answer to your implicit
question above, that the universe has to take things just as
personally as it needs to exist. That, if you like, is the degree of
'mentality' (one of the terms that probably should be retired) you
might expect to exist before life evolved. And you're right to
specify 'evolved' because whatever we mean by mind in the organic
sense would of course be vacuous if in constitution and function it
offered no evolutionary advantage.
This leads to the second suggestion: what we call 'mind' is the
evolved capacity for representation, memory and intention directed
towards an environment, resulting from selected-for elaborations of
primitive but critically-similar potentials. Of course, this is the
standard direction of any explanatory thrust, but with the critical
stipulation that we must be able to preserve the appearances from soup
to nuts: this is, as you point out, the nub. Again, I don't insist on
any particular vocabulary, only the necessary sense. As Popper
remarks, debate about words is futile - just clarify your terms until
the problem emerges precisely, or goes away.
Of the above factors, the one that bears, I think, most on the
'appearance of mindlessness', is memory (a point made by Russell in
his neutral monist guise). Essentially, we're 'conscious' of what we
can remember - this is inherent in the sense of re-presentation. So
it may not in fact meet the case to hold that we're 'unaware' of what
we don't remember so well, but rather that 'primitive' awareness is
swamped in our memory by repeated re-presentation of dominant
higher-order themes. In fact, introspection reveals the constant
coming and going of 'awarenesses' of every type and degree, shading to
ultimate forgetfulness. IOW, 'consciousness' is just taking
particular things *so* personally that everything else is forgotten.
So that, if you like, is the 'appearance' of mindlessness.
David
David Nyman
> There are many bad solutions too. Finding a good solution
> means having an exat grasp of the problem, not saying in some
> vague way that mind and matter are different things.
exposition of the problem as you grasp it, with any explicit angles of
attack you may have to propose.
David
Bruno Marchal
On 31 July, 10:03, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:On 31 Jul 2009, at 10:32, 1Z wrote (to David):But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of thementalfrom the physicalIt is usually called the mind-body problem. There are many good bookon the subject.
There are many bad solutions too. Finding a good solution
means having an exat grasp of the problem, not saying in some
vague way that mind and matter are different things.
My own work is partially a reformulation of that problem (andpartially a beginning of a solution), when taking Mechanism seriouslyinto account.Tell us which step in UDA you have a problem of understanding with.Give us a number between 1 and 8, and a justification. OK?
I don't have a problem in understanding anything. I have a problem
in granting Platonism. Without Platonism, there is no UDA "just
there".
wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
there is no illusory matter.
At best you have an alternative to
materalism-realism,
not a disproof of it.
1Z
On 31 July, 14:57, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2009, at 12:43, 1Z wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 31 July, 10:03, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> >> On 31 Jul 2009, at 10:32, 1Z wrote (to David):
>
> >>> But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> >>> mental
> >>> from the physical
>
> >> It is usually called the mind-body problem. There are many good book
> >> on the subject.
>
> > There are many bad solutions too. Finding a good solution
> > means having an exat grasp of the problem, not saying in some
> > vague way that mind and matter are different things.
>
> I don't see to what you make allusion.
>
>
>
> >> My own work is partially a reformulation of that problem (and
> >> partially a beginning of a solution), when taking Mechanism seriously
> >> into account.
>
> >> Tell us which step in UDA you have a problem of understanding with.
> >> Give us a number between 1 and 8, and a justification. OK?
>
> > I don't have a problem in understanding anything. I have a problem
> > in granting Platonism. Without Platonism, there is no UDA "just
> > there".
>
> I guess you mean that there is no universal dovetailer (UD) out there.
> Who ever said that? I just say that the UD exists in the sense that
> you can prove its existence in a tiny weak part of Arithmetic.
proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
> > wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
> > there is no illusory matter.
>
> Sure. But the UD exists, like prime number exists.
in the relevant sense.
> > At best you have an alternative to
> > materalism-realism,
> > not a disproof of it.
>
> Well, then there should be a number between 1 and 8, or 0 and 8 where
> you miss the step.
> Apparently it is the 0 step, given that you still don't understand
> that my hypothesis is just classical digital mechanism. Classical
> means I accept the excluded third principle.
>
> I think the confusion comes from the fact that I obtain platonist (in
> Plato or Plotinus sense) conclusions. But the hypotheses are 100%
> neutral or agnostic on this point. Like in Paris and Brussels you
> still confuse the conclusion (admittedly startling) and the hypothesis.
>
be neutrral about Platonism? If Platonism is false,
the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
Quentin Anciaux
2009/7/31 1Z <peter...@yahoo.com>:
"existence" ? RITSIAR is a point of view (of an observer)... If
something exists, it exists...
You're using "mathematical existence" as if it meant "no existence"...
why bother using existence at all then ?
>> > wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
>> > there is no illusory matter.
>>
>> Sure. But the UD exists, like prime number exists.
>
> Which for a non-Platononists is not at all
> in the relevant sense.
>
>> > At best you have an alternative to
>> > materalism-realism,
>> > not a disproof of it.
>>
>> Well, then there should be a number between 1 and 8, or 0 and 8 where
>> you miss the step.
>> Apparently it is the 0 step, given that you still don't understand
>> that my hypothesis is just classical digital mechanism. Classical
>> means I accept the excluded third principle.
>>
>> I think the confusion comes from the fact that I obtain platonist (in
>> Plato or Plotinus sense) conclusions. But the hypotheses are 100%
>> neutral or agnostic on this point. Like in Paris and Brussels you
>> still confuse the conclusion (admittedly startling) and the hypothesis.
>>
> How can a conlusion that the material world doesn't exist
> be neutrral about Platonism? If Platonism is false,
> the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
> there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
>> Show me a piece of text I have written, anywhere, which makes you
>> think so please,
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> >
>
Quentin
--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Bruno Marchal
If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated mindsthere is no illusory matter.Sure. But the UD exists, like prime number exists.
Which for a non-Platononists is not at all
in the relevant sense.
How can a conlusion that the material world doesn't exist
be neutrral about Platonism?
If Platonism is false,
the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
Rex Allen
> So my point is simply: let's start from the understanding that to
> exist is just and only what it is to exist-for-oneself: the defining
> characteristic of existence is 'taking everything personally'. The
> standard put-down at this point is something like 'well how personally
> do you suppose an electron takes itself?' to which the riposte is
> simply 'precisely as personally as it needs to exist'.
So I'm willing to believe that there might be "something that it's
like" to be an electron, that electrons may in some way have some sort
of subjective experience.
BUT, as you say, that all happens in a different part of the forest.
I don't see that the electron's experiential aspect contributes in any
way to my experience of electrons. And, in a easier to visualize
vein, the same goes for chairs. Maybe there's something that it's
like to be a chair, but this is irrelevant to my conscious experience
of chairs. How could the chair's experience of its existence affect
my experience of the chair?
So in addition to conscious experience being uncaused, I take it to
also be acausal.
Conscious experience only does one thing: exist. Consciousness just
is. There's nothing else to it. No other purpose for it. No deeper
meaning in it. No additional role that it plays in some larger
process.
I take it to be acausal even to the extent that my current subjective
experience is not caused by my previous experiences. Each moment of
consciousness stands alone, connected to it's predecessors and
successors only by the similarity of their content.
You can find all sorts of causal-structure models, in physics or in
COMP, that can be fit to the contents of your conscious experience,
but these are just descriptive, not proscriptive.
> As to 'first' causes, I think
> we've reached the end of the semantic road. If you want, you can can
> elect to be a mathematical Prospero and conjure us from the deep by
> tautological force majeure, or you can accept the mystery of our
> contingent 'necessity'. Take your pick.
It does seem likely to me that our conscious experience exists
necessarily. Though for it to be a mystery would imply a hidden,
unknown cause. But consciousness is uncaused, it just exists
(necessarily), so there can be no mystery.
BTW, the quality of your posts are very high, it surprises me that you
can write them so quickly. Well done!
Bruno Marchal
David's post.
On 30 Jul 2009, at 22:34, David Nyman wrote:
>
> 2009/7/30 Rex Allen <rexal...@gmail.com>:
>
>> It seems to me that the primary meaning of "to exist" is "to be
>> conscious".
Hmm.. I do not completely disagree, because I can prove (with the AUDA
definition of belief and knowledge, that what Rex says is indeed true,
from the first person point of view. But taking this 100% seriously
leads to solipism. If only to pursue this discussion I bet on the
existence of some others, which consciousness I am currently
disconnected from (thankfully, the net provides a way to share third
person little pieces of things between us to supply that non first
person apparent sharing).
>>
>>
>> But what causes conscious experience? Well, I'm beginning to think
>> that nothing causes it.
OK. I rather clearly disagree. Arithmetical relations "cause" it. They
are clearly responsible for numbers introspection and numbers
chatting, and their discovery of the gap between.
>> Our conscious experience is fundamental,
>> uncaused, and irreducible.
Uncaused, OK, like any property of number can be said to be uncaused.
>>
>>
>> Why do we think that our conscious experience must be caused? Maybe
>> this isn't a valid assumption. Maybe we are being led astray by the
>> apparent nature of the macroscopic material world that we perceive?
Well, we search not necessarily a cause, but still an explanation. And
that explanation has to fit with what we can prove, can know, can
feel, can observe, and can infer.
To say consciousness is fundamental does not explain many thing. It is
a bit like saying matter is fundamental, except that in this case it
is helped in some methodological way for some time.
>>
>>
>> So on the surface this view of consciousness as fundamental may sound
>> a bit off-putting,
And as, you seem to be aware, it leads to solipsism.
>> but I think it's not so radical compared to
>> competing theories.
Hmm... It is a bit like David, you put to much emphasis, to say the
least, on the first person, which is the subject of consciousness.
Comp saves the first person from its materialistic elimination, but
comp does not eliminate mathematics, nor physics. It provides a very
precise theory which supplies the absence of matter and explain its
appearance, and which I like to call "machine or number theology", if
only because it provides a clean purely arithmetical interpretation
(AUDA) of Plotinus neoplatonist theory.
The ONE is "just" arithmetical truth. But I am not sanguine about
this, analytical truth works the same.
The INTELLECT is "arithmetical provability"
The KNOWER (alias the first person, alias the universal soul) is
provability in case of truth.
INTELLIGIBLE MATTER is "arithmetical provability in case of
arithmetical consistency".
SENSIBLE MATTER is "arithmetical provability in case of arithmetical
consistency and truth".
This makes 8 (meta)theories, which capture the same part of
arithmetic, but have quite different modal logics, which correspond to
different types of point of view. 8 because three of them are split
into provable and unprovable parts by the incompleteness phenomena.
To put it roughly: consciousness is a Goddess, sure, but it has seven
Sisters.
If we follow Plotinus, those correspond to the degree of "falling" of
the soul.
>> David answered:
>
> Of course I'm in sympathy with what you say here.
I am not astonished :)
OK. With some reserves.
> Rex:
>
>> Take the brain. I haven't verified it myself, but I'm willing to
>> believe that the structure and function of the brain is closely
>> correlated with the mind. My brain represents the contents of my
>> conscious experience. The activity of the brain over time maps to the
>> the contents of my conscious experience over time. Fine.
OK.
>> But the brain
>> is not the cause of my conscious experience.
OK. But is an evidence of having a deep and long computational
history. And in a sense, the brain is the "cause" of my consciousness
"filtration" in a vast subset of future computational histories.
>> A brain is something that
>> one is conscious OF, and thus has a secondary, derivative type of
>> existence.
OK.
>> David:
>
> Very well put. I've mentioned David Bohm's model of a video game,
> which actually got him thinking about the relationships inherent in
> the above scenario, thus: there's a game taking place on a screen
> (explicate order) being acted on by (but not itself acting on) a
> program (implicate order), which in turn is being acted on by (but not
> acting on) the feedback from a player (super-implicate order). In
> this analogy, the brain-body-world is akin to the on-screen
> representation, which in fact emerges from, and is under the control
> of, an underlying set of orderings that seamlessly incorporate both
> player and game. Subject and object then emerge as a heuristic
> distinction in the guise of complementary poles abstracted from
> feedback relationships.
I will have to reread that.
> Rex:
>
>> I can think about my brain, so it is something that I am conscious
>> of,
>> and so it exists in that sense. To the extent that I can examine and
>> experiment on someone else's brain, that is also a perceived
>> experience. But again, all of these things could happen in a dream,
>> or
>> hallucination, or to a brain-in-a-vat, or to someone in a computer
>> simulation.
>
> Yes, it could, but this may not be the version most conducive to
> sanity!
>
>> But the brain
>> is not the cause of my conscious experience. A brain is something
>> that
>> one is conscious OF, and thus has a secondary, derivative type of
>> existence.
>
> Yes, and this 'secondary' existence is just a category of
> existence-for-oneself.
Here you talk about the 'brain' which is in your 'brain'. the physical
brain is most plausibility a completely definable "object". Its
physics, as we can observe it, relies eventually on infinite histories.
> The contents of consciousness are precisely
> what we are taking personally, else they couldn't exist for us. We
> co-habit with them. But they don't just sit there: they connect
> seamlessly beyond our personal horizons, which is how we get to
> justify the belief that they refer to something - as we tend to say -
> outside our selves. But that 'outside' of course isn't outside at
> all; it's just as 'inside' as we are, taking things just as personally
> as it needs to exist, just like us. The external world we see so
> clearly is a reflection of the inside-out surfaces of our mindworlds.
OUR, the Löbian machines. OK.
OUR, the Humans. Not OK.
>
>
>> Similarly, science. I'm willing to believe that quantum mechanics and
>> relativity both describe my observations very well. But this is just
>> the fitting of various mathematical formulas and narratives to what
>> we
>> are conscious of. There's no deeper meaning to science than that. It
>> doesn't tell us about what fundamentally exists.
I recall that theology has been keep out of science and academies
since 1500 years, and has still not really come back.
Due to this unfortunate situation, "science" is confused as being a
sort of theology by itself, which it cannot be.
The least I have try to do is to illustrate that we can reason and
proceed "scientifically" (= proposing modest refutable theories on
consciousness, souls, person, identity and various "god-
like"mathematical and non mathematical entities).
Science is half-blind since a long time, but it is not the fault of
the science spirit, it is the fault of the human spirit which abuse of
the ten thousand authority arguments around those fundamental
questions, and, as consequence, that the spirit of science is
forbidden there.
>> It provides us with
>> stories that fit what our experiences: "IF you were made from
>> subatomic particles in a physical universe, THIS system of particles
>> and forces is consistent with your current observations."
Science will never provide more than IF this then THAT. Even theology.
To defend theology as a science consists in admitting to propose
theory (IF this), and then derive consequences in that theory (then
THAT). And test it, directly, indirectly up to the refutation, and
amelioration, correction, publication, etc.
>>
>
> Yes, and of course WERE you thus made you wouldn't find anybody there
> to take things personally. The great value of COMP, I think, is that
> it pumps the intuition that we can't take persons for granted: they
> don't just map directly onto our representations, which I guess we
> should have expected, because god knows they don't look like anything
> that could be us. Of course a computational narrative may turn out
> not to be the way to go, but I strongly suspect that we still await a
> revolution in - well not physics, but..what? being-science? (gawd) -
> that will be in a primary sense generative of persons prior to the
> generation of appearances.
The theology of numbers. What they can feel and dream, about
themselves and each others, relatively to each one.
> IOW, there probably has to be some sort of
> fundamentally implicate-explicate-superexplicate thingamijig going on
> out there - er, I mean in here.
Sure.
>
>
>> Science is basically us trying to make sense of a dream.
>>
>> So in this view, consciousness is very simple. What's complicated is
>> fitting "explanatory" scientific theories to what is observed, and
>> identifying and understanding causal structures (e.g., a brain, a
>> machine, whatever) whose evolving state can be interpreted as
>> representing a series of "connected" or "related" instances of
>> consciousness.
Numbers do that.
>> But the observed physical system is NOT conscious, it
>> just represents the contents of someone's conscious experience.
>
> Very well put.
>
>> So initially this view seems somewhat...solipsistic (?),
Not necessarily, yet. You could have talk about "universal
consciousness", which does make sense with comp, although I am not
entirely sure. Universal consciousness is the consciousness of the
virgin universal machine, which is rare to find those days (when you
buy a computer it is already full of non universal programs). A
particular consciousness is when the universal consciousness forget
its origin. But this, to be sure, has not yet been asked to the
universal machine (it is beyond AUDA, I mean).
>> but
>> ultimately I think it really isn't much more radical than any other
>> theory on the table. For instance, any deterministic scientific
>> theory
>> entails that we have the experience of making choices without making
>> actual choices (in the free will sense). And so does any
>> indeterminstic theory that is based on bottom-up causation.
>
> Well, of course it's solipsistic, but that's its strength.
?
> You can
> only know yourself: but that 'self', properly understood, extends
> beyond merely perspectival horizons, to everything that is.
You are a billion times too much quick here.
> This is
> the perennial philosophy, and in this case, perennial because
> unavoidable.
OK.
> And as for 'deterministic', if we want to deploy
> causation in our narratives - and I don't see why we shouldn't - then
> existence-for-self gives you a conveniently monistically-collapsed
> version of the causal nexus that indivisibly unites perception,
> intention and action. Since they're indivisible, they only work in
> concert, and hence you can't get causal closure until the sense
> necessary in context gains expression. As to 'first' causes, I think
> we've reached the end of the semantic road.
I disagree. For any rational people betting their brain is a machine,
addition and multiplication are very good first cause. Equivalent one
are abstraction and application. There are many other equivalent one,
for the theology. They are not equivalent with respect to engineering,
though.
> If you want, you can can
> elect to be a mathematical Prospero and conjure us from the deep by
> tautological force majeure, or you can accept the mystery of our
> contingent 'necessity'. Take your pick.
>
>> Beyond that, all theories eventually boil down to having to having to
>> take some set of fundamental entities and laws as unexplained,
>> unsupported brute facts. So whether it's one level down or twelve
>> levels down, at some point they end up saying "and these things just
>> exist, created from nothing, supported by nothing".
Yes, that's right. But some theories are elegant, does not eliminate
person, are more fun, than others.
>>
>>
>> So, no matter which way we go, reality doesn't match our common-sense
>> expectations.
Right, but common-sense change all the time. Somehow, it is a provable
promise that it never really stabilize, unless it remember its origin.
In that case it can perhaps contemplate the big thing, but can no more
play in it. (Again I am beyond AUDA).
>> I think this view makes the fewest assumptions, and
>> ultimately seems no more fantastical than any other theory on offer
>
> This is what my mother used to call 'having the courage of your lack
> of convictions'. I like it.
I am not sure I understand that remark. To sum up you have the
current paradigm:
MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS => NUMBER
comp forces the reversal:
NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER (followed by => HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS => HUMAN NUMBER)
Rex proposes something like:
CONSCIOUSNESS => ?
It is radical, and it is difficult to say if it explains anything. I
suspect the goal could be personal enlightnment instead of a search in
a communicable theory which should or could explain the observable and
non observable (but "feelable", like pain) phenomena.
Bruno
Rex Allen
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Of course a computational narrative may turn out
> not to be the way to go, but I strongly suspect that we still await a
> revolution in - well not physics, but..what? being-science? (gawd) -
> that will be in a primary sense generative of persons prior to the
> generation of appearances. IOW, there probably has to be some sort of
> fundamentally implicate-explicate-superexplicate thingamijig going on
> out there - er, I mean in here.
So if you describe a process that generates persons, how will you
explain the existence of the generating process?
So if something produces consciousness, what produces the producer?
So yes, I've no doubt that one can "explain" consciousness by pointing
to some more fundamental process that you infer from the contents of
our conscious experience.
But since this more fundamental substrate in turn requires an
explanation, your net explanatory gain is ZERO.
The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience.
Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms
of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity.
So one arbitrary solution is to cut the circle at some preferred point
and declare what's found at that point to be "fundamental" and
everything else flows from it.
To me a better solution is to start at the start, and just accept that
consciousness exists first, uncaused and fundamental. The contents of
our conscious experiences exist second, and derivatively.
Where and how do these secondary things exist? In the same place and
in the same way that the things that we perceive in our dreams exist.
David Nyman
> I don't see that the electron's experiential aspect contributes in any
> way to my experience of electrons. And, in a easier to visualize
> vein, the same goes for chairs. Maybe there's something that it's
> like to be a chair, but this is irrelevant to my conscious experience
> of chairs. How could the chair's experience of its existence affect
> my experience of the chair?
chair) to your (remembered) conscious experience of the chair is just
that both awarenesses owe their existence to the same ontological
facts and events. Furthermore, it's crucial to see IMO that at the
fundamental level, this awareness is critical to causal 'closure'.
Not to put too fine a point on it, what I'm saying is that the
fundamental relations between explanatory entities must depend on
perception and intention as well as action. To speak somewhat
metaphorically, 'particle-particle' relations must entail that the
'particles' - however one defines them - in some minimum, but
irreducible sense, perceive, intend, and act with respect to each
other.
> So in addition to conscious experience being uncaused, I take it to
> also be acausal.
below the presentation level, IMO, but every regress has to stop
somewhere, as any schoolchild knows. And of course the *vocabulary*,
so to speak, of consciousness - the rawness of the feels - is not
itself within the domain of explanation. But acausal, that's a horse
of a different colour. Indeed that's what you end up with in the
current world according to physics (which it's why I say it's
incomplete). But if you believe this, you're with Spinoza and Liebniz
in believing that consciousness just parallels physics without
interacting with it in any way - and frankly I wouldn't even have a
clue what this could mean.
The challenge is I think to see that there must be an evolutionary
point, in the end, to the effort that has gone into the complex
machinery of self-awareness we all possess. There must be some things
that can only be achieved by taking things personally in that
particular way that can't be done impersonally - i.e. 'unconsciously'
by one of Chalmers' Australian zombies. And for this to be so it must
supervene on the sort of causal principles I've tried to expose as
intrinsic to existence in this personal sense.
> I take it to be acausal even to the extent that my current subjective
> experience is not caused by my previous experiences. Each moment of
> consciousness stands alone, connected to it's predecessors and
> successors only by the similarity of their content.
needs to carry. We just need to show - by similarity as you say -
that your states of consciousness are nomologically linked. So it's
really a sort of self-fulfilling principle: you possess just enough
coherence to claim that your experience is coherent to that degree.
> You can find all sorts of causal-structure models, in physics or in
> COMP, that can be fit to the contents of your conscious experience,
> but these are just descriptive, not proscriptive.
terms. There's no sense of 'necessary' that I'm aware of (with the
doubtful exception of Bruno's possibly necessary numbers) that can do
any more work than this.
> It does seem likely to me that our conscious experience exists
> necessarily.
existence-for-self. Given the manifest presence rather than absence
of such existence, it is clearly necessary. Nevertheless, in some
counterfactual sense, it might have been absent and never present.
But this is possibly excessively Talmudic.
> Though for it to be a mystery would imply a hidden,
> unknown cause. But consciousness is uncaused, it just exists
> (necessarily), so there can be no mystery.
David
David Nyman
> So yes, I've no doubt that one can "explain" consciousness by pointing
> to some more fundamental process that you infer from the contents of
> our conscious experience.
>
> But since this more fundamental substrate in turn requires an
> explanation, your net explanatory gain is ZERO.
think if this is your criterion of explanatory success it will remain
forever unmet. Of course, in the end we can only tell tales, but some
of these can be very surprising and enlightening.
David
David Nyman
> Hmm... It is a bit like David, you put to much emphasis, to say the
> least, on the first person, which is the subject of consciousness.
struggling to an extent with semantics. And of course, your
perspective is informed always by COMP - quite rightly, it's your
metier - but my position, though sympathetic to yours, isn't
necessarily identical. Further clarification will probably have to be
postponed till my return from Bonny Scotland.
> The ONE is "just" arithmetical truth. But I am not sanguine about
> this, analytical truth works the same.
> The INTELLECT is "arithmetical provability"
> The KNOWER (alias the first person, alias the universal soul) is
> provability in case of truth.
> INTELLIGIBLE MATTER is "arithmetical provability in case of
> arithmetical consistency".
> SENSIBLE MATTER is "arithmetical provability in case of arithmetical
> consistency and truth".
>> Well, of course it's solipsistic, but that's its strength.
>
> ?
only 'know' in the context of the system in which you participate.
>> You can
>> only know yourself: but that 'self', properly understood, extends
>> beyond merely perspectival horizons, to everything that is.
>
> You are a billion times too much quick here.
never really understood whether 0-personal in your sense means
not-personal or personal-to-the-minimum-but-not-vanishing-degree.
>> This is what my mother used to call 'having the courage of your lack
>> of convictions'. I like it.
>
> I am not sure I understand that remark.
David
Brent Meeker
> A further thought:
>
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Of course a computational narrative may turn out
>> not to be the way to go, but I strongly suspect that we still await a
>> revolution in - well not physics, but..what? being-science? (gawd) -
>> that will be in a primary sense generative of persons prior to the
>> generation of appearances. IOW, there probably has to be some sort of
>> fundamentally implicate-explicate-superexplicate thingamijig going on
>> out there - er, I mean in here.
>
> So if you describe a process that generates persons, how will you
> explain the existence of the generating process?
>
> So if something produces consciousness, what produces the producer?
>
> So yes, I've no doubt that one can "explain" consciousness by pointing
> to some more fundamental process that you infer from the contents of
> our conscious experience.
>
> But since this more fundamental substrate in turn requires an
> explanation, your net explanatory gain is ZERO.
>
> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience.
> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms
> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity.
to a dentist - and less pain in your experience.
>
> So one arbitrary solution is to cut the circle at some preferred point
> and declare what's found at that point to be "fundamental" and
> everything else flows from it.
>
> To me a better solution is to start at the start, and just accept that
> consciousness exists first, uncaused and fundamental. The contents of
> our conscious experiences exist second, and derivatively.
virtuous as well as vicious.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> Rex proposes something like:
>
> CONSCIOUSNESS => ?
>
> It is radical, and it is difficult to say if it explains anything. I
> suspect the goal could be personal enlightnment instead of a search in
> a communicable theory which should or could explain the observable and
> non observable (but "feelable", like pain) phenomena.
AND
On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>
>> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience.
>> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms
>> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity.
>
> If you explain the existence of a pain in your tooth by a cavity the experience may lead
> to a dentist - and less pain in your experience.
I am proposing, I suppose:
CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE
So obviously it seems useful to postulate the existence of things like
quarks and electrons, which we then use to make predictions about what
will happen if we do this, that, or the other. However, I think there
is good reason to believe that this only holds true in our own
relatively well-behaved part of what is actually a vast experiential
wilderness.
Any proposal that has our consciousness as being "caused", whatever
the causal mechanism, is open to the possibility that we are caused to
experience something that is not reflective of the reality that
produced the experience. Dreams, delusions, hallucinations,
brains-in-vats, and computer simulations of brains all offer real or
conceivable examples of scenarios where what is experienced might lead
one astray in trying to determine the underlying nature of things.
If our conscious experience is caused, then for all we know we're
giant amorphous blobs floating in 12 dimensional space, but with just
the right internal causal structure to produce the conscious
experience of being humans in 3-dimensional space. Or we could be
"Boltzmann Brains", produced by the random fluctuations of particles
in just the right way to produce the illusion of our current
experiences. Given enough time, exactly our experience would be
produced, regardless of the underlying physics of the Boltzmann
Universe that we actually inhabit, just through a brute random search
of the space of possibilities, combination and recombination of all
possible configurations. OR (per Bruno) we could be mathematical
algorithms existing only in some immaterial platonic sense.
Or identical experiences, plus all variations, of being Brent or Bruno
might be caused by each of the above mechanisms at different times and
in different places. An infinite number of universes, or a universe
of infinite size, or with an infinite amount of time, or a quantum
mechanical multiverse with infinite branches, or a platonic Plenitude
containing all possible mathematical/algorithmic structures, would all
seem to be possibilities, and not even mutually exclusive ones.
BUT, I don't think so.
All causal explanations for consciousness (even Bruno's) ultimately
rely on fiat assertions that "this causes conscious experience",
without providing any convincing explanation for why this should be.
It's not so much causation as correlation, as far as I can see.
As I mentioned, I'm sure that the brain can be viewed as representing
the contents of my experience. And I'm sure that a computer program
could also be written that would represent the contents of my
conscious experience and whose representational state would evolve as
the program ran so that it continued to match what I experience over
time. But this would not mean that the program was conscious, or that
my brain is conscious.
The living brain and the executing computer program both just
represent the contents of my conscious experience, in the same way
that a map represents the actual terrain.
However, I question the need to push the explanation down to a
separate layer. So we are at the top of your ontological stack, I
assume. And we look below us to see what supports us. But then we
have to look below that level to see what supports it, and below that
level to see what supports it, and so on. Infinite regress. Turtles
all the way down.
But instead why not look at our own experience, which is the only
thing we know directly, as the foundation of the ontological stack.
Everything that exists rests on the foundation of our conscious
experience? In this view, the stack goes up for as far as our
intellect can reach. And as our intellectual capacity expands, the
our view of the existential landscape above us also expands.
This, I think, makes more sense.
Bruno Marchal
You are using the identity thesis. It is inconsistent for any rational
agent who believe that its own consciousness is invariant for a local
functional substitution.
> Or we could be
> "Boltzmann Brains", produced by the random fluctuations of particles
> in just the right way to produce the illusion of our current
> experiences.
Same remark. If we are machine, Boltzmann brain does not work, unless
they have the right relative statistics, but then they are no more BBs.
> Given enough time, exactly our experience would be
> produced, regardless of the underlying physics of the Boltzmann
> Universe that we actually inhabit, just through a brute random search
> of the space of possibilities, combination and recombination of all
> possible configurations. OR (per Bruno) we could be mathematical
> algorithms existing only in some immaterial platonic sense.
No we aren't. There are no such identifty thesis consistent with the
comp hyp.
Comp makes consciosusness more fundamental, than usual identifty
theses permit.
>
>
> Or identical experiences, plus all variations, of being Brent or Bruno
> might be caused by each of the above mechanisms at different times and
> in different places. An infinite number of universes, or a universe
> of infinite size, or with an infinite amount of time, or a quantum
> mechanical multiverse with infinite branches, or a platonic Plenitude
> containing all possible mathematical/algorithmic structures, would all
> seem to be possibilities, and not even mutually exclusive ones.
This is slightly less wrong, but consciousness is distributed on such
multi-realities. It defines them in the limit.
>
>
> BUT, I don't think so.
>
> All causal explanations for consciousness (even Bruno's) ultimately
> rely on fiat assertions that "this causes conscious experience",
I permanently avoid the notion of causality in search of the
fundamentals. Causlaity is like free-will, it is something which
emerge at some high level, of description.
Comp is not "brain produces consciousness". It is the assertion of the
existence of la level of description of my "body" such that I will not
experience anything usual in the case my "body" is substituted by an
equivalent , for that level, digital device.
That is the "yes doctor". It does not presuppose that the brain causes
consciousness or thing like that.
>
> without providing any convincing explanation for why this should be.
With comp, such explanation cannot be given. If a doctor shows any
such beliefs in the completeness of such an explanation, you better
run away, and search for a more modest doctor.
But we can have convincing evidences that comp makes sense. Today's
physics implies comp, today biology implies comp, today's
neurophysiology implies comp. Non-comp needs to speculate about many
things we have no evidences at all. But despite this, few realize that
comp is incompatible with the aristotelian idea that there is a
physical universe operating primitively. Comp shows that Plato's
theory is more coherent than Aristotle theory.
Even yours is more coherent, yet quite vague.
>
> It's not so much causation as correlation, as far as I can see.
Sure. And the point is that such a correlation cannot be one-one. You
can attach consciousness to a body (your friend's body, for example),
but if you say "yes to the doctor", you can understand that you cannot
attach your experience to any body (nor physical, mathematical, etc.).
On the contrary, bodies should be said to be "caused" by, or emerging
from, consciousness.
And then computer science suggest a definition of consciousness as a
state of true belief in a reality.
>
>
> As I mentioned, I'm sure that the brain can be viewed as representing
> the contents of my experience. And I'm sure that a computer program
> could also be written that would represent the contents of my
> conscious experience and whose representational state would evolve as
> the program ran so that it continued to match what I experience over
> time. But this would not mean that the program was conscious, or that
> my brain is conscious.
Exactly, that is even a key point.
>
>
> The living brain and the executing computer program both just
> represent the contents of my conscious experience, in the same way
> that a map represents the actual terrain.
This is ambiguous. If you agree that this does not force you to say
"no" to the doctor, despite he will handle only those "map-like"
representations, then I am OK with you.
>
>
> However, I question the need to push the explanation down to a
> separate layer.
Because to put consciousness as primitive does not explain neither
consciousness, nor matter, nor their relation.
You may be right, but then we are waiting for the theory, and the
explanation.
By the way, what is the status of your theory with respect to comp?
> So we are at the top of your ontological stack, I
> assume. And we look below us to see what supports us. But then we
> have to look below that level to see what supports it, and below that
> level to see what supports it, and so on. Infinite regress. Turtles
> all the way down.
If you accept the structure (N, + x) we can use beautiful method to
solve infinite regress. That is what does "recursion theory" all the
times.
If you don't accept (N, +, x), how will you explain the fact that we
are consciously talking about (N, +, x)?
>
>
> But instead why not look at our own experience, which is the only
> thing we know directly, as the foundation of the ontological stack.
You can try. Good luck. I can agree that we know our experiences, and
even better that anything else. But as such, those are the things we
cannot communicate to others, at all. That is why only great artist,
poet and musician dare to try.
That is why some scientist does the mistake of putting those
incommunicable things under the rug. They are mistaken because they
confuse "non communicable", with "non existence". Eventually they will
eliminate the person.
>
> Everything that exists rests on the foundation of our conscious
> experience?
The problem is "our". What do you mean by that? If by "our" you mean
"us" the universal machine, I can interpret favorably (with respect to
the comp theory) that everything that exists rests on the foundation
of our consciousness.
And this includes "consciousness", in a circular way, bur which
circularity can be eliminated by theorems in computer science. Then
consciousness appears to be a logical descendant of the instinctive
bet that there is a reality. It provides a relative self-speeding
power which has no bound.
> In this view, the stack goes up for as far as our
> intellect can reach. And as our intellectual capacity expands, the
> our view of the existential landscape above us also expands.
>
> This, I think, makes more sense.
You should appreciate comp and its consequences, because it is closer
to this view than you seem to realize. But you have to tell us what
you mean by "our" to evaluate the degree of adequation between your
insight, and what can be derived from computer science and self-
reference logics.
Bruno
John Mikes
CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE
1Z
On 31 July, 14:23, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/31 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com>:
> > Since the mental is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in physics. it has to be
> > higher-level or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax.
>
> Blimey! Thanks, Peter - you couldn't have expressed a circular
> argument more succinctly! However, my reformulation is inevitably
> equally circular (retaining the - presumably intentionally - ironic
> use of 'uncontroversially') viz:
> "Since the physical is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in
> mentality, it has to be
> higher-level or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax."
>
> So you pays your money.....?
is epistemically certain, it is ipso facto ontologically basic. But
that
doesn't follow at all. I have evidence that the physical is basic --
the whole
of science. You have no evidence that the mental is basic because the
mental
does not reveal its own ontological nature. All you have is the
**epistemic*** claim
that the mental definitely exists, in some sense.
>But no: the insuperable (AFAICS)
> advantage of the second formulation is that 'mentality' (i.e. what is
> real in the sense that I am real) is uniquely given - it is the fons
> et origo of any inference, and hence justifies its direction in the
> second case, whilst annihilating it in the first.
to be the ontological.
> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> > mental
> > from the physical
>
> On the contrary, I've said it repeatedly.
> > For dualism you need materalism AND the
> > mental AND an unbridgeable gap. You keep leaving the gap out.
>
> I'm left with the nagging sense that perhaps we're just violently
> agreeing and the confusion is over semantics. We both require a
> justification for reality-in-the-sense-I-am-real. Obviously this
> requires an account of shoes and ships and sealing-wax not only on the
> basis of our direct knowledge of them in these terms, but also in the
> multiplicity of other ways that directly given elements can be
> re-ordered - including of course those concerned with the heuristics
> of their behaviour, such as whatever version of theoretical physics is
> currently in favour. Neither of us believes that a coherent account
> in terms of more than one ontological mode of subsistence is either
> necessary or possible. But an entity is more than the mere sum of
> whatever properties we can abstract from it. So if what you're saying
> could be reduced to the claim that there must be a unique ontology
> that is consistent with all of the foregoing, and that you prefer to
> call it physical, we could agree.
the mental emerges from the physical.
> One caveat however - and I think this is at the root of your permanent
> disagreement with Bruno. If we are to accept the 'physical' narrative
> as the fundamental justification of what it is to be RITSIAR, then the
> explanatory entities and relationships deployed for this purpose must
> be justified explicitly and exclusively in terms of 'really physical'
> entities and relations. Consequently, it is incoherent to postulate
> 'functional' relationships across such boundaries as constitutive of
> anything RITSIAR, because this opens up a veritable infinity of
> alternative, arbitrarily abstracted, 'causal' inferences.
to have
any function. That is an argument you have made elsewhere, it is not
a particularly good argument, and it is not germane to this discussion
> Consequently, and - I can't help adding - *obviously*, since we cannot
> credit *all* of these abstractions with the needful causal potency, we
> are all the more unjustified in privileging any *one* of them.
> So Bruno's point, fundamentally, is that if we're going to argue for
> functional justification of the mental - in the sense of RITSIAR -
> then said functional entities and relations must be postulated to be
> 'really real'. COMP just axiomatises the functional entities and
> relations that are held to be RITSIAR. Bruno is sometimes a little
> difficult to pin down on the foundational RITSIAR-ness of the 'number
> realm',
>perhaps because his attention is focused more on what he can
> do with it. But if one simply can't stomach the idea that 'platonic
> numbers' are what is really real, then fair enough.
>But then one must
> abjure functional-computational justifications for the 'mental':
> again, fair enough (it's probably closer to my own prejudice). But
> unless you're an eliminativist about the mental, you can't have it
> both ways.
are neither functionalist nor elimintativist. Sheesh.
> > Idealism does not save appearances. It cannot explain
> > how there was a mindless universe for millions of years before
> > life evolved, for instance. Idealists usually have to flatly deny that
> > particular
> > appearance.
>
> But I think we can save them quite handily. First, calling something
> 'idealism' just pumps the intuition that there have to be sort of
> bright images everywhere independent of 'minds'. The problem here is
> that we're stuck with folk vocabulary that drags in extraneous notions
> left, right and centre causing an implosion of the imagination. We
> need to fix this, and I have a couple of suggestions. The first was
> in my reply to Rex, where I suggest, in answer to your implicit
> question above, that the universe has to take things just as
> personally as it needs to exist.
>That, if you like, is the degree of
> 'mentality' (one of the terms that probably should be retired) you
> might expect to exist before life evolved. And you're right to
> specify 'evolved' because whatever we mean by mind in the organic
> sense would of course be vacuous if in constitution and function it
> offered no evolutionary advantage.
>
> This leads to the second suggestion: what we call 'mind' is the
> evolved capacity for representation, memory and intention directed
> towards an environment, resulting from selected-for elaborations of
> primitive but critically-similar potentials. Of course, this is the
> standard direction of any explanatory thrust, but with the critical
> stipulation that we must be able to preserve the appearances from soup
> to nuts: this is, as you point out, the nub. Again, I don't insist on
> any particular vocabulary, only the necessary sense. As Popper
> remarks, debate about words is futile - just clarify your terms until
> the problem emerges precisely, or goes away.
them
> Of the above factors, the one that bears, I think, most on the
> 'appearance of mindlessness', is memory (a point made by Russell in
> his neutral monist guise). Essentially, we're 'conscious' of what we
> can remember - this is inherent in the sense of re-presentation. So
> it may not in fact meet the case to hold that we're 'unaware' of what
> we don't remember so well, but rather that 'primitive' awareness is
> swamped in our memory by repeated re-presentation of dominant
> higher-order themes.
You have no need to struggle to come up with a panpsychist
theory, since you have no valid objection to physicalism.
Your argument so far has been based on two dubious premises --
that eliminativism and functonalism are the only physicalist options,
and that functionalism is arbitrary and in-the-eye-of-beholder.
>
> read more »
1Z
On 31 July, 14:44, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31 July, 11:43, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > There are many bad solutions too. Finding a good solution
> > means having an exat grasp of the problem, not saying in some
> > vague way that mind and matter are different things.
>
> Do elaborate. It would be really helpful to have an exactly stated
> exposition of the problem as you grasp it, with any explicit angles of
> attack you may have to propose.
The problem of mind and consciousness is one of the most important in
philosophy, because the stubborn inexplicabiliy of some aspects of
consciousness has important metahysical ramifications, which
themselves have knock-on effects in other areas. Given the current
state of play in philosophy, mind-body issues are almost all that
hinders an all-encompassing physicalism. Physicalism has wider
implications. For instance, it ahas the capacity to imply that
determinism is true and free-will false, possibly in conjunction with
other theories, which itself would have major consequences in ethical
and political thought. Moreover, alternatives to physicalism -- such
as idealism, the idea that "all is mind" and mind-matter dualism --
are obviously shaped by the mind-body problem. From a modern point of
view, where Man is no longer the Centre of All Things, it seems odd
that anyone would want to make human mentality a central feature of
the universe, as both of those alternatives do. Yet, they cannot be
rejected without some sort of solution to the Mind-Body problem.
Consciousness presents a number of features and problems. In
increasing order some of them are:-
* What you are aware of, and what you are aware with.
* Behaviour: Consciousness as opposed to unconsciousness.
* Sense of Self
* Intentionality
* Binding/synthesis
* Phenomenality
The mere fact that consciousness is multi-faceted has implications: if
it is a "rag-bag" of features, it is unlikely to be a basic
constituent of the universe as some people maintain.
People who have read Marx or with leftish political leanings often use
"consciousness" to mean the mindset of an individual or group -- so
that is is possible to "raise" one's consciousness by becoming aware
of more or different things. For the purposes of investigating the
metaphysical implications of the Mind-Body Problem, that is not what
the word "consciousness" means . We take it to mean what you are aware
withnot what you are aware of.
The word "conscious" can also be used to indicate that someone is
awake and interacting with their environment, as opposed to somnolent.
If this were all the philosophical problem consisted of, it would be a
lot simpler! The philosophical problem is about the nature of the
faculty of consciousness, not whether it is "switched on" -- whether
someone is displaying it at a certain point in time. Nonetheless, this
tells us that there is an external behavioural aspect to
consciousness. We should not think of it as a deely hidden,
impenetrable mystery. Hopefully, we should not think of it as nothing
butbehaviour either. We can and do attribute consciousness to other
individuals (quite possibly including non-humans) on the basis of
their behaviour, but what we attribute to them is not just behaviour
-- it is an "inner world" of thoughts and feelings we introspectively
detect in ourselves, and link with certain kinds of our own external
behaviour.
The sense of self is perhaps the easiest feature of consiousness to
deal with. It is easy to see why organisms need a sense of self --
they would not want to absent-mindedly chew off one of their own
limbs, as Daniel Dennett reminds us. We can naturalistically
understand consciousness as a kind of virtual reality system, and the
sense-of-self as a kind of figure that is manipulated within the
simulation to explore counterfactual situations. We can imagine
information processing-systems that process information about
themselves, that have an internal self-representation. Indexical
pronouns, and recursive functions show how self-awareness can be
leveraged syntactically.
The sense of the self is made to explain other aspects of
consciousness in "homuncular" theories in which an inner self lends
intentionality, phenomenality and so on to consciousness in some
inexplicable way. This class of theory is often and rightly criticised
for its infinite regress, yet remains eternally popular.
Of course I have been talking about the "sense of self" in a rather
fictive sense, not as an actually existing entity. But, as
philosophers from Buddha to Hume have noticed, an inner self -- above
and beyond both the body and mental contents such as thoughts and
feelings is not discernable. There may be a thought "I am" which
accompanies all other thoughts, as Kant believed (or a felling or
quale that fulfils a similar role) -- but they are thoughts and
feelings of self -- not selves ! Of course such an inner self is not
detectable objectively within the brain, which seems to be fairly
decentralised organ, either,
I strongly suspect that people who believe in an inner self, do not
detect an inner self as such within themselves. Rather they feel they
must have a "little (wo)man" inside them to make everything work; i.e.
it is a theory masquerading as a fact.
Intentionality is regarded as the very mark of the mental by some.
Intentionality means "aboutness", the ability of mental contents such
as thought and beliefs to be about something. If you think about a
rock, you do not have a rock in your head, you have, in some sense, a
thought. Intentionality is closely allied to the ability to form
representations -- examples of external representations include words
and pictures --which is not particularly mysterious. Whilst
intentionality has its puzzles, it does not challenge physicalism in
any basic way. Moreover, it is now universally acknowledged that there
can be unconscious mental contents, and therefore unconscious
inentionality. So intentionality is part of the problem of mind rather
than the problem of consciousness.
At one time, teleology was regarded as the mark of them mental, and as
the nub of the mind-body problem (or, rather, a wider life-mecahnism
problem). It is now regarded as resolvable by a reduction of teleology
in favour of mechanistic causation. "Teleological" entities have some
internal representation of a a future state, and act in order to bring
it about. Nothing more than mechanism is needed to explain that. We
have been able to build teleological devices since the 50s.
(Cybernetics)
Binding or synthesis is the way that different sensory modalities
combine into a unified representation of the world. This was known to
ancient philosphers like Aristotle, who thought it required a "sixth
sense", to modern philosophers like Kant who called it the Synthetic
Unity of Apperception, and to neurologists who call it the Binding
Problem. A magic homunculus, a central Scrutiniser suggests itself to
some as an solution to this problem; everything comes together at the
Central Scrutiniser. But, as usual, this is not very explanatory. Does
the Scrutniser have another scrutiniser within it ?
Ultimately the Binding problem is structural and behavioural, and
therefore within the grasp of a scientific approach. The real problem
-- the Hard Problem -- is subjective experience.
Whilst subjective experience can be analysed into aspects that are
unchallenging physically (see Appendix) there are other aspects which
are much more problematical. The technical term for aspects of
subjective experience is "qualia".
Qualia Introduced
Qualia are the way things seem to us, experiences considered purely as
experiences. They are conceptually distinct from the physical
experiences outside the cranium that cause them (if any--dreams and
hallucinations are qualia as much as anything), and are also defined
without prejudice to whatever intra-cranial events may or may not
accompany or implement them. That is to say, they are not defined as
neurological events (although the definition does not preclude their
being identified with such events by some process of explanation). An
example would be the way lemons taste to you, as opposed to their
chemical composition.
C.I Lewis' Original Definition of Qualia
"There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which
may be repeated in different experiences, and are thus a sort of
universals; I call these "qualia." But although such qualia are
universals, in the sense of being recognized from one to another
experience, they must be distinguished from the properties of objects.
Confusion of these two is characteristic of many historical
conceptions, as well as of current essence-theories. The quale is
directly intuited, given, and is not the subject of any possible error
because it is purely subjective."
Infallibility and other Epistemic Issues
People like Dennett make much of the infallibility clause ("is not the
subject of any possible error"). He argues that because we could be
wrong about qualia, the whole notion is dispensible. However, we could
be wrong about anything. We make mistakes about external objects, does
that mean an external world is dispensible? An epistemological verion
of Fank Jacksion's Mary woudl nto be know what qualia are either,
despire being familiar with every shade of infallibility and
ineffability. What qualia re explains their inieffability, not the
other way round!
What is the problem of qualia?
The problem of qualia is the problem of their relationship to the
physical description of the world. Many people have the intuition that
showing a brain-scan of someone, John, eating lemons to someone else,
June, with no sense of taste would not tell June what lemons taste
like even if she knew everything there is to know about neurology.
This intuition is called the 'explanatory gap'. Many people also have
an intuition that everything can be explained by the behaviour of
matter at the most fundamental level, i.e that all sciences will
eventually be reduced to physics. This intuition is called
reductionism and has the clear implication that there cannot
ultimately be any explanatory gaps. If you have both intuitions, you
are going to have a problem with qualia.
What Qualia Are and Are Not
Is there a need for the word "qualia": What qualia are not
I do need the term qualia to clearly differentiate the experiential
aspects from
1. The physical properties of objects that are giving rise to
experiences. This is a point brought out in CI Lewis's definition.
Under "naive" — that is, pre-scientific — theories, it is assumed that
things are as they seem; the perceived properties of objects start off
attached to the object itself, and are just copied by perception. This
simple picture was picked apart by the development of a scientific
picture of how the sense organs work.
2. The neural correlates of the experience -- considered as such.
To say that a quale is a different thing from nueral behaviour simply
begs the question against some proposed solutions to the MBP, such as
token identity theory. However, experiences do not seem like neural
activity. Our ancestors had all sorts of experiences without realsiing
there are such things as neurons. So long as "qualia" labels the way
things seem they can be held as being not necesarily the same as their
neural correlates, without begging any questions about what they
"really" are.
3. The behavioural accompaniments of experience. This is relevant
to Dennett's thinking, in that he associates experience with the
tendency to produce reports.
4. Information or knowledge (cognition as opposed to perception).
Being told about the Eiffel Towers is not the same as sseing it,
althought the same information may be conveyed. Cognition is not
phenomenally vivid in normal people. There is a condition called
synaesthesia where words, ideas, etc are phenomenally vivid. Trying to
identify phenomenality with cognition would render this well-attested
psychological peculiarity incomprehensible.
Qualia and Intentionality
Straightforward identification of qualia with brain states is hindered
by the fact that brain states do not have the properties qualia seem
to have; for instance if a green triangle, is seen, there is nothing
in the brain that is green and triangular, either. (Nor is there
necessarily any external object with those properties within the field
of vision). A similar problem also occurs with intentionality.
(Intentionality labels the tendency of thoughts or words to be about
something). To think about rocks is not to have rocks in the head.
This does not startle us because we are used to the fact that symbols
and represetations are not the same as the things they represent. You
cannot sit on the word "chair". So all that is needed to solve this
puzzle in the case of intentionality is the idea that the mind/brain
is some kind of symbolic or representational system.
Can this trick be made to work for qualia? The essential problem of
qualia is their inability to be expressed in language; that is the
problem from which the privacy of the mental stems, and from which the
subjectivity of the mental further stems. It could be argued at a
stretch that qualia are the intentions of a "language of thought", a
language that underpins our mental processes but to which we do not
have conscious access. However, a complete physical description of the
brain must include such a language-of-thought as one of its aspects,
so this theory contains the implication that qualia could be captured
in physicalese (since they are already captured in a language-of-
thought which itself is captured by a complete physical description).
If the indescribability of qualia is already present, and most severe,
in physicalese, it is very difficult to see how accessing the LOT via
physicalese would help.
Qualia and naive realism
Naive realism is the view that we perceive things just as they are. It
is undermined by a number of essentially scientific discoveries:-
1. Optical illusions are not properties of the object being viewed.
The whole point of the Muller-Lyer illusion is that the lines are
really of equal length. If the apparent inequality is a real property
of the diagram, whence the equality?
2. People see the same thing differently. Three people looking at a
coin might see an oval, a circle and a rectanlge. Yet these cannot all
be the actual shape of the coin.
3. The phenomenal appearances of dreams, hallucinations cannot be
properties of real, external objects. Hence the hard problem of
consciousness arises from the combination of a scientific world-view
and introspective access to consciousness.
In total, these create a need for some concept of perceived qualities
even if it is not a concept of qualia. Possible alternatives include
"sense data", "Percepts, and so on.
Negative definitions and limiting concepts: "Qualia" as a non-
referring term.
Outright qualia-denial is quite implausible; it is the claim that
smells don't smell and pains don't pain. A related manoeuvre is to
deny the usefulness of the word "qualia". The word is often used to
point out something which is unexplained within current theories of
consciousness, something unknown. How can a word which doesn't mean
anything be of any use? Surely it can be eliminated without changing
anything.
There is a distinction between two different kinds or shades of
meaning made by Frege. "Reference" is the external-world object a
symbol is "about". "Sense" is the kind of meaning a symbol has even if
does not have a reference. This shows that a referentless term can
still be meaningful, but it does not quite show that there is a
benefit in employing such terms. (After all, many examples of
referntless terms are obviously useless -- words such as "pixie",
"unicorn" and so on).
We need to be aware of the limitations of our knowledge. We need a
vocabulary to indicate those limitations. Without one, we might
prematurely decide that we understood everything. There is a
philsophical tradition of such negative or limiting concepts, with
Kant's noumenon perhaps being the most famous example.
But, continues the argument, such terms are scientifically useless
even if they are employed by philosophers.
The demand that all scientific terminology be pre-equipped with
referents is self defeating. The purposes of many scientific
programmes is precisely to find the referent of some term. Science
progresses by investigating mysteries, not by sweeping them under the
carpet. We don't know what "dark matter" names, but we need a label
for the mystery so we can get on with investigating it. Our ancestors
didn't really know what "water" means. Where would we be if some proto-
Dennett had advised them to abandon the term?
1Z
On 31 July, 18:27, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I don't understand what could be "mathematically existence" ? What is
> "existence" ? RITSIAR is a point of view (of an observer)... If
> something exists, it exists...
>
> You're using "mathematical existence" as if it meant "no existence"...
> why bother using existence at all then ?
of mathematical objects. Mathematical existence cannot be dismissed
entirely,
but need not be accepted on the same level as ontological existence
(=RITSIAR).
> >> I think the confusion comes from the fact that I obtain platonist (in
> >> Plato or Plotinus sense) conclusions. But the hypotheses are 100%
> >> neutral or agnostic on this point. Like in Paris and Brussels you
> >> still confuse the conclusion (admittedly startling) and the hypothesis.
>
> > How can a conlusion that the material world doesn't exist
> > be neutrral about Platonism? If Platonism is false,
> > the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
> > there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
>
> Again what existence means in this case ?
mathematically,
but also ontoligically. ANti-Platonism asserts that "the square root
of two exists"
has meanign only within a particular "game" or set of assumptions,
like
"Sherlock Holmes lives at 221b Baker Street".
1Z
On 31 July, 18:55, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2009, at 18:05, 1Z wrote:
>
>
>
> > If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
> > proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
> > existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
> > but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>
> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITISIAR?
> The point is just that IF you survive "in the RITSIAR" sense, with a
> digital (even material, if you want) brain, then materiality has to be
> retrieved by coherence or gluing property of immaterial computation,
> or there is an error in the UD Argument.
phsycial
brain into a physcial computer, physicalism is unscathed. Your
argument
against physcialism is that is unnecessary because something else
is doing the work -- that I could be running on some immaterial UDA.
But you have to assume Platonism to get your UDA, so you have to
assume Platonism to refute physicalism. Without that assumption, the
rest doesn't follow.. It is step 0.
> >>> wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
> >>> there is no illusory matter.
>
> >> Sure. But the UD exists, like prime number exists.
>
> > Which for a non-Platononists is not at all
> > in the relevant sense.
>
> Again, if that is true, there must be something wrong in the UD
> Argument. Which one?
> > How can a conlusion that the material world doesn't exist
> > be neutrral about Platonism?
>
> The point is that Platonism is in the conclusion, not in the hypothesis.
that your UDA is a phsycal entity floating in space somwhere.
In fact, you have explictly said that the UDA has Platonic existence:
> > the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
> > there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
>
> Why do you want the UD to exist somewhere?
of shear non-existence.
>Does prime numbers need to
> exist somewhere to exist at all?
You say they do.:
"But the UD exists, like prime number exists".
Then there is nothing left at all.
> The UDA reasoning is, in a short way: Comp -> Platonism. (In your
> sense of platonism).
> If you believe Platonism is false, then by the UD Argument, you
> believe that comp (i.e. YD + CT) is false, or you believe that there
> is something wrong in UDA.
> What?
some sort of existence.
> Let me ask you that question precisely.
>
> Is it a problem with the first person indeterminacy and its invariance
> properties? That is, is it a problem in the first sixth steps: UDA 1--6.
> Is it a problem with UDA-7. Where the indeterminacy domain, still
> material, is infinite?
> Is it a problem with UDA-8. Where the indeterminacy field become
> (sigma_1) arithmetical?
of Platonism before you even get on to the rest of it.
> (sigma_1 means here a very tiny part of arithmetical truth,
1Z
On 3 Aug, 06:51, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Rex proposes something like:
>
> > CONSCIOUSNESS => ?
>
> > It is radical, and it is difficult to say if it explains anything. I
> > suspect the goal could be personal enlightnment instead of a search in
> > a communicable theory which should or could explain the observable and
> > non observable (but "feelable", like pain) phenomena.
>
> AND
>
>
> >> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience.
> >> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms
> >> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity.
>
> > If you explain the existence of a pain in your tooth by a cavity the experience may lead
> > to a dentist - and less pain in your experience.
>
> I am proposing, I suppose:
>
> CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE
>
> So obviously it seems useful to postulate the existence of things like
> quarks and electrons, which we then use to make predictions about what
> will happen if we do this, that, or the other. However, I think there
> is good reason to believe that this only holds true in our own
> relatively well-behaved part of what is actually a vast experiential
> wilderness.
can't experience.
> Any proposal that has our consciousness as being "caused", whatever
> the causal mechanism, is open to the possibility that we are caused to
> experience something that is not reflective of the reality that
> produced the experience. Dreams, delusions, hallucinations,
> brains-in-vats, and computer simulations of brains all offer real or
> conceivable examples of scenarios where what is experienced might lead
> one astray in trying to determine the underlying nature of things.
so are deprecated by Occam's razor.
> However, I question the need to push the explanation down to a
> separate layer. So we are at the top of your ontological stack, I
> assume. And we look below us to see what supports us. But then we
> have to look below that level to see what supports it, and below that
> level to see what supports it, and so on. Infinite regress. Turtles
> all the way down.
what is happening on the Nth level?
> But instead why not look at our own experience, which is the only
> thing we know directly, as the foundation of the ontological stack.
> Everything that exists rests on the foundation of our conscious
> experience? In this view, the stack goes up for as far as our
> intellect can reach. And as our intellectual capacity expands, the
> our view of the existential landscape above us also expands.
consciousness as its basis?
Bruno Marchal
On 06 Aug 2009, at 19:09, 1Z wrote:
>
>
>
> On 31 July, 18:55, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 31 Jul 2009, at 18:05, 1Z wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
>>> proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
>>> existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
>>> but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>>
>> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITSIAR?
>
> If current physics is correct.
Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
certainty.
As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not real.
Ontological first person does not need an "IF this or that theory is
correct".
You are reifying theoretical constructions.
>
>
>> The point is just that IF you survive "in the RITSIAR" sense, with a
>> digital (even material, if you want) brain, then materiality has to
>> be
>> retrieved by coherence or gluing property of immaterial computation,
>> or there is an error in the UD Argument.
>
>
> It is not clear what you mean by that. If I am transferred from a
> phsycial
> brain into a physcial computer, physicalism is unscathed. Your
> argument
> against physcialism is that is unnecessary because something else
> is doing the work --
My argument is not that. From what you say, I infer that you
understand the seven first steps of the UD-Argument.
You seem to have a problem with the 8th step, which is the step
showing that no "work" is needed at all. The usual number relations do
the work, and this without any need to reify them.
> that I could be running on some immaterial UDA.
> But you have to assume Platonism to get your UDA, so you have to
> assume Platonism to refute physicalism. Without that assumption, the
> rest doesn't follow.. It is step 0.
Do I need platonism to believe in the existence of prime numbers? I
need only the amount of arithmetical realism for saying that the
(mathematical) machine x stop or doesn't stop on input y. This is
enough for the computational supervenience. And physical supervenience
does not work, as the step 8 of UDA shows.
>
>
>>>>> wihout a UDA there are no generated minds, without generated minds
>>>>> there is no illusory matter.
>>
>>>> Sure. But the UD exists, like prime number exists.
>>
>>> Which for a non-Platononists is not at all
>>> in the relevant sense.
>>
>> Again, if that is true, there must be something wrong in the UD
>> Argument. Which one?
>
> The *implict* assumption of Platonism. Step 0.
It is a relief for me to see that you did look at the papers, and
realise I do not postulate platonism, only realism. So now you have to
attribute this assumption as an implicit assumption. I'm afraid that
such an implicit assumption exists only in your imagination.
You reify a physical primitive reality to instantiate consciousness,
and you attribute me a reification of the numbers to get the same, but
the point of step 8 is to show that such a reification, be it with
matter or number, cannot work.
You don't have a problem with step zero (the real one in the papers).
I think that you have a problem with step 8.
In step seven the UD running is still primitively material, and the
step 8 shows that such an ontological materiality does not help,
*cannot* help.
>
>
>>> How can a conlusion that the material world doesn't exist
>>> be neutrral about Platonism?
>>
>> The point is that Platonism is in the conclusion, not in the
>> hypothesis.
>
> It has to be in the hypothesis. Otherwise you need to show
> that your UDA is a phsycal entity floating in space somwhere.
A physical UD does not change anything, by step 8.
>
> In fact, you have explictly said that the UDA has Platonic existence:
> "But the UD exists, like prime number exists".
I said this to explain that the existence of the UD is of the same
mathematical nature as the existence of the prime number. No need to
double the mathematical ontology.
>
>
>>> If Platonism is false,
>>> the mathematical world doesn';t exist either. and
>>> there is nowhere for the UD to exist at all.
>>
>> Why do you want the UD to exist somewhere?
>
> Because I exist somewhere, and I can;t be generated out
> of shear non-existence.
You talk like if mathematical existence = non existence. I think
Quentin made a similar remark.
But I believe in elementary arithmetic. I can prove that prime numbers
and UDs exist, and by step 8 that is enough. No need to reify such
existence. And step 8 shows that this entails that reification of the
physical objects is a red herring too.
>
>
>> Does prime numbers need to
>> exist somewhere to exist at all?
>
> I say hey don't.
So you believe in the mathematical existence of prime numbers. Good.
>
>
> You say they do.:
>
> "But the UD exists, like prime number exists".
... meaning that the UD, and its mathematical running, mathematically
exist. UD exists in the same mathematical sense than the prime
numbers, and step 8 shows this is all we can use, once we assume
digital mechanism.
>
>
>> Does the physical universe exist somewhere?
>
> Something does. You can't eliminate the phys. uni. AND Plato's heaven.
> Then there is nothing left at all.
By mathematical (arithmetical) realism, the prime numbers and the
mathematical machine continue to exist. By step 8, physical
supervenience is wrong, and the mathematical existence of computation
forces us to restrict the supervenience thesis on those mathematical
computations, which have to exist in the mathematical sense. No need
to reify Plato's heaven. I don't do that, either explicitly nor
implicitly (or show me where).
>
>
>> The UDA reasoning is, in a short way: Comp -> Platonism. (In your
>> sense of platonism).
>
> No,. its Platonism->Comp -> Platonism.
No, it is Comp -> Platonism. Comp includes realism for the
mathematical existence.
>
>
>> If you believe Platonism is false, then by the UD Argument, you
>> believe that comp (i.e. YD + CT) is false, or you believe that there
>> is something wrong in UDA.
>
>> What?
>
> The assumption of Platonism you need to give the UD
> some sort of existence.
I need some sort of existence indeed. Arithmetical existence is enough
by step 8.
>
>
>> Let me ask you that question precisely.
>>
>> Is it a problem with the first person indeterminacy and its
>> invariance
>> properties? That is, is it a problem in the first sixth steps: UDA
>> 1--6.
>> Is it a problem with UDA-7. Where the indeterminacy domain, still
>> material, is infinite?
>> Is it a problem with UDA-8. Where the indeterminacy field become
>> (sigma_1) arithmetical?
>
> I have already answered that. THere is an *implicit* assumption
> of Platonism before you even get on to the rest of it.
Could you show me at which step I am using that *implicit* assumption?
Well, it cannot be in the seven first steps, given that we are free,
there, to reify materiality and imagine the UD as a concrete material
machine.
So it can only be in the 8th step. But the point of step 8 consists
precisely in showing that a physical or even just ontological reality
is pointless.
You talk like if we knew that a primitive physical ontology exists,
but we don't know that, and the seven first step are neutral on that.
You are the one insisting that for consciousness to exist, we need a
physical ontology. But the step 8 shows that with comp such a physical
ontology, or any special ontology is spurious.
You make me regret to have put the step 8 at the end of UDA. Note that
in all my older french version of UDA, I begin by step 8, to make
clear the very essence of the mind body problem once we assume comp.
Consciousness is a purely mathematical phenomenon which makes us
believe in such ontology when digital mechanism forces us to admit
that the simple mathematical existence is enough, and is all we can
really use to attach consciousness to computations.
My diagnostic: you have a problem with step 8. The problem you have
with step 0 comes from the fact that you introduce an implicit
assumption which is not there, or you are playing with the word by 1)
reifying a non mathematical ontology for shear existence, 2) forcing
me to to the same with mathematical existence. But the point is that
such reification does not work (by step 8), unless you identify
mathematical existence with inexistence. But then you should say
"prime numbers do not exist", "UDs do not exist".
You should show where in step 8 the *implicit assumption* has been used.
Bruno
Torgny Tholerus
>
> Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
> Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
> Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
> certainty.
> As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
> quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
> conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not real.
>
When I woke up this morning, I realized that my consciousness was not
real...
--
Torgny Tholerus
Quentin Anciaux
2009/8/7 Torgny Tholerus <tor...@dsv.su.se>:
meaning... (there exists no 'I') and if you're not, either you're
deluded or you 're lying ;)
Regards,
Quentin
> --
> Torgny Tholerus
Bruno Marchal
On 07 Aug 2009, at 10:09, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> 2009/8/7 Torgny Tholerus <tor...@dsv.su.se>:
>>
>> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>>
>>> Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
>>> Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
>>> Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have
>>> ontological
>>> certainty.
>>> As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
>>> quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
>>> conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not
>>> real.
>>>
>>
>> When I woke up this morning, I realized that my consciousness was not
>> real...
>
> Like before... If you are a zombie, the sentence above has no
> meaning... (there exists no 'I') and if you're not, either you're
> deluded or you 're lying ;)
Or you have a good sense of humor.
The idea of a dreaming zombie, waking up to realize that he was
dreaming being conscious, is rather funny.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
> Very important post, Peter. We are progressing.
>
>
> On 06 Aug 2009, at 19:09, 1Z wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 31 July, 18:55, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>>> On 31 Jul 2009, at 18:05, 1Z wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
>>>> proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
>>>> existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
>>>> but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>>> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITSIAR?
>> If current physics is correct.
>
>
> Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
> Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
> Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
> certainty.
> As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
> quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
> conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not real.
But as Bertrand Russell, David Hume and many mystics have pointed out you can wake up and
realize there is consciousness but the "I" that possesses it is a fiction.
Brent
Johnathan Corgan
> But as Bertrand Russell, David Hume and many mystics have pointed out you can wake up and
> realize there is consciousness but the "I" that possesses it is a fiction.
There are also many common reports of what is colloquially called "ego
loss" in the hallucinogenic literature. Users report the experience of
being "conscious" in that they are awake, perceiving sensory data, and
performing motor functions, but they have no sense of self or "I".
Johnathan Corgan
Bruno Marchal
Absolutely so. It corresponds to the "ego-death" that most people can
live after consuming some entheogen. The so-called "breakthrough"
after consuming some amount of concentrated extract of Salvia
Divinorum is often described in term of ego-death or ego annihilation,
but I think that it is more aptly described as a dissociation between
the first person and the other hypostases with a feeling to remember
who "you" really are, and which is not related to memories or bodies.
That is why some describe this instead as an expansion of the "I", or
an expansion of consciousness. It is related to the second form of
comp-immortality I was talking about some month ago.
Even in the case of the ideal self-referentially correct machine,
there is a sort of competition between many (eight ?) "I". In post-
Plotinus neoplatonist term, the soul "falls" when the "I" identifies
itself with the material hypostases. It is the passage from an "I"
defined in term of truth and/or provability only to an "I" which
includes an attachment to self-consistency (Dt, or ~B~t).
Assuming comp, and extending the arithmetical interpretation of the
Plotinus hypostases, this seems to be the "real" logical origin of
Matter and physical sensations. Much work remains to confirm this.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
David Nyman
>>>> If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
>>>> proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
>>>> existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
>>>> but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>>>
>>> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITSIAR?
>>
>> If current physics is correct.
>
>
> Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
> Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
> Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
> certainty.
> As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
> quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
> conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not real.
> Ontological first person does not need an "IF this or that theory is
> correct".
> You are reifying theoretical constructions.
I think need to take a hard line on RITSIAR. I feel that the key lies
in what Bruno terms the certainty of the ontological first person
(OFP): i.e. the sine qua non of reality as it is uniquely available to
us. Since this is inescapably the foundation of any and all
judgements whatsoever, it is simultaneously both the both point of
departure and the 'what-is-to-be-explained' of RITSIAR. In this light
it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities -
physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the
domain of epistemology. IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
theoretical constructions.
So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap', and it seems to me that
its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
epistemology. Indeed, what conceivable strategy could raise these
theoretical constructions - to which the OFP uniquely lends existence
- to the ontological certainty of their host? Is there a coherent way
to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
opposed to postulating or observing one)? There is something
quintessential that stubbornly eludes capture, because epistemological
access never tells us what an entity *is* - only what can be
ascertained of its 'externalised' properties. And lest we be tempted
to accept the sum of these properties as exhausting 'existence', we
need only turn to the self-evident corrective of the OFP.
So the gap must remain, and I think that now I see why Bruno appeals
simply to the 'ordinary' mathematical sense of existence - because
COMP, under this analysis, is an epistemological schema, and its
entities are theoretical constructions. Hence the question of jumping
the ontological gap is in abeyance, perhaps permanently, but in any
case in the realm of faith. And if this is true for COMP, then
mutatis mutandis it is true for physics. It's no use appealing to
notions of 'what it's like to be a brain' - nor what it's like to be a
COMP-quale - because we can never say that it is 'like anything to be'
the stuff of epistemology. Hence we must see our theorising and
observing - in physical, computational, or whatever terms - *in
relation* to ontological certainty, not as constitutive of it. This
necessarily weakens what can be ascertained by theory or by
observation, but at least keeps us honest.
The unavoidable consequence of the foregoing is that atoms, quarks and
numbers cannot be RITSIAR. Rather, they stand in some theoretical
relation to RITSIAR, but strictly on the epistemological side of the
explanatory gap. They are 'real as far as theory takes us', or if
further jargon is unavoidable: RAFATTU.
>>> The point is just that IF you survive "in the RITSIAR" sense, with a
>>> digital (even material, if you want) brain, then materiality has to
>>> be
>>> retrieved by coherence or gluing property of immaterial computation,
>>> or there is an error in the UD Argument.
>>
>>
>> It is not clear what you mean by that. If I am transferred from a
>> phsycial
>> brain into a physcial computer, physicalism is unscathed. Your
>> argument
>> against physcialism is that is unnecessary because something else
>> is doing the work --
>
> My argument is not that. From what you say, I infer that you
> understand the seven first steps of the UD-Argument.
> You seem to have a problem with the 8th step, which is the step
> showing that no "work" is needed at all. The usual number relations do
> the work, and this without any need to reify them.
See above.
>> But you have to assume Platonism to get your UDA, so you have to
>> assume Platonism to refute physicalism. Without that assumption, the
>> rest doesn't follow.. It is step 0.
>
> Do I need platonism to believe in the existence of prime numbers? I
> need only the amount of arithmetical realism for saying that the
> (mathematical) machine x stop or doesn't stop on input y. This is
> enough for the computational supervenience. And physical supervenience
> does not work, as the step 8 of UDA shows.
And again.
> It is a relief for me to see that you did look at the papers, and
> realise I do not postulate platonism, only realism. So now you have to
> attribute this assumption as an implicit assumption. I'm afraid that
> such an implicit assumption exists only in your imagination.
> You reify a physical primitive reality to instantiate consciousness,
> and you attribute me a reification of the numbers to get the same, but
> the point of step 8 is to show that such a reification, be it with
> matter or number, cannot work.
My argument against the *physical* instantiation of a computational
mind (i.e. in any non-eliminative sense) rests on the claim that the
very arbitrariness of possible physical instantiations of a given
computation (cf Hofstadter) violates the criterion of direct
supervention on *specific* physical entities and relations from which
a class of emergent phenomena inherits physical - as opposed to merely
mental (and hence egregiously question-begging) - stability.
Naturally, all this is per physics as ordinarily understood.
Tolerating such a violation is tantamount to accepting (and this is
notoriously claimed by Hofstadter et al) that *any* arbitrarily
assembled set of physical entities deemed to be in the required
'functional' relation (e.g. - famously - in an anthill) necessarily
stabilises exactly the same 'mental state'. AFAICS this is by itself
quite sufficient to reveal such a 'mind' as intrinsically unphysical -
and a fortiori un-RITSIAR.
My argument assumes, however, that - per physicalism - a running
computation (as opposed to its specification) necessarily requires
*some* physical activity to transform inputs to outputs (e.g. in terms
of logic gates). Step 8, however, seems to take a step beyond this by
proposing that a running computation can take the form of (as opposed
to merely being described by) a machine *state*: i.e. without the
requirement of activity. But in precisely what sense can such a
'stopped' state (i.e. still within purely physical terms of reference)
be regarded as a 'running' computation, and hence - per computational
theory of mind - as evocative of temporal experience? And in any
case, in what way is step 8 intended to extend intuition beyond my own
argument, which - as I have tried to show - also elicits the insight
that the direct supervention of 'functional' relations on functions
themselves - not on their arbitrarily-defined physical tokens - is
central to the recovery of 'mind' from computation.
> You talk like if we knew that a primitive physical ontology exists,
> but we don't know that, and the seven first step are neutral on that.
> You are the one insisting that for consciousness to exist, we need a
> physical ontology. But the step 8 shows that with comp such a physical
> ontology, or any special ontology is spurious.
And again, the onto-epistemological gap.
David
David Nyman
> You're doing it again. You are assuming that because the mental
> is epistemically certain, it is ipso facto ontologically basic. But
> that
> doesn't follow at all. I have evidence that the physical is basic --
> the whole
> of science. You have no evidence that the mental is basic because the
> mental
> does not reveal its own ontological nature. All you have is the
> **epistemic*** claim
> that the mental definitely exists, in some sense.
'epistemic' certainty, but its status as what is *ontologically
certain*. To regard consciousness itself (or in Bruno's terms the
ontological first person) as merely the object of 'knowledge' is to
commit the fallacy of taking 'observation' in a naively literal sense:
i.e. to require there to be an 'observer'. But this, self-evidently,
can only lead to infinite regress. Consequently, consciousness does
not consist in the 'observation' of epistemic entities, but in their
instantiation. Consciousness is, as it were, the 'ontology of
epistemology'. When you say that the physical is basic, you are
yourself mistaking the epistemological for the ontological. As to
your evidence consisting in 'the whole of science', since the nature
and significance of this evidence is precisely what is in question, it
is inadequate merely to make such appeals to authority. It would be
more helpful if you would address these arguments in their own terms,
rather than begging various questions by appeal to 'pre-established
fact', or tilting at straw men of your own making.
>> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
>> > mental
>> > from the physical
>>
>> On the contrary, I've said it repeatedly.
>
> Please say it again.
exemplified in consciousness - you try get physically-basic ontology
for free. In other words, you simply assume that if we take ourselves
to 'be' - what? - say, neural activity in 'computational' - or some
yet-to-be-established - guise, then - pouf! - the ontological first
person is conjured from mere description. But there is no sense in
which one can simply 'be' an epistemic 'object' - a theoretical
construction. *This* is the explanatory gap, and you are trying to
jump it by this customary, well-worn sleight-of-intuition. But it is
precisely this bit of magic that is in question. And in my view the
right place to start questioning is the direction of inference, as
I've - repeatedly - said.
> You still haven't said what the objection is to saying that
> the mental emerges from the physical.
another class of description. If that exhausts your idea of the
'mental' I say you are an eliminativist. But you say you're not.
What then?
> Assuming (without justification) that anything can arbitrarily be said
> to have
> any function. That is an argument you have made elsewhere, it is not
> a particularly good argument, and it is not germane to this discussion
consist in the claim that 'anything can arbitrarily be said to have
any function'. What I'm criticising, quite specifically, is the claim
that the self-evidently existent category of the ontological first
person is equivalent to a particular class of arrangements of
ontologically-basic-in-their-own-right physical entities. This, I
take it, can be construed only as a particularly odd form of dualism,
or eliminativism. The 'arbitrariness' is inherent in the burden of
the term 'functionalism', which is intrinsically neutral as to the
details of physical implementation. This is its great strength in its
legitimate sphere of application, and its fatal weakness in the
present context.
>>But then one must
>> abjure functional-computational justifications for the 'mental':
>> again, fair enough (it's probably closer to my own prejudice). But
>> unless you're an eliminativist about the mental, you can't have it
>> both ways.
>
> Of course you can! There are plenty accounts of the mental that
> are neither functionalist nor elimintativist. Sheesh.
is specifically against functionalist accounts based on an assumed
physical ontology. So I repeat: the burden of my claim is that if you
want to be ontological about the physical, you must give up
functionalist arguments for mind; otherwise you are an implicit
dualist, or else an eliminativist, even though you may be unaware of
it (as indeed an eliminativist would have to be!) You may of course
disagree, but saying 'of course you can' is not an argument. Beyond
that, I'm not arguing here against other accounts of the mental,
though you don't indicate what you have in mind (as it were)
>> But I think we can save them quite handily. First, calling something
>> 'idealism' just pumps the intuition that there have to be sort of
>> bright images everywhere independent of 'minds'. The problem here is
>> that we're stuck with folk vocabulary that drags in extraneous notions
>> left, right and centre causing an implosion of the imagination. We
>> need to fix this, and I have a couple of suggestions. The first was
>> in my reply to Rex, where I suggest, in answer to your implicit
>> question above, that the universe has to take things just as
>> personally as it needs to exist.
>
> Why, for heaven's sake? That seems completely arbitrary.
sorry if this seems impolite, I don't intend it to be). As I've said,
virtually every term we use has been used by someone else to mean
something different. The use of the term 'personal' in this context,
as I've tried to explain, is to carry the sense that what 'exists' is
always, as it were, incipiently personal or 'owned'. This is, I
believe, not crude idealism, but in fact the crucial prerequisite for
any intuition as to how the 'ownership' of consciousness could be
conceived to emerge from something in some sense more fundamental, but
nonetheless categorically congruent.
>> This leads to the second suggestion: what we call 'mind' is the
>> evolved capacity for representation, memory and intention directed
>> towards an environment, resulting from selected-for elaborations of
>> primitive but critically-similar potentials. Of course, this is the
>> standard direction of any explanatory thrust, but with the critical
>> stipulation that we must be able to preserve the appearances from soup
>> to nuts: this is, as you point out, the nub. Again, I don't insist on
>> any particular vocabulary, only the necessary sense. As Popper
>> remarks, debate about words is futile - just clarify your terms until
>> the problem emerges precisely, or goes away.
>
> Repeating that we need to save the appearances does nothing to save
> them
>
>> Of the above factors, the one that bears, I think, most on the
>> 'appearance of mindlessness', is memory (a point made by Russell in
>> his neutral monist guise). Essentially, we're 'conscious' of what we
>> can remember - this is inherent in the sense of re-presentation. So
>> it may not in fact meet the case to hold that we're 'unaware' of what
>> we don't remember so well, but rather that 'primitive' awareness is
>> swamped in our memory by repeated re-presentation of dominant
>> higher-order themes.
>
> You cannot derive an "is true" from a "might be true".
that the fundamental 'personalisation' of the universe must
necessarily manifest with a very different appearance to that which is
in evidence. I'm merely trying to apply a little massage to the
intuition that this doesn't have to be so.
> You have no need to struggle to come up with a panpsychist
> theory,
arguments relating to the various senses of the term 'to exist' with
which I hope to give a shove to intuitions that have perhaps become
too stuck in one groove
> since you have no valid objection to physicalism.
> Your argument so far has been based on two dubious premises --
> that eliminativism and functonalism are the only physicalist options,
> and that functionalism is arbitrary and in-the-eye-of-beholder.
pointed out when I lazily resorted to 'specious'). AFAICS you have
not independently argued for their dubiousness, but instead have
gestured towards 'well-established' positions. Furthermore, I haven't
at all claimed that they are the *only* physicalist options, I've
simply attacked these specific positions where they are resorted to.
If you are prepared to confront what has actually been said,
specifically and point for point, we may make progress, but otherwise
I fear we shan''t get much further.
Bruno Marchal
On 10 Aug 2009, at 02:59, David Nyman wrote:
>
> 2009/8/7 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
>>>>> If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
>>>>> proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
>>>>> existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
>>>>> but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>>>>
>>>> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITSIAR?
>>>
>>> If current physics is correct.
>>
>>
>> Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
>> Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
>> Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
>> certainty.
>> As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
>> quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
>> conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not
>> real.
>> Ontological first person does not need an "IF this or that theory is
>> correct".
>> You are reifying theoretical constructions.
>
> I think need to take a hard line on RITSIAR. I feel that the key lies
> in what Bruno terms the certainty of the ontological first person
> (OFP): i.e. the sine qua non of reality as it is uniquely available to
> us.
I thought you were using "RITSIAR" in this 1-person way. But it seems
that
Peter Jones was using in in a 3-person way. But all the 3-things
belong to the realm of the dubitable, and none can be real in the
sense I am real.
I can know that I am real, but I cannot *know* for sure that I have
fingers, or that I am made of atom, or that my hair are brown. This
"knowledge" is of the conjectural, theoretical type.
> Since this is inescapably the foundation of any and all
> judgements whatsoever, it is simultaneously both the both point of
> departure and the 'what-is-to-be-explained' of RITSIAR.
"to-be-explained" means to be explained in a theory. I show that comp
leads to a simple theory for the ontology (any universal machine, like
a tiny fragment of arithmetic will do), and a slightly less simple
epistemology (arithmetic + the induction axiom, so that we get the
self-awareness theorem: Bp -> BBp (if I believe p, I believe that I
believe p).
> In this light
> it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities -
> physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the
> domain of epistemology.
I don't see why. I would not put arithmetic in epistemology, or only
in a very large sense of epistemology, the epistemology of the 0-
person views!. It seems clearer to accept them ontologically like in
the usual practice of math. Could be only a vocabulary problem here.
> IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
> theoretical constructions.
Yes, but this does not mean those construction does not refer to
something real independently of us, and this is what I assume for
comp. Even if the whole existence get annihilated, 17 would still be
prime.
>
>
> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap', and it seems to me that
> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
> epistemology. Indeed, what conceivable strategy could raise these
> theoretical constructions - to which the OFP uniquely lends existence
> - to the ontological certainty of their host? Is there a coherent way
> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
It is the point of saying "yes" to the doctor. You don't say yes
because the new brain is a good modelisation of your brain, but
because you bet it will enact yourself completely, relatively to the
neighborhood.
> There is something
> quintessential that stubbornly eludes capture, because epistemological
> access never tells us what an entity *is* - only what can be
> ascertained of its 'externalised' properties. And lest we be tempted
> to accept the sum of these properties as exhausting 'existence', we
> need only turn to the self-evident corrective of the OFP.
>
> So the gap must remain, and I think that now I see why Bruno appeals
> simply to the 'ordinary' mathematical sense of existence - because
> COMP, under this analysis, is an epistemological schema, and its
> entities are theoretical constructions.
You may confuse the reality of number, and the reality of machine/
theories talking about those numbers. Numbers are not viewed as
theoretical construction. The theoretical construction are our
theories on the numbers. It simplifies things.
> Hence the question of jumping
> the ontological gap is in abeyance, perhaps permanently, but in any
> case in the realm of faith.
All theories demands faith, but the faith needed for understanding
that 17 is prime is not comparable to the act of faith needed to say
yes to the doctor.
> And if this is true for COMP, then
> mutatis mutandis it is true for physics.
This is hard for many people, because our faith in a physical worlds
relies on billions years of prejudice. Only the greeks, from -500 to
+500, have dare to doubt it, and this gave rise to science, including
theology. But Aristotle, and mainly its middle age disciples have
reintroduced the naturalist dogma.
> It's no use appealing to
> notions of 'what it's like to be a brain' - nor what it's like to be a
> COMP-quale - because we can never say that it is 'like anything to be'
> the stuff of epistemology.
Assuming comp we can still say that it is like you feel right now.
Only zombie cannot understand, but if they are good zombie, they will
have no problem to fake that they understand.
> Hence we must see our theorising and
> observing - in physical, computational, or whatever terms - *in
> relation* to ontological certainty, not as constitutive of it.
That's right.
> This
> necessarily weakens what can be ascertained by theory or by
> observation, but at least keeps us honest.
>
> The unavoidable consequence of the foregoing is that atoms, quarks and
> numbers cannot be RITSIAR.
I thought this was obvious.
> Rather, they stand in some theoretical
> relation to RITSIAR, but strictly on the epistemological side of the
> explanatory gap. They are 'real as far as theory takes us', or if
> further jargon is unavoidable: RAFATTU.
Well frankly this will depend of the first "T" of RAFATTU. It depends
of the theory.
With the comp theory, quarks, electrons, planet and galaxies are not
ontologically real.
With string theory, they may be real.
I think that this what the movie graph argument makes necessary.
>
> Naturally, all this is per physics as ordinarily understood.
> Tolerating such a violation is tantamount to accepting (and this is
> notoriously claimed by Hofstadter et al) that *any* arbitrarily
> assembled set of physical entities deemed to be in the required
> 'functional' relation (e.g. - famously - in an anthill) necessarily
> stabilises exactly the same 'mental state'. AFAICS this is by itself
> quite sufficient to reveal such a 'mind' as intrinsically unphysical -
> and a fortiori un-RITSIAR.
Hmm... things are more subtle, but in a first approximation this can
be useful.
Once you say yes to the digital surgeon, you can undersatnd that you
are immaterial, in the sense you can change body everyday, like you
can buy a new car. The movie graph shows that comp makes this
immateriality contagious on the environment.
>
>
> My argument assumes, however, that - per physicalism - a running
> computation (as opposed to its specification)
It is important to distinguish a program (immaterial static object)
and a computation (an immaterial "dynamic" object, which can be finite
or infinite, but is best handled when accepting it is infinite,
because in that case a dynamic can be defined by a function from N to
anything: it is a sequence of things). If not, people get troubled by
the existence of running computation in platonia/arithmetical truth.
> necessarily requires
> *some* physical activity to transform inputs to outputs (e.g. in terms
> of logic gates). Step 8, however, seems to take a step beyond this by
> proposing that a running computation can take the form of (as opposed
> to merely being described by) a machine *state*: i.e. without the
> requirement of activity.
No, activity is required. But activity is just a function from N to
set of states. The movie graph show that a machine cannot distinguish
physical activity from such an arithmetical activity. A computation is
an infinite set of numbers such that there is a universal number
generating that sequence.
> But in precisely what sense can such a
> 'stopped' state (i.e. still within purely physical terms of reference)
> be regarded as a 'running' computation, and hence - per computational
> theory of mind - as evocative of temporal experience?
By the invocation of a universal machine/number.
The problem, well the white rabbit problem, is that if a universal
machine makes a sequence s1 s2 s" ... a computation, then there will
be an infinity of such universal machine and computations, and from
the first person point of view the person belongs to all those
computations at once.
> And in any
> case, in what way is step 8 intended to extend intuition beyond my own
> argument, which - as I have tried to show - also elicits the insight
> that the direct supervention of 'functional' relations on functions
> themselves - not on their arbitrarily-defined physical tokens - is
> central to the recovery of 'mind' from computation.
See above.
>
>
>> You talk like if we knew that a primitive physical ontology exists,
>> but we don't know that, and the seven first step are neutral on that.
>> You are the one insisting that for consciousness to exist, we need a
>> physical ontology. But the step 8 shows that with comp such a
>> physical
>> ontology, or any special ontology is spurious.
>
> And again, the onto-epistemological gap.
All the edges in the graph of the arithmetical hypostases represents
gap from the machine point of views. 8 gaps. In details: 8 + infinity
of gaps, because the material hypostases are graded and multiplied.
But I don't want to use AUDA too much, if some people have still
trouble with UDA.
The discovery of the universal machine is the creative bomb which
makes comp possible and plausible. Universal machine, like computers
and brains, are not trivial mathematical object at all. To study comp
without computer science, is like doing cosmology without QM and GR.
Of course we can have the deepest intuition right, by experience, but
to make a sharble verifiable theory, I am afraid we cannot dismiss
some math ...
David Nyman
Bruno, I'm broadly in agreement with your comments, and merely
re-emphasise a few points below on which I'm being a stickler. Also,
I have some further comments and questions on step 8.
>> In this light
>> it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities -
>> physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the
>> domain of epistemology.
>
> I don't see why. I would not put arithmetic in epistemology, or only
> in a very large sense of epistemology, the epistemology of the 0-
> person views!. It seems clearer to accept them ontologically like in
> the usual practice of math. Could be only a vocabulary problem here.
stickler here. In the strictest sense the ontological equivalence of
anything whatsoever to the indexical OFP can only be an assumption -
albeit one that might be justifiable in the case of the best theory.
Beyond this, that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* as it
appears, is in principle outside the scope of explanation itself.
>> IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
>> theoretical constructions.
>
> Yes, but this does not mean those construction does not refer to
> something real independently of us, and this is what I assume for
> comp
that the construction *refers* to something real. But I think perhaps
that the something thus referenced is not best characterised as being
real *independently* of us, but rather *constitutive* of us and our
(most general) environment.
> Even if the whole existence get annihilated, 17 would still be
> prime.
departure and don't really wish to make an argumentative point out of
it. Nonetheless, in passing, perhaps I have a more radical intuition
of annihilation than you. One can waste a lot of breath speculating
on 'nothing' because, strictly I guess, there can be nothing at all it
can refer to. I could demonstrate this, given infinite time, simply
by flatly rejecting *any* survivor of such annihilation that you or
anyone cared to propose, to the crack of doom. On this basis, even
'17 is prime' is a goner.
>> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
>> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
>> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
>> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap', and it seems to me that
>> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
>> epistemology. Indeed, what conceivable strategy could raise these
>> theoretical constructions - to which the OFP uniquely lends existence
>> - to the ontological certainty of their host? Is there a coherent way
>> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
>> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
>
> It is the point of saying "yes" to the doctor. You don't say yes
> because the new brain is a good modelisation of your brain, but
> because you bet it will enact yourself completely, relatively to the
> neighborhood.
advance what it would mean to *be* such an enactment (i.e. to be
*sure*) so you can only bet that saying yes will not affect the state
of the indexical OFP.
> You may confuse the reality of number, and the reality of machine/
> theories talking about those numbers. Numbers are not viewed as
> theoretical construction. The theoretical construction are our
> theories on the numbers. It simplifies things.
one shared by all mathematicians. But again, in the final analysis,
numbers can only be 'viewed' as ontologically real, not *known* to be.
But this is true of any assumption whatever, and I freely concede
your points about the simplicity of the assumptions in the case of
comp.
> All theories demands faith, but the faith needed for understanding
> that 17 is prime is not comparable to the act of faith needed to say
> yes to the doctor.
>> It's no use appealing to
>> notions of 'what it's like to be a brain' - nor what it's like to be a
>> COMP-quale - because we can never say that it is 'like anything to be'
>> the stuff of epistemology.
>
> Assuming comp we can still say that it is like you feel right now.
> Only zombie cannot understand, but if they are good zombie, they will
> have no problem to fake that they understand.
comp-quale, but we may have sufficient faith to bet that it's like
'what you feel right now'.
>> Hence we must see our theorising and
>> observing - in physical, computational, or whatever terms - *in
>> relation* to ontological certainty, not as constitutive of it.
>
> That's right.
> I thought this was obvious.
enters the lecture room with a sheaf of papers and writes a complex
theorem on the blackboard. He turns to the students and says "ladies
and gentlemen, this of course is obvious". He then shuffles his
papers, looks at the board again and continues more doubtfully "at
least, I think it is obvious". Then he stares fixedly at the board
for ten minutes without speaking, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
Finally, he rubs out the theorem and leaves the room. The students
are nonplussed, but remain in their seats. Thirty minutes later, the
professor re-enters the room, looking disheveled but happy. He writes
exactly the same theorem on the blackboard with a flourish, turns to
his audience and announces triumphantly "ladies and gentlemen, I was
right - it IS obvious!"
>> Rather, they stand in some theoretical
>> relation to RITSIAR, but strictly on the epistemological side of the
>> explanatory gap. They are 'real as far as theory takes us', or if
>> further jargon is unavoidable: RAFATTU.
>
> Well frankly this will depend of the first "T" of RAFATTU. It depends
> of the theory.
> With the comp theory, quarks, electrons, planet and galaxies are not
> ontologically real.
> With string theory, they may be real.
>> My argument against the *physical* instantiation of a computational
>> mind (i.e. in any non-eliminative sense) rests on the claim that the
>> very arbitrariness of possible physical instantiations of a given
>> computation (cf Hofstadter) violates the criterion of direct
>> supervention on *specific* physical entities and relations from which
>> a class of emergent phenomena inherits physical - as opposed to merely
>> mental (and hence egregiously question-begging) - stability.
>
> I think that this what the movie graph argument makes necessary.
>> Naturally, all this is per physics as ordinarily understood.
>> Tolerating such a violation is tantamount to accepting (and this is
>> notoriously claimed by Hofstadter et al) that *any* arbitrarily
>> assembled set of physical entities deemed to be in the required
>> 'functional' relation (e.g. - famously - in an anthill) necessarily
>> stabilises exactly the same 'mental state'. AFAICS this is by itself
>> quite sufficient to reveal such a 'mind' as intrinsically unphysical -
>> and a fortiori un-RITSIAR.
>
> Hmm... things are more subtle, but in a first approximation this can
> be useful.
By un-RITSIAR, in this instance, I mean that in these strictly
physical terms (i.e. without comp) such a mind doesn't even exist -
hence 'a fortiori'.
>> My argument assumes, however, that - per physicalism - a running
>> computation (as opposed to its specification)
>
> It is important to distinguish a program (immaterial static object)
> and a computation (an immaterial "dynamic" object, which can be finite
> or infinite, but is best handled when accepting it is infinite,
> because in that case a dynamic can be defined by a function from N to
> anything: it is a sequence of things). If not, people get troubled by
> the existence of running computation in platonia/arithmetical truth.
dynamic object) and an implementation of a computation (material
dynamic process) - again, per standard physical theory - as a
refutation of standard comp *in these strictly physical terms*. My
point is, that per physicalism, a computation must be implemented in
some physical mechanism in order to have any real - i.e. physical -
effects (at least this was true the last time I did any programming).
Hence the existence of 'immaterial objects' in this case is simply
irrelevant to any effects that would be strictly justifiable as
ontologically real, per physicalism. Consequently, I agree that the
reversal of ontological primacy you stipulate is necessary to save
comp.
Your argument however seems to be based not on the physical
implementation but the 'immaterial' computation to which it is
postulated - per standard comp - to be equivalent. Is this right?
>> necessarily requires
>> *some* physical activity to transform inputs to outputs (e.g. in terms
>> of logic gates). Step 8, however, seems to take a step beyond this by
>> proposing that a running computation can take the form of (as opposed
>> to merely being described by) a machine *state*: i.e. without the
>> requirement of activity.
>
> No, activity is required. But activity is just a function from N to
> set of states. The movie graph show that a machine cannot distinguish
> physical activity from such an arithmetical activity. A computation is
> an infinite set of numbers such that there is a universal number
> generating that sequence.
states", you again seem to refer to 'immaterial activity'. It seems
to me that what you are saying amounts to this:
If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
the running program, regardless of specific implementation, that
implements the function and hence the mind, then this is
indistinguishable by the machine from it simply *being* the function
and hence the mind. Standard comp is then seen to refute - or at
least make irrelevant - its own basis in materiality. Is this right?
>> And in any
>> case, in what way is step 8 intended to extend intuition beyond my own
>> argument, which - as I have tried to show - also elicits the insight
>> that the direct supervention of 'functional' relations on functions
>> themselves - not on their arbitrarily-defined physical tokens - is
>> central to the recovery of 'mind' from computation.
>
> See above.
> The discovery of the universal machine is the creative bomb which
> makes comp possible and plausible. Universal machine, like computers
> and brains, are not trivial mathematical object at all. To study comp
> without computer science, is like doing cosmology without QM and GR.
> Of course we can have the deepest intuition right, by experience, but
> to make a sharble verifiable theory, I am afraid we cannot dismiss
> some math ...
David
>
> Bruno
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
On 10 Aug 2009, at 17:20, David Nyman wrote:
>
> 2009/8/10 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
> Bruno, I'm broadly in agreement with your comments, and merely
> re-emphasise a few points below on which I'm being a stickler.
All right.
> Also,
> I have some further comments and questions on step 8.
Good.
>
>
>>> In this light
>>> it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities -
>>> physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to
>>> the
>>> domain of epistemology.
>>
>> I don't see why. I would not put arithmetic in epistemology, or only
>> in a very large sense of epistemology, the epistemology of the 0-
>> person views!. It seems clearer to accept them ontologically like in
>> the usual practice of math. Could be only a vocabulary problem here.
>
> Yes, I normally wouldn't dispute this point, but but I'm being a
> stickler here. In the strictest sense the ontological equivalence of
> anything whatsoever to the indexical OFP can only be an assumption -
> albeit one that might be justifiable in the case of the best theory.
OFP, OFP, ... ? Ah Ontological First Person.
Actually in "indexical OFP" I could argue that "indexical and
ontological" are just reminders on point where we already agree (and
agree with the universal machine discourse, after some definition and
theorems ...).
But with comp, the first person does not necessarily identifies with
any representation, like we don't have to identify ourselves with a
body, but we can bet on "staying the same person in the sense that I
stay the same person after drinking a cup of coffe" (SSPSSSPDCC, if
you want :) for some digital body transformation.
The 1-I, the 1-person, does not need to identify itself to any body,
or representation (actually: the 1-person cannot do that, it can
identify itself only to itself as a person).
So the 1-person bet on some 3-person (the body, the code relatively to
its most probable universal computation), and on its invariance for
some (digital) body transformation.
Assuming comp, the reasoning leads to make consciousness a larger
invariant (and then you have more choice and latitude in the
transformation, for example with amnesia, or false souvenirs, etc.).
But strictly speaking (I am also a stickler), the first person can
never identify herself to *any* representation, she share this with
the 0-person ONE, or the non differentiate (arithmetical) truth. The
knower does not know who he is. Relatively to probable histories, he
makes bets "all the time".
>
> Beyond this, that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* as it
> appears, is in principle outside the scope of explanation itself.
No! This is the "miracle" of comp. Machine cannot not discover the
incommunicable part of their experience, but they can, assume of bet
on comp, and justify that why it has to be so. That is AUDA. The gap
is justified from inside. It is a consequence from the fact that
machine can prove their own incompleteness theorems, and even study
the geometry of their ignorance. The ultimate gap remains unavoidable,
so you are right saying that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP
is outside the scope of the explanation, but that fact, is an "easy"
theorem on and by the machine which introspect herself.
To sum up:
The unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* beyond the scope of the
explanation-comp theory. But that very fact *is* in the scope of the
theory.
>
>
>>> IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
>>> theoretical constructions.
>>
>> Yes, but this does not mean those construction does not refer to
>> something real independently of us, and this is what I assume for
>> comp
>
> I agree, as above that it is the whole point of our endeavours to say
> that the construction *refers* to something real. But I think perhaps
> that the something thus referenced is not best characterised as being
> real *independently* of us, but rather *constitutive* of us and our
> (most general) environment.
I agree with you, but this can be said among enlightened people who
understand the whole stuff.
Before the reasoning, you could be suspected to put the horse behind
the car.
With comp, numbers, or finite things like combinators etc. have
clearly a relation with us, but a priori it is simpler to state their
laws without referring to us.
A number is even if and only its square is even. This is a law about
numbers. Those are the type of truth which we have to state as not
depending on us <here and now>, even if it depends on us, or are us,
"there".
>
>
>> Even if the whole existence get annihilated, 17 would still be
>> prime.
>
> I understand that it is justifiable to take this as your point of
> departure and don't really wish to make an argumentative point out of
> it. Nonetheless, in passing, perhaps I have a more radical intuition
> of annihilation than you. One can waste a lot of breath speculating
> on 'nothing' because, strictly I guess, there can be nothing at all it
> can refer to.
This I do not understand. There are many nothing everywhere, and other
absence, and I am open that absolute nothingness could be conceivable,
a bit like theories having no models. It seems you just point here on
a difficult open question.
> I could demonstrate this, given infinite time, simply
> by flatly rejecting *any* survivor of such annihilation that you or
> anyone cared to propose, to the crack of doom. On this basis, even
> '17 is prime' is a goner.
I still don't see why or how you could do that, except by convincing
me that Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent.
>
>
>>> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised
>>> immemorially -
>>> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
>>> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we
>>> are
>>> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap', and it seems to me that
>>> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
>>> epistemology. Indeed, what conceivable strategy could raise these
>>> theoretical constructions - to which the OFP uniquely lends
>>> existence
>>> - to the ontological certainty of their host? Is there a coherent
>>> way
>>> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
>>> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
>>
>> It is the point of saying "yes" to the doctor. You don't say yes
>> because the new brain is a good modelisation of your brain, but
>> because you bet it will enact yourself completely, relatively to the
>> neighborhood.
>
> Yes indeed, this is my point. There is no way to *conceive* in
> advance what it would mean to *be* such an enactment (i.e. to be
> *sure*) so you can only bet that saying yes will not affect the state
> of the indexical OFP.
Yes, thanks to the "(i.e. to be *sure*). Yes. Of course we can
conceive in advance what it could mean to be such an enactement. It
would be like me or you but with souvenirs of going to the digital
hospital and coming back, or like using teleportation, and
communicating themselves at the speed of light in the neighborhood,
like those very words.
>
>
>> You may confuse the reality of number, and the reality of machine/
>> theories talking about those numbers. Numbers are not viewed as
>> theoretical construction. The theoretical construction are our
>> theories on the numbers. It simplifies things.
>
> I agree that this assumption simplifies things, and as you say it is
> one shared by all mathematicians. But again, in the final analysis,
> numbers can only be 'viewed' as ontologically real, not *known* to be.
> But this is true of any assumption whatever, and I freely concede
> your points about the simplicity of the assumptions in the case of
> comp.
Ah :)
>
>
>> All theories demands faith, but the faith needed for understanding
>> that 17 is prime is not comparable to the act of faith needed to say
>> yes to the doctor.
>
> Agreed.
>
>>> It's no use appealing to
>>> notions of 'what it's like to be a brain' - nor what it's like to
>>> be a
>>> COMP-quale - because we can never say that it is 'like anything to
>>> be'
>>> the stuff of epistemology.
>>
>> Assuming comp we can still say that it is like you feel right now.
>> Only zombie cannot understand, but if they are good zombie, they will
>> have no problem to fake that they understand.
>
> Yes, *assuming* comp. We cannot *know* what it is like to be a
> comp-quale, but we may have sufficient faith to bet that it's like
> 'what you feel right now'.
Yes. Actually this is even a problem for real practitioners of comp,
they may come to believe they know that comp is true, and then they
will be inconsistent. Comp entails the existence of sort of possible
future "delusion", it may already be a way to keep alive the past
delusion. There is a sort of paradox here a machine clever enough to
understand or bet on an artificial brain can understand the artificial
brain is not needed. The problem is that you don't need to understand
the implication of saying "yes doctor" for saying "yes" to the doctor.
A common problem with technologies, already related to their
duplicabilities.
>
>
>>> Hence we must see our theorising and
>>> observing - in physical, computational, or whatever terms - *in
>>> relation* to ontological certainty, not as constitutive of it.
>>
>> That's right.
>
> Hooray!
>
>> I thought this was obvious.
>
> You may have heard the following story. A professor of mathematics
> enters the lecture room with a sheaf of papers and writes a complex
> theorem on the blackboard. He turns to the students and says "ladies
> and gentlemen, this of course is obvious". He then shuffles his
> papers, looks at the board again and continues more doubtfully "at
> least, I think it is obvious". Then he stares fixedly at the board
> for ten minutes without speaking, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
> Finally, he rubs out the theorem and leaves the room. The students
> are nonplussed, but remain in their seats. Thirty minutes later, the
> professor re-enters the room, looking disheveled but happy. He writes
> exactly the same theorem on the blackboard with a flourish, turns to
> his audience and announces triumphantly "ladies and gentlemen, I was
> right - it IS obvious!"
I guess it was obvious, but not obviously obvious :)
Yes in math there is the obvious (that nobody understand)
Then there is what is obviously obvious (for those who still does not
understand).
And so forth.
Normally "obvious" means, assuming a non sadistic teacher:
- it follows in one step from the definition or from the last theorem.
Making it a very relative notion.
>
>
>>> Rather, they stand in some theoretical
>>> relation to RITSIAR, but strictly on the epistemological side of the
>>> explanatory gap. They are 'real as far as theory takes us', or if
>>> further jargon is unavoidable: RAFATTU.
>>
>> Well frankly this will depend of the first "T" of RAFATTU. It depends
>> of the theory.
>> With the comp theory, quarks, electrons, planet and galaxies are not
>> ontologically real.
>> With string theory, they may be real.
>
> Yes, real in the relative sense we have been discussing.
OK. And number are real in that sense, too.
Usually, even physicists, have less doubt about the existence of even
numbers than on the standard modal of elementary particles.
Actually I do disagree with this, and Peter Jones made good point
here. If you were true, UDA could be simplified a lot. Physicalism
does not prevent dualism form/matter at all, like immaterial software
and physical hardware. Physicalism can still explained the existence
of the many immaterial being like nations, countries, persons (being
fuzzy on the 1-3 distinction), games, music, etc.
But comp, pushed on its logical conclusion prevent physicalism to
explain the 1-person stable observations. We have to explain the
appearances of all observables protagonists from the relation between
numbers. There is a problem of vocabulary deciding if matter disappear
or not. It is easier to say that physicalism is shown inconsistent or
epistemologically empty. But this is not an entirely trivial
proposition to demonstrate; it is full of traps, and without QM, nor
Post or Turing, I would never have believed this, nor find the
argument. UDA needs the universal machine concept.
> Consequently, I agree that the
> reversal of ontological primacy you stipulate is necessary to save
> comp.
Comp doesn't let much choice: like biology got an evolutionary aspect,
physics got an evolutionary aspect in logic and arithmetic. Comp just
show that things are far more complex than physicalist, or even some
mathematicalist, tend to think.
Comp provides a relatively easy theory of mind (computer science, self-
reference logics and their intensional nuances) but present a big
problem : extracting the qubits from a relative dreaming property of
numbers.
>
>
> Your argument however seems to be based not on the physical
> implementation but the 'immaterial' computation to which it is
> postulated - per standard comp - to be equivalent. Is this right?
> (More on this below.)
This is unclear. UDA1-7 can be based on the physical implementation of
the devices presented in the protocol of the thought experiment. UDA-8
eliminates that assumption.
>
>
>>> necessarily requires
>>> *some* physical activity to transform inputs to outputs (e.g. in
>>> terms
>>> of logic gates). Step 8, however, seems to take a step beyond
>>> this by
>>> proposing that a running computation can take the form of (as
>>> opposed
>>> to merely being described by) a machine *state*: i.e. without the
>>> requirement of activity.
>>
>> No, activity is required. But activity is just a function from N to
>> set of states. The movie graph show that a machine cannot distinguish
>> physical activity from such an arithmetical activity. A computation
>> is
>> an infinite set of numbers such that there is a universal number
>> generating that sequence.
>
> When you say that "activity is just a function from N to set of
> states", you again seem to refer to 'immaterial activity'. It seems
> to me that what you are saying amounts to this:
>
> If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
> the running program, regardless of specific implementation,
Careful: the mind needs specific implementations, but below its
substitution level, all implementations acts simultaneously, from its
perspective (in case it decides to take a look below its level, he
should see this).
Once the reversal is done the word "physical" is reduced to something
very specific, which includes a (perhaps to high) first person
indeterminacy.
> that
> implements the function and hence the mind, then this is
> indistinguishable by the machine from it simply *being* the function
> and hence the mind.
The mind (the 1-mind, not the numbers) is distributed in the set of
all computations, you cannot really attach it in any single
computation, unless you have reasons to think it is correlated to your
own histories. Remember that at UDA-8 we abandon the physical
supervenience for a comp supervenience, which is hard to describe
without the minimum amount of math I was talking about.
I may insist that the 1-person, nor its consciousness, is never
attached to any thing which can be represented. Only its third person
vehicles are, and the person can make relative and local bets on those
vehices and their relative stabilities.
This is recover and made consistent by the nuance between the prover
Bp and the knower Bp & p (and the feeler, Bp & p & Dt); which by
construction are the same, yet they cannot know that.
> Standard comp is then seen to refute - or at
> least make irrelevant - its own basis in materiality. Is this right?
comp + physicalism is either contradictory or epistemologically
empty (person eliminativist).
The proof is constructive. It gives the place where you can studied
where the appearance of physics come from.
This will provide jobs for mathematicians of the next millenia.
>
>
>>> And in any
>>> case, in what way is step 8 intended to extend intuition beyond my
>>> own
>>> argument, which - as I have tried to show - also elicits the insight
>>> that the direct supervention of 'functional' relations on functions
>>> themselves - not on their arbitrarily-defined physical tokens - is
>>> central to the recovery of 'mind' from computation.
>>
>> See above.
>
> Have I succeeded in answering my own question?
I let you judge.
>
>
>> The discovery of the universal machine is the creative bomb which
>> makes comp possible and plausible. Universal machine, like computers
>> and brains, are not trivial mathematical object at all. To study comp
>> without computer science, is like doing cosmology without QM and GR.
>> Of course we can have the deepest intuition right, by experience, but
>> to make a sharble verifiable theory, I am afraid we cannot dismiss
>> some math ...
>
> Vous avez raison cher maitre, j'en suis sur.
You mean "Vous avez raison cher maître, j'en suis sûr."
Stickler in French is "pointilleux", which means literaly asking for
the correct accents!
I cannot wait for your questions on step 8 :)
Bruno
David Nyman
> But strictly speaking (I am also a stickler), the first person can
> never identify herself to *any* representation, she share this with
> the 0-person ONE, or the non differentiate (arithmetical) truth. The
> knower does not know who he is. Relatively to probable histories, he
> makes bets "all the time".
'personal' to some minimum but not-eliminable degree (0-personal in
your terminology). The first person inherits the "I" from the One:
this is essential to make sense of duplicability and teleportation.
>> Beyond this, that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* as it
>> appears, is in principle outside the scope of explanation itself.
>
> No! This is the "miracle" of comp. Machine cannot not discover the
> incommunicable part of their experience, but they can, assume of bet
> on comp, and justify that why it has to be so. That is AUDA. The gap
> is justified from inside. It is a consequence from the fact that
> machine can prove their own incompleteness theorems, and even study
> the geometry of their ignorance.
> The ultimate gap remains unavoidable,
> so you are right saying that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP
> is outside the scope of the explanation, but that fact, is an "easy"
> theorem on and by the machine which introspect herself.
> To sum up:
> The unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* beyond the scope of the
> explanation-comp theory. But that very fact *is* in the scope of the
> theory.
>>>> IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
>>>> theoretical constructions.
>>>
>>> Yes, but this does not mean those construction does not refer to
>>> something real independently of us, and this is what I assume for
>>> comp
>>
>> I agree, as above that it is the whole point of our endeavours to say
>> that the construction *refers* to something real. But I think perhaps
>> that the something thus referenced is not best characterised as being
>> real *independently* of us, but rather *constitutive* of us and our
>> (most general) environment.
>
> I agree with you, but this can be said among enlightened people who
> understand the whole stuff.
> Before the reasoning, you could be suspected to put the horse behind
> the car.
phrase. I am doing this, would you say?
> With comp, numbers, or finite things like combinators etc. have
> clearly a relation with us, but a priori it is simpler to state their
> laws without referring to us.
> A number is even if and only its square is even. This is a law about
> numbers. Those are the type of truth which we have to state as not
> depending on us <here and now>, even if it depends on us, or are us,
> "there".
>>> Even if the whole existence get annihilated, 17 would still be
>>> prime.
>>
>> I understand that it is justifiable to take this as your point of
>> departure and don't really wish to make an argumentative point out of
>> it. Nonetheless, in passing, perhaps I have a more radical intuition
>> of annihilation than you. One can waste a lot of breath speculating
>> on 'nothing' because, strictly I guess, there can be nothing at all it
>> can refer to.
>
> This I do not understand. There are many nothing everywhere, and other
> absence, and I am open that absolute nothingness could be conceivable,
> a bit like theories having no models. It seems you just point here on
> a difficult open question.
>> I could demonstrate this, given infinite time, simply
>> by flatly rejecting *any* survivor of such annihilation that you or
>> anyone cared to propose, to the crack of doom. On this basis, even
>> '17 is prime' is a goner.
>
> I still don't see why or how you could do that, except by convincing
> me that Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent.
our discussion here.
>> Ah, but my argument attempts to distinguish a computation (immaterial
>> dynamic object) and an implementation of a computation (material
>> dynamic process) - again, per standard physical theory - as a
>> refutation of standard comp *in these strictly physical terms*. My
>> point is, that per physicalism, a computation must be implemented in
>> some physical mechanism in order to have any real - i.e. physical -
>> effects (at least this was true the last time I did any programming).
>> Hence the existence of 'immaterial objects' in this case is simply
>> irrelevant to any effects that would be strictly justifiable as
>> ontologically real, per physicalism.
>
> Actually I do disagree with this, and Peter Jones made good point
> here. If you were true, UDA could be simplified a lot. Physicalism
> does not prevent dualism form/matter at all, like immaterial software
> and physical hardware. Physicalism can still explained the existence
> of the many immaterial being like nations, countries, persons (being
> fuzzy on the 1-3 distinction), games, music, etc.
will have to insist a little more. There are two absolutely crucial
differences IMO between the examples you cite above (which Peter also
appeals to) and computation - per strict physicalism - conceived as
*constitutive* of the OFP (as contrasted with 3-description):
1) All of your examples are in principle hierarchically reducible (per
physicalism) to *specific* nameable physical entities and relations,
and any change in these specifications produces an identifiable change
in the collective entity (e.g. different notes = different music).
One can't simply say e.g. that 'nation' is invariant in the face of
different collections of persons, since any such change is
unquestionably material to the persons actually constitutive of the
nation - and this is the point (i.e. it's still different notes =
different music).
2) None of your examples (and indeed NO immaterial entity other than
computation) is postulated to evoke a novel ontological category such
as the OFP i.e. a 'nation' isn't something with an ontology distinct -
and in a different category - from that of the persons who constitute
it.
Computationalism (i.e. when assumed to supervene on the activity of an
ontologically privileged physical substrate) violates both of the
above criteria: it is *invariant* (i.e. different notes = same music)
under inumerable different physical reductions (i.e. it is defined
functionally); and yet any such state of affairs (again excluding mere
3-descriptions) is asserted somehow to evoke an *identical* - and
moreover completely *novel* - ontological category.
Consequently IMO the foregoing criteria make the computational theory
of mind a mere dogma under the criterion of strict physicalism,
although the restrictiveness of this criterion usually passes
unrecognised precisely in consequence of this dogmatic blindness.
Indeed it is precisely the contradiction implicit in the conjunction
of strict physicalism with the computational theory of mind that step
8 seeks to expose and correct. The reversal of number and physics, by
contrast, privileges as efficacious the precise number relations upon
which computational invariance depends. In so doing it justifies comp
as an ontological category, and thereby eludes this criticism.
BTW, when you refer to "dualism form/matter" I assume you aren't
appealling to mind-matter dualism in any literal sense, although this
is IMO actually implied by any (non-3-description) computational
theory of mind that uniquely privileges physical entities and
relations as ontologically efficacious.
I'd like to dispose of this issue definitively, if possible. Either
I'm wrong in some point of the analysis (which I would be happy to
concede if clearly demonstrated), or something is being missed here.
> But comp, pushed on its logical conclusion prevent physicalism to
> explain the 1-person stable observations. We have to explain the
> appearances of all observables protagonists from the relation between
> numbers. There is a problem of vocabulary deciding if matter disappear
> or not. It is easier to say that physicalism is shown inconsistent or
> epistemologically empty. But this is not an entirely trivial
> proposition to demonstrate; it is full of traps, and without QM, nor
> Post or Turing, I would never have believed this, nor find the
> argument. UDA needs the universal machine concept.
> the devices presented in the protocol of the thought experiment. UDA-8
> eliminates that assumption.
ontologically-primary physicalism? Does this assume in this case that
UDA1-7 could still be coherent per *some* theory of mind, but *not*
under the assumption that "I am a machine", as step 8 seeks to
demonstrate?
>> When you say that "activity is just a function from N to set of
>> states", you again seem to refer to 'immaterial activity'. It seems
>> to me that what you are saying amounts to this:
>>
>> If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
>> the running program, regardless of specific implementation,
>
> Careful: the mind needs specific implementations, but below its
> substitution level, all implementations acts simultaneously, from its
> perspective (in case it decides to take a look below its level, he
> should see this).
>
> Once the reversal is done the word "physical" is reduced to something
> very specific, which includes a (perhaps to high) first person
> indeterminacy.
referring to the fact that because a computation is deemed invariant
in the face of different valid implementations its implicit 'ontology'
is immaterial as contrasted with an assumption of a basically material
ontology.
>> that
>> implements the function and hence the mind, then this is
>> indistinguishable by the machine from it simply *being* the function
>> and hence the mind.
>
> The mind (the 1-mind, not the numbers) is distributed in the set of
> all computations, you cannot really attach it in any single
> computation, unless you have reasons to think it is correlated to your
> own histories. Remember that at UDA-8 we abandon the physical
> supervenience for a comp supervenience, which is hard to describe
> without the minimum amount of math I was talking about.
> I may insist that the 1-person, nor its consciousness, is never
> attached to any thing which can be represented. Only its third person
> vehicles are, and the person can make relative and local bets on those
> vehices and their relative stabilities.
>
> This is recover and made consistent by the nuance between the prover
> Bp and the knower Bp & p (and the feeler, Bp & p & Dt); which by
> construction are the same, yet they cannot know that.
If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
implements the function, then this is indistinguishable by the machine
from it simply *being* the (equally immaterial) function. Standard
basis in materiality.
>> Have I succeeded in answering my own question?
>
> I let you judge.
>> Vous avez raison cher maitre, j'en suis sur.
>
> You mean "Vous avez raison cher maître, j'en suis sûr."
> Stickler in French is "pointilleux", which means literaly asking for
> the correct accents!
> I cannot wait for your questions on step 8 :)
David
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
Hi David,
>>
>> I cannot wait for your questions on step 8 :)
>
> I cannot wait for your answers :-)
Asap. I am busy. Too much things to do. Hope I will find some
windows ...
Best,
Bruno
David Nyman
> Asap. I am busy. Too much things to do. Hope I will find some
> windows ...
David
>
> Best,
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
On 11 Aug 2009, at 01:47, David Nyman wrote:
>
> 2009/8/10 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
>> But strictly speaking (I am also a stickler), the first person can
>> never identify herself to *any* representation, she share this with
>> the 0-person ONE, or the non differentiate (arithmetical) truth. The
>> knower does not know who he is. Relatively to probable histories, he
>> makes bets "all the time".
>
> Yes, I agree with this. This is why I've always said that the One is
> 'personal' to some minimum but not-eliminable degree (0-personal in
> your terminology). The first person inherits the "I" from the One:
> this is essential to make sense of duplicability and teleportation.
You know, in the "machine theology", that is, in the interview of the
Löbian machine (AUDA), the role of the ONE is aptly done by the notion
of truth, as conceived in mathematical logic, and which is rather
clear about arithmetical sentences. It is important to mention Tarski
theorem, and to remember that no correct machine can ever even name
its own truth predicate, so that such a ONE satisfy already a first
"axiom" of Plotinus, which is that the ONE has no name.
You may be right attributing a personhood to "truth", like Plotinus
could be right in attributing a will. I don't know. What is clearer is
that any singular first person (which is never really singular
actually) inherited its soul from "the universal soul" which is the
knower, and the one defined by Bp & p. But the "p" of "Bp & p" is
inherit from the ONE (truth), like Bp is inherit
is inherit from Intellect. This makes consistent many assertion by
Plotinus, and is basically what the machine can say and/or infer from
its "self-searching".
But we are really in AUDA here, and I feel like using authoritative
argument, at this stage.
>
>
>>> Beyond this, that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* as
>>> it
>>> appears, is in principle outside the scope of explanation itself.
>>
>> No! This is the "miracle" of comp. Machine cannot not discover the
>> incommunicable part of their experience, but they can, assume of bet
>> on comp, and justify that why it has to be so. That is AUDA. The gap
>> is justified from inside. It is a consequence from the fact that
>> machine can prove their own incompleteness theorems, and even study
>> the geometry of their ignorance.
>
> Apparently we don't agree :-(
>
>> The ultimate gap remains unavoidable,
>> so you are right saying that the unique qualitative nature of the OFP
>> is outside the scope of the explanation, but that fact, is an "easy"
>> theorem on and by the machine which introspect herself.
>> To sum up:
>> The unique qualitative nature of the OFP *is* beyond the scope of the
>> explanation-comp theory. But that very fact *is* in the scope of the
>> theory.
>
> Apparently we DO agree :-)
OK.
>
>
>>>>> IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
>>>>> theoretical constructions.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but this does not mean those construction does not refer to
>>>> something real independently of us, and this is what I assume for
>>>> comp
>>>
>>> I agree, as above that it is the whole point of our endeavours to
>>> say
>>> that the construction *refers* to something real. But I think
>>> perhaps
>>> that the something thus referenced is not best characterised as
>>> being
>>> real *independently* of us, but rather *constitutive* of us and our
>>> (most general) environment.
>>
>> I agree with you, but this can be said among enlightened people who
>> understand the whole stuff.
>> Before the reasoning, you could be suspected to put the horse behind
>> the car.
>
> Or "put the horse before the cart", in our delightfully archaic
> phrase. I am doing this, would you say?
>
>> With comp, numbers, or finite things like combinators etc. have
>> clearly a relation with us, but a priori it is simpler to state their
>> laws without referring to us.
>
> I agree that simpler is better as long as we are clear on what is
> being assumed.
The difficulty of the UDA could come from that at step 0, we somehow
ask a question, independently of the ontology.
You can say "yes" to the doctor without having any definite opinion
about the existence of primitive matter or not. You have to believe in
some amount of consensual reality (which people do when sending a mail
to a mailing list, usually).
The reasoning leads then to an extraction of a "theory of everything".
That theory does not postulate matter, but explain, actually by
postulating number + addition and multiplication, why universal
machine exists and observe eventually matter, and why primitive matter
cannot interfere with it (so that by Occam, it is as useless as ether
and phlogiston).
Well this concern many more things than just computationalism, like
(different restaurant, same price). here are many immaterial pattern
in invariant in nature, even waves in general can be see in this way
when you add a dynamic. Quantum field makes particles already
immaterial in that sense I would say. The only newness in
computationalism is the presume digitalness. But OK.
>
> under inumerable different physical reductions (i.e. it is defined
> functionally); and yet any such state of affairs (again excluding mere
> 3-descriptions) is asserted somehow to evoke an *identical* - and
> moreover completely *novel* - ontological category.
I am not sure I follow this. Once you say yes to the doctor, you
"know" that you are a number which moves itself, of you course you
know just that you are a person who bet on its survival for digital
annihilation-reconstitution. But this is already true for books and
electronic mailings. I am not sure what is new. WE just get numerical,
like say a symphony by Sibelius available from a numerical CD.
>
>
> Consequently IMO the foregoing criteria make the computational theory
> of mind a mere dogma under the criterion of strict physicalism,
> although the restrictiveness of this criterion usually passes
> unrecognised precisely in consequence of this dogmatic blindness.
?
>
> Indeed it is precisely the contradiction implicit in the conjunction
> of strict physicalism with the computational theory of mind that step
> 8 seeks to expose and correct.
Yes. The epistemological contradiction.
> The reversal of number and physics, by
> contrast, privileges as efficacious the precise number relations upon
> which computational invariance depends. In so doing it justifies comp
> as an ontological category, and thereby eludes this criticism.
It justifies there is no sense to add any form of existence beyond
arithmetical existence. It makes arithmetic the theory of everything,
and it explains what is matter from the point of view of the universal
numbers.
Comp does not introduce any new ontology. It uses the fact that
computer science is embedded in "truth". It exploits the necessary gap
between computer science and computer's computer science. The gap
contains what universal machine can hope and fear.
>
>
> BTW, when you refer to "dualism form/matter" I assume you aren't
> appealling to mind-matter dualism in any literal sense,
I was, locally, in defense of physicalism against your argument. Once
the implication of comp is understood, this takes another sense, of
course.
> although this
> is IMO actually implied by any (non-3-description) computational
> theory of mind that uniquely privileges physical entities and
> relations as ontologically efficacious.
Yes. It is even the reason why materialist does not succeed to solve
the mind-body problem. They introduce a notion of matter which
eventually can be shown to be nonsensical. With comp, matter can still
explains the mind (which explains why comp is the favorite theory of
the atheist and the materialist), the problem is that, with comp,
matter can no more explain matter, or more precisely: the postulation
of matter acn no more justifies the appearance of matter in the mind
of any universal machine. Physics become ultimately the study of the
border of the ignorance of the universal person. This can be studied
with math, and up to now, it seems to work.
>
>
> I'd like to dispose of this issue definitively, if possible. Either
> I'm wrong in some point of the analysis (which I would be happy to
> concede if clearly demonstrated), or something is being missed here.
>
>> But comp, pushed on its logical conclusion prevent physicalism to
>> explain the 1-person stable observations. We have to explain the
>> appearances of all observables protagonists from the relation between
>> numbers. There is a problem of vocabulary deciding if matter
>> disappear
>> or not. It is easier to say that physicalism is shown inconsistent or
>> epistemologically empty. But this is not an entirely trivial
>> proposition to demonstrate; it is full of traps, and without QM, nor
>> Post or Turing, I would never have believed this, nor find the
>> argument. UDA needs the universal machine concept.
>
>> UDA1-7 can be based on the physical implementation of
>> the devices presented in the protocol of the thought experiment.
>> UDA-8
>> eliminates that assumption.
>
> When you say "physical implementation" here, do you mean in terms of
> ontologically-primary physicalism?
As you want. The seven first step work with comp, or with comp +
physicalism. It is really like you prefer.
The assumption of physicalism is almost never use in the practice of
science. It is just in the background.
The idea that physicalism is part of the science of today is an
oversimplification. It belongs to the religious background more or
less inherit from years of oversimplification of Aristotle Platonism.
A real scientist does just not commit itself ontologically at all,
except for the local referents of the terms appearing in its theory.
> Does this assume in this case that
> UDA1-7 could still be coherent per *some* theory of mind, but *not*
> under the assumption that "I am a machine", as step 8 seeks to
> demonstrate?
You may clarify. UDA1-7 needs "I am a machine", so I have no idea of
what could be UDA1-7 without "I am a machine".
UDA1-7 is UDA0-7 with UDA-0 = "I am a machine" (material or not, it
does change anything).
UDA-8, which is really independent, just shows that once we attach the
mind to a computation, we cannot attach the mind to the physical
activity incarnating that computation. UDA1-7 do a sort of contrary:
if we attach a physical activity to a mind, then the mind itself can
attach itself only to an infinity of (primarily physical) computation.
With both, you can, well, you must (to remain epistemologically
coherent) drop "primarily physical".
>
>
>>> When you say that "activity is just a function from N to set of
>>> states", you again seem to refer to 'immaterial activity'. It seems
>>> to me that what you are saying amounts to this:
>>>
>>> If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
>>> the running program, regardless of specific implementation,
>>
>> Careful: the mind needs specific implementations, but below its
>> substitution level, all implementations acts simultaneously, from its
>> perspective (in case it decides to take a look below its level, he
>> should see this).
>>
>> Once the reversal is done the word "physical" is reduced to something
>> very specific, which includes a (perhaps to high) first person
>> indeterminacy.
>
> Yes, I know, but at this point (i.e. before the reversal) I was
> referring to the fact that because a computation is deemed invariant
> in the face of different valid implementations its implicit 'ontology'
> is immaterial as contrasted with an assumption of a basically material
> ontology.
OK.
>
>
>>> that
>>> implements the function and hence the mind, then this is
>>> indistinguishable by the machine from it simply *being* the function
>>> and hence the mind.
>>
>> The mind (the 1-mind, not the numbers) is distributed in the set of
>> all computations, you cannot really attach it in any single
>> computation, unless you have reasons to think it is correlated to
>> your
>> own histories. Remember that at UDA-8 we abandon the physical
>> supervenience for a comp supervenience, which is hard to describe
>> without the minimum amount of math I was talking about.
>> I may insist that the 1-person, nor its consciousness, is never
>> attached to any thing which can be represented. Only its third person
>> vehicles are, and the person can make relative and local bets on
>> those
>> vehices and their relative stabilities.
>>
>> This is recover and made consistent by the nuance between the prover
>> Bp and the knower Bp & p (and the feeler, Bp & p & Dt); which by
>> construction are the same, yet they cannot know that.
>
> Yes, forget 'mind', it's inessential to the argument here. How about:
>
> If it is the case that, per comp, it is the 'immaterial' activity of
> the running program, invariantly under different implementations,
This is ambiguous. But frankly, I think I will be able to say much
more when the seventh step will be completed.
The notion of implementation, like computation are typical
mathematical notion, completely neutral about the existence of a
physical world, or what what would be the ultimate implementation.
Comp does not prevent relative implementations to play some key role,
like when we share computational histories.
> that
> implements the function,
"we" are more program or number than function, and our implementations
count. Indeed, from the first person point of view, physical
appearance is really a sum on all implementations.
> then this is indistinguishable by the machine
> from it simply *being* the (equally immaterial) function.
I can agree.
> Standard
> comp is then seen to refute - or at least make irrelevant - its own
> basis in materiality.
>
> Is this acceptable?
I would say it is much more than making the material basis irrelevant,
it makes it deductible. It explains exactly how the physical laws
emerge, and unlike physics, it explains exactly why it can hurt.
Matter remains relevant, but it is no more a primitive thing.
Comp gives a new physics. And this makes comp empirically testable.
Just extract physics from comp, and compare to what we can observe. At
first sight the comp physics seems to be completely exuberant, but
computer science shows that its exuberance is already very quantum
like. So it is too early to say if comp is refuted or not.
I provide a practical tool to measure our degree of non
computationalism (but this statement is very weak, because, as I said,
super-machines and other "gods" have the same physics. Only *very*
near the ONE, physics begin to change, apparently.
Bruno
David Nyman
Bruno, thanks for your detailed responses which I will peruse closely.
Meanwhile, I finally managed to locate on FOR an apparently coherent
summary of the MGA (which I understand to be the essence of UDA-8).
Here is my understanding of it:
The MGA presents the case of a TM with a prepared tape that specifies
a computation deemed - per comp - to instantiate a specific phenomenal
conscious sequence. Since a TM is invariant to the details of
physical implementation, we can set out to produce a maximally
reduced, or 'lazy', version of this particular machine, called Olympia
(perhaps evoked as reclining languorously on her chaise longue).
Given the finite length and specific execution paths of the
computation, we can determine the precise sequence of tape location
states that it entails. Knowing this, we can arrange a simple
mechanism to produce precisely these states by turning the
corresponding tape locations on or off in a sequential left-to-right
process. We can further arrange for the machine to be able to produce
the states required for each non-invoked path by means of similar
additional pre-arranged mechanisms, even though these would not in
fact be activated by the computation as specified. In this way we can
ensure that both actual and counterfactual conditions could be dealt
with by the simplest possible combination of minimised and idle
mechanisms.
If I've got this more or less right, the burden of the MGA seems to be
that a physical TM instantiating a specific computation deemed to
evoke a conscious state could have its activity reduced to such a
minimal level that it is no longer plausible that consciousness could
supervene on it. Whilst this does indeed strike one as intuitively
very strong, as long as there continues to be activity at *any* level
a diehard material-computationalist could still claim that it wasn't a
final knockdown blow. I see now that - as you remarked - my own
argument includes a first approximation of this, since my reference to
the arbitrarily many implementations of the computation would of
course include Olympia.
But the burden of my argument is in fact different, since - setting
Olympia aside - it questions the very plausibility of what is assumed
by comp - i.e. that a conscious state fixed in the *same* state by
computational specification could be capable of invariance in the face
of entirely *different* physical activities, if it is deemed to be
*caused* by these activities. This idea in fact appeals
simultaneously to two separate causal principles - i.e. computational
and physical. Hence it strikes one as inherently a sort of
non-interactive dualism, as implied by the computation's - and hence
the conscious state's - insensitivity to changes in physical activity.
The solution then seems obviously to be to throw one or other of these
supposed causal principles out, i.e.:
1) either it is the case that consciousness simply supervenes on
particular physical activities whose computational status is
irrelevant;
2) or it is the case that consciousness supervenes on computation
itself independent of physical activity (the conclusion that you in
fact draw from the MGA).
In the second case - i.e. the reversal of number and matter - I agree
that you can save any role for primitive matter only at the cost of
rendering it dualistically epiphenomenal in the sense sometimes
attributed (IMO incoherently) to consciousness in materialist
accounts.
As to UDA1-7, I think I see now that of course you assume mechanism,
but that you reserve the argument for number-matter reversal until
UDA-8. Perhaps this order might better be reversed?
David
Bruno Marchal
... but then comp is false. OK? And thus comp implies "2".
>
> 2) or it is the case that consciousness supervenes on computation
> itself independent of physical activity (the conclusion that you in
> fact draw from the MGA).
>
> In the second case - i.e. the reversal of number and matter - I agree
> that you can save any role for primitive matter only at the cost of
> rendering it dualistically epiphenomenal in the sense sometimes
> attributed (IMO incoherently) to consciousness in materialist
> accounts.
But then by UDA1-7, not only "stuffy matter" would be epiphenomenal,
but it would have absolutely no relationship with any observation,
making it entirely spurious.
>
>
> As to UDA1-7, I think I see now that of course you assume mechanism,
> but that you reserve the argument for number-matter reversal until
> UDA-8. Perhaps this order might better be reversed?
Like in my theses? May be. MGA is far more subtle than UDA1-7, that is
why I have eventually decide to put it at the end.
Bruno
Note that what you describe here as MGA is Maudlin's later and
different argument. MGA is also immune to an objection made by
Russell, which is that QM does "realize" the couterfactuals. Maudlin's
argument can be saved from this with a version where Olympia simulates
classicaly the quantum evolution of the brain. So MGA is more simple
and direct. Anyway, the conclusions are the same, comp forces the
abandon of the physical supervenience thesis. So comp forces to
restrict the supervenience thesis on the mathematical computations
(computationalist supervenience).
David Nyman
>> The solution then seems obviously to be to throw one or other of these
>> supposed causal principles out, i.e.:
>>
>> 1) either it is the case that consciousness simply supervenes on
>> particular physical activities whose computational status is
>> irrelevant;
>
> ... but then comp is false. OK? And thus comp implies "2".
1) is what I always believed, for the reasons I've given, but I hadn't
taken 2) to be a serious possibility. Now I'm prepared to entertain
computational supervenience, because I'm intrigued by where it might
lead us. It's genuinely illuminating.
>> 2) or it is the case that consciousness supervenes on computation
>> itself independent of physical activity (the conclusion that you in
>> fact draw from the MGA).
>>
>> In the second case - i.e. the reversal of number and matter - I agree
>> that you can save any role for primitive matter only at the cost of
>> rendering it dualistically epiphenomenal in the sense sometimes
>> attributed (IMO incoherently) to consciousness in materialist
>> accounts.
>
> But then by UDA1-7, not only "stuffy matter" would be epiphenomenal,
> but it would have absolutely no relationship with any observation,
> making it entirely spurious.
distinguishable.
> Note that what you describe here as MGA is Maudlin's later and
> different argument. MGA is also immune to an objection made by
> Russell, which is that QM does "realize" the couterfactuals. Maudlin's
> argument can be saved from this with a version where Olympia simulates
> classicaly the quantum evolution of the brain. So MGA is more simple
> and direct. Anyway, the conclusions are the same, comp forces the
> abandon of the physical supervenience thesis. So comp forces to
> restrict the supervenience thesis on the mathematical computations
> (computationalist supervenience).
contained within my own version by default. Intuition is of course
somewhat personal, but the form of the argument against physical
supervenience I presented - which I think first arose from the mix of
fascination and horror produced by reading Hofstadter, Dennett et al -
has always seemed obvious to me, and the defences against it just
wrong-headed. The belief in comp + physical supervenience strikes me
as the most arbitrary and incoherent form of dualism out there, and
why its proponents just don't get this is a complete mystery, as far
as I'm concerned. But then life is full of mystery. Fortunately :-)
David
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
On 12 Aug 2009, at 16:38, David Nyman wrote:
>
> 2009/8/12 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
>>> The solution then seems obviously to be to throw one or other of
>>> these
>>> supposed causal principles out, i.e.:
>>>
>>> 1) either it is the case that consciousness simply supervenes on
>>> particular physical activities whose computational status is
>>> irrelevant;
>>
>> ... but then comp is false. OK? And thus comp implies "2".
>
> Yes, absolutely Definitely. No question.
>
> 1) is what I always believed, for the reasons I've given, but I hadn't
> taken 2) to be a serious possibility. Now I'm prepared to entertain
> computational supervenience, because I'm intrigued by where it might
> lead us. It's genuinely illuminating.
I think it is.
But, with Church thesis, it is even more so. We get the class of
computable functions, which appears to be close for the most
transcendental operation in the whole of mathematics, diagonalization.
It is a arguably a "bit" more than "causally closed". And enough
equivalence theorems makes computational supervenience a precise
mathematical phenomenon.
The seventh step of UDA, and indeed the Universal dovetailing itself,
makes sense only through the assumed existence of universal machines.
(Church thesis asserts that Lambda Calculus, Lisp, fortran, c++, game
of life, quantum topology, are name of such universal machine/word/
number).
>
>
>>> 2) or it is the case that consciousness supervenes on computation
>>> itself independent of physical activity (the conclusion that you in
>>> fact draw from the MGA).
>>>
>>> In the second case - i.e. the reversal of number and matter - I
>>> agree
>>> that you can save any role for primitive matter only at the cost of
>>> rendering it dualistically epiphenomenal in the sense sometimes
>>> attributed (IMO incoherently) to consciousness in materialist
>>> accounts.
>>
>> But then by UDA1-7, not only "stuffy matter" would be epiphenomenal,
>> but it would have absolutely no relationship with any observation,
>> making it entirely spurious.
>
> Agreed. In any case, for me, epiphenomenal and spurious are hardly
> distinguishable.
I will not stickle on that point :)
Can we say that?
>
>
>> Note that what you describe here as MGA is Maudlin's later and
>> different argument. MGA is also immune to an objection made by
>> Russell, which is that QM does "realize" the couterfactuals.
>> Maudlin's
>> argument can be saved from this with a version where Olympia
>> simulates
>> classicaly the quantum evolution of the brain. So MGA is more simple
>> and direct. Anyway, the conclusions are the same, comp forces the
>> abandon of the physical supervenience thesis. So comp forces to
>> restrict the supervenience thesis on the mathematical computations
>> (computationalist supervenience).
>
> Yes, the argument is an explicit reductio ad absurdum, which is
> contained within my own version by default. Intuition is of course
> somewhat personal, but the form of the argument against physical
> supervenience I presented - which I think first arose from the mix of
> fascination and horror produced by reading Hofstadter, Dennett et al -
> has always seemed obvious to me, and the defences against it just
> wrong-headed. The belief in comp + physical supervenience strikes me
> as the most arbitrary and incoherent form of dualism out there, and
> why its proponents just don't get this is a complete mystery, as far
> as I'm concerned. But then life is full of mystery. Fortunately :-)
The problem is that many materialists use "physicalist comp" to hide,
somehow, the mind body problem. We would be "mere machine."
But if we are "mere digital machine", and if we don't eliminate
consciousness and person, we have to justify the apparent
computability of the sharable neighborhood from a sum on the whole
universal dovetailing, which is a tiny (Sigma_1) part of arithmetic.
We live in the "natural" matrix that you get with any universal
system, be it the game of life or numbers with succession, addition
and multiplication. The matrix is infinite, and, by first person
indeterminacy, "we" are dense on its border (like the mandelbrot set).
It remains to explain why, from inside, that infinite sum takes the
shape of a quantum sum. The quantum sum does eliminate the white
rabbits (WR), but with comp we have to show why in appearance the
quantum WR-hunters win on all possible comp WR-hunters.
The second "crazy", but """"obvious"""", fact: is that we can already
have a chat with the universal machine, on that question. AUDA. But
alas, this is obvious only through an understanding of some theorems:
Gödel, Löb, Solovay and some others, which themselves requires some
knowledge in mathematical logic. Comp, as it should be expected, gives
a prominent role to computer science, logic and mathematics. And
question concerning "I" and selves gives a prominent role to the
mathematical theory of self-reference.
Now, is the ONE a person? I still don't know if that make sense (in
"machine's theology"). Who knows?
David Nyman
> I will not stickle on that point :)
>
> Can we say that?
> Now, is the ONE a person? I still don't know if that make sense (in
> "machine's theology"). Who knows?
D ;-)
>
> Bruno
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
1Z
> 2009/8/7 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>:
>
>
> >>>> If it isn;t RITSIAR, it cannot be generating me. Mathematical
> >>>> proofs only prove mathematical "existence", not onltolgical
> >>>> existence. For a non-Platonist , 23 "exists" mathematically,
> >>>> but is not RITSIAR. The same goes for the UD
>
> >>> Is an atom RITSIAR? Is a quark RITSIAR?
>
> >> If current physics is correct.
>
> > Then it is not "RITSIAR" in the sense of the discussion with David.
> > Real in the sense that "I" am real. is ambiguous.
> > Either the "I" refers to my first person, and then I have ontological
> > certainty.
> > As I said on FOR, I can conceive that I wake up and realize that
> > quark, planet, galaxies and even my body were not real. I cannot
> > conceive that I wake up and realize that my consciousness is not real.
> > Ontological first person does not need an "IF this or that theory is
> > correct".
> > You are reifying theoretical constructions.
>
> I think need to take a hard line on RITSIAR. I feel that the key lies
> physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the
> theoretical constructions.
That doesn't follow at all. A theoretical construct can have a real
referent. eg, if the theory of quarks is true , quarks exist. What
else
would "theory X is true" mean?
> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap',
> and it seems to me that
> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
> epistemology.
but is doesn't sound like Levine's one.
>Indeed, what conceivable strategy could raise these
> theoretical constructions - to which the OFP uniquely lends existence
> - to the ontological certainty of their host?
so "onotlogical" can't bve qualifying "certainty". Do you mean
something like "the one certain fact about ontology/existence"?
Beyond that, you have raised a fake problem. Realism doesn;t need the
existence of a non-mental world to be a certainty, it just needs
it to be more plausible than the alternatives.
> Is there a coherent way
> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
a category error. What the realist would say is that she can conceive
of theoretical statements havign real referents.
> There is something
> quintessential that stubbornly eludes capture, because epistemological
> access never tells us what an entity *is* - only what can be
> ascertained of its 'externalised' properties.
how do you know there is one?
>And lest we be tempted
> to accept the sum of these properties as exhausting 'existence', we
> need only turn to the self-evident corrective of the OFP.
> So the gap must remain, and I think that now I see why Bruno appeals
> simply to the 'ordinary' mathematical sense of existence - because
> COMP, under this analysis, is an epistemological schema, and its
> entities are theoretical constructions.
> Hence the question of jumping
> the ontological gap is in abeyance, perhaps permanently, but in any
> It's no use appealing to
> notions of 'what it's like to be a brain' - nor what it's like to be a
> COMP-quale - because we can never say that it is 'like anything to be'
> observation, but at least keeps us honest.
>
> The unavoidable consequence of the foregoing is that atoms, quarks and
> numbers cannot be RITSIAR.
that they are not necessarily RITSIAR. Which is straightforwardly
given
by the observation that theories are less than certain. All you have
writen
boils down to the fallacy that "no necessarily true" implies
"necessarily untrue"
On 10 Aug, 04:50, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/6 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com>:
> > You're doing it again. You are assuming that because the mental
> > is epistemically certain, it is ipso facto ontologically basic. But
> > that
> > doesn't follow at all. I have evidence that the physical is basic --
> > the whole
> > of science. You have no evidence that the mental is basic because the
> > mental
> > does not reveal its own ontological nature. All you have is the
> > **epistemic*** claim
> > that the mental definitely exists, in some sense.
>
> The unique feature of consciousness is not - as you claim - its
> 'epistemic' certainty, but its status as what is *ontologically
> certain*.
>To regard consciousness itself (or in Bruno's terms the
> ontological first person) as merely the object of 'knowledge' is to
> commit the fallacy of taking 'observation' in a naively literal sense:
> i.e. to require there to be an 'observer'. But this, self-evidently,
> can only lead to infinite regress. Consequently, consciousness does
> not consist in the 'observation' of epistemic entities, but in their
> instantiation.
is therefore ontological.
> Consciousness is, as it were, the 'ontology of
> epistemology'. When you say that the physical is basic, you are
> yourself mistaking the epistemological for the ontological.
> As to
> your evidence consisting in 'the whole of science', since the nature
> and significance of this evidence is precisely what is in question, it
> is inadequate merely to make such appeals to authority.
false bcause they are not necessarily true.
>It would be
> more helpful if you would address these arguments in their own terms,
> rather than begging various questions by appeal to 'pre-established
> fact', or tilting at straw men of your own making.
invocations
of "ontological" and "epistemological" read like nonsese to me.
> >> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> >> > mental
> >> > from the physical
>
> >> On the contrary, I've said it repeatedly.
>
> > Please say it again.
>
> The problem is this: in the face of one indubitable ontology - that
> exemplified in consciousness - you try get physically-basic ontology
> for free.
that I am not claiming cvertainty for it.
And I don't think I get any ontology from consciousness. I'll grant
that it is indubitable that it exists, but that tells me nothing
about *what* it is. A brute fact is not an ontology.
>In other words, you simply assume that if we take ourselves
> to 'be' - what? - say, neural activity in 'computational' - or some
> yet-to-be-established - guise, then - pouf! - the ontological first
> person is conjured from mere description.
not
the map.
> But there is no sense in
> which one can simply 'be' an epistemic 'object' - a theoretical
> construction.
*can* be correct, one *can* be the referent of a theoretical
description, and the referent of a theoretical construction, if it
has one, is
a real thing.
>*This* is the explanatory gap,
commiting a basica fallacy -- saying that because the map is not
itself real, it cannot *represetn* a real territory.
>?and you are trying to
> precisely this bit of magic that is in question. And in my view the
> right place to start questioning is the direction of inference, as
> I've - repeatedly - said.
>
> > You still haven't said what the objection is to saying that
> > the mental emerges from the physical.
>
> I'm saying that all that can 'emerge' from one class of description is
> another class of description.
> If that exhausts your idea of the
> 'mental' I say you are an eliminativist. But you say you're not.
> What then?
specific
the the nature of the mental and the nature of phsycial
*descriptions*. However
that does not mean that it is impossible for the mental territory to
emrge
from the physical territory. There are two things here, the brute fact
-- *that* the mental
emerges -- and the explanation -- *how* it emerges.
> > Assuming (without justification) that anything can arbitrarily be said
> > to have
> > any function. That is an argument you have made elsewhere, it is not
> > a particularly good argument, and it is not germane to this discussion
>
> This is a straw man of your own construction. My argument does not
> consist in the claim that 'anything can arbitrarily be said to have
> any function'. What I'm criticising, quite specifically, is the claim
> that the self-evidently existent category of the ontological first
> person is equivalent to a particular class of arrangements of
> ontologically-basic-in-their-own-right physical entities.
the emergence of mental territory from physial territory, you have
criticised the emergence
of the mental territory from the physcical map. Well, you can't grow
potatos in a map of Norfolk,
but you can still grow potatos in Norfolk.
>This, I
> take it, can be construed only as a particularly odd form of dualism,
> or eliminativism.
> The 'arbitrariness' is inherent in the burden of
> the term 'functionalism', which is intrinsically neutral as to the
> details of physical implementation.
1. A function can have multiple instantions
2. Anything can instantiate any function.
> This is its great strength in its
> legitimate sphere of application, and its fatal weakness in the
> present context.
>
> >>But then one must
> >> abjure functional-computational justifications for the 'mental':
> >> again, fair enough (it's probably closer to my own prejudice). But
> >> unless you're an eliminativist about the mental, you can't have it
> >> both ways.
>
> > Of course you can! There are plenty accounts of the mental that
> > are neither functionalist nor elimintativist. Sheesh.
>
> Yes of course there are other accounts, but my argument at this point
> is specifically against functionalist accounts based on an assumed
> physical ontology. So I repeat: the burden of my claim is that if you
> want to be ontological about the physical, you must give up
> functionalist arguments for mind; otherwise you are an implicit
> dualist, or else an eliminativist, even though you may be unaware of
> it (as indeed an eliminativist would have to be!)
>You may of course
> disagree, but saying 'of course you can' is not an argument.
asserted
with little argument can be rejected with little argument. The burden
is on you.
> Beyond
> that, I'm not arguing here against other accounts of the mental,
> though you don't indicate what you have in mind (as it were)
>
> >> But I think we can save them quite handily. First, calling something
> >> 'idealism' just pumps the intuition that there have to be sort of
> >> bright images everywhere independent of 'minds'. The problem here is
> >> that we're stuck with folk vocabulary that drags in extraneous notions
> >> left, right and centre causing an implosion of the imagination. We
> >> need to fix this, and I have a couple of suggestions. The first was
> >> in my reply to Rex, where I suggest, in answer to your implicit
> >> question above, that the universe has to take things just as
> >> personally as it needs to exist.
>
> > Why, for heaven's sake? That seems completely arbitrary.
>
> Perhaps you could try a little harder to go beyond the vocabulary (I'm
> sorry if this seems impolite, I don't intend it to be).
> As I've said,
> virtually every term we use has been used by someone else to mean
> something different. The use of the term 'personal' in this context,
> as I've tried to explain, is to carry the sense that what 'exists' is
> always, as it were, incipiently personal or 'owned'. This is, I
> believe, not crude idealism, but in fact the crucial prerequisite for
> any intuition as to how the 'ownership' of consciousness could be
> conceived to emerge from something in some sense more fundamental, but
> nonetheless categorically congruent.
fundamental,
rather than the cognitive, the experiential, etc etc.
If you have a *specific* explanatory gap in mind, that guides you into
what is specifically missing from physical accounts. For, instance
the
Levine-Nagel gap indicated that phenomenal expereince is lacking, and
that
is what people like Chalmers and Rosenberg try to plug back in.
However, you don't have a specific explanatory gap in mind. Your
argument that the "epsistemtologcial" (theoretical?? descriptive??)
can never
be the "ontolgical" (real?) is general-purpose.
a hypotheises, you are arbitrarily adding qualifications to
it to save appearances.
>I'm merely trying to apply a little massage to the
> intuition that this doesn't have to be so.
>
> > You have no need to struggle to come up with a panpsychist
> > theory,
>
> I don't have a 'panpsychist' theory. Rather, I've made some general
> arguments relating to the various senses of the term 'to exist' with
> which I hope to give a shove to intuitions that have perhaps become
> too stuck in one groove
>
> > since you have no valid objection to physicalism.
> > Your argument so far has been based on two dubious premises --
> > that eliminativism and functonalism are the only physicalist options,
> > and that functionalism is arbitrary and in-the-eye-of-beholder.
>
> Again, calling them 'dubious' is not an argument (as you correctly
> pointed out when I lazily resorted to 'specious').
as
I have shown.
> AFAICS you have
> not independently argued for their dubiousness, but instead have
> gestured towards 'well-established' positions.
else can I refute that but to point to the existence of theory Z in
the literature?
David Nyman
>> I think need to take a hard line on RITSIAR. I feel that the key lies
>> in what Bruno terms the certainty of the ontological first person
>> (OFP): i.e. the sine qua non of reality as it is uniquely available to
>> us. Since this is inescapably the foundation of any and all
>> judgements whatsoever, it is simultaneously both the both point of
>> departure and the 'what-is-to-be-explained' of RITSIAR. In this light
>> it becomes self-evident that any and all explanatory entities -
>> physical, computational, or whatever - are severely restricted to the
>> domain of epistemology. IOW - as Bruno says above - they are
>> theoretical constructions.
>
> That doesn't follow at all. A theoretical construct can have a real
> referent. eg, if the theory of quarks is true , quarks exist. What
> else
> would "theory X is true" mean?
real referents. Part of our problem in discussion I think is that you
tend to attribute views to me that - if I held them - would indeed be
fatuous. Now, you are within your rights to say that it's my fault
for giving you this impression. But I can only reply that my
intention is to draw attention to something more subtle, and this is
difficult.
I think if I had to sum up the point of departure for more or less
everything I've been saying, it would be that I question the
assumption that everything we can discover or know about the world can
be exhausted by describing its observable behaviour - whatever the
model. This is I think what has been called the 'view from nowhere'
and - wonderfully useful though it undoubtedly is, and prone as I am
myself to rely on it much of the time - I'm not alone in criticising
it in the context of mind-body issues. And this is because it seems
to me - though I think not to you - that in this domain alone we're
forced out of our view from nowhere and confronted with the fact that
what we're trying to explain by observation is the very phenomenon
we're using to make the observation. And this is the problem.
>> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
>> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
>> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
>> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap',
>> and it seems to me that
>> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
>> epistemology.
>
> I don;t know what explanatory gap you are talking about,
> but is doesn't sound like Levine's one.
to be' - not 'what it is to describe' - so maybe we need another term
to avoid confusion. So the gap is the one between these two things.
> What is "Ontological certainty"? Certainty belongs to epistemolgoy,
> so "onotlogical" can't bve qualifying "certainty". Do you mean
> something like "the one certain fact about ontology/existence"?
'what it is to be' on the basis of 'what it is to describe'. To which
my response is that we can't, because in the area of the first person
we have indubitable acquaintance with at least some aspect of the
former. And in my view, this acquaintance is so alien to 'what is
described' that the assumption of the gap being bridged on the basis
of *any* model of observability can only be a brute apriori
assumption. Now I know that many people aren't troubled by this, and
some just are. Frankly, by this stage I'm ready to put it down to
differences in imaginative style, what we're trying to achieve
personally with our thinking, or something equally idiosyncratic. I
don't really believe it can be resolved entirely by persuasion.
> Realism doesn;t need the
> existence of a non-mental world to be a certainty, it just needs
> it to be more plausible than the alternatives.
question, the various positions that I've successively tried to hold
on to (and I think I've traversed most of them over the last 30 years
or so) having become less and less plausible to me. I don't want to
be a mysterian, but I think that the assumption that with a bit more
effort we've got the mind sorted on the basis of current theories will
turn out to be more like Lord Kelvin's notorious dicta on black-body
radiation and the ether wind. Actually, if that were the case, it
would be a good omen, because that presaged relativity and QM.
>> Is there a coherent way
>> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
>> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
>
> Probably not, but that is because the question posed is somethign of
> a category error. What the realist would say is that she can conceive
> of theoretical statements havign real referents.
referent of a theoretical statement to be something 'external' is in
fact the category error - i.e. the view from nowhere again. Someone
(can't remember who) put it like this: "what is the external world
supposed to be external to?" Look, it may well be that you're capable
of doing this sort of category-juggling in your head whilst still
using the standard theoretical language. Part of the trouble is that
I'm never quite sure if others are doing this, which is why I try to
proceed in a painfully step-by-step way in enquiring into it - which
probably makes me sound like the village idiot to you.
>> There is something
>> quintessential that stubbornly eludes capture, because epistemological
>> access never tells us what an entity *is* - only what can be
>> ascertained of its 'externalised' properties.
>
> How do you know? If you can't detect some mysterious inner essence,
> how do you know there is one?
from nowhere can 'detect' anything of the sort precisely because it
doesn't - can't - say anything about the 'inner' at all - i.e. its
externalised: that's its point. Theories represent the limit of what
the world can *tell* us, not the limit of what it *is*. Do you
really suppose that you are limited in any such way? That your
existence as it is known to you by acquaintance is entirely exhausted
by what I can glean by interacting with you or bouncing signals off
you?
What we know by indubitable acquaintance is something absolutely
qualitatively different to what is described theoretically - it has to
be - and whereas of course I'm not implying that this acquaintance
gives us the ante on the whole nature of existence, I do believe that
it should be a salutory corrective to any notion of the 'completeness'
of our theories of observation.
>>And lest we be tempted
>> to accept the sum of these properties as exhausting 'existence', we
>> need only turn to the self-evident corrective of the OFP.
>
> THat passage is very far from self evident. Explain, please.
>> So the gap must remain, and I think that now I see why Bruno appeals
>> simply to the 'ordinary' mathematical sense of existence - because
>> COMP, under this analysis, is an epistemological schema, and its
>> entities are theoretical constructions.
>
> No, Bruno is a Platonist. He thinks numbers are RITSIAR
basis of my latest discussion with him, that he sees all theory -
including number theory - as standing in relation (i.e. referring to)
to what is RITSIAR, not as actually *being* RITSIAR. Elsewhere, he's
distinguished between a representation of a number, and a number. It
seems to me that you are using Platonic to characterise what is in
principle unobservable, but surely that also applies to many of the
theoretical entities appealed to by physics with equal force?
>> Hence the question of jumping
>> the ontological gap is in abeyance, perhaps permanently, but in any
>> case in the realm of faith. And if this is true for COMP, then
>> mutatis mutandis it is true for physics.
>
> Of course not. Physics is about explaining the real world.
stands in some theoretical relation to the describably real. But I
reiterate that you can't jump the gap from description to 'what it is'
for free - and this is not to rubbish the unique achievement of
science in human understanding. It is simply to warn against hubris,
I suppose. What has been extraordinarily successful in one domain of
application may yet flounder when pushed too far beyond it.
You see, the thing that interests me about comp isn't that I know that
it's true. Rather it's because I think that it confronts the
mind-body issue without sweeping the real problems under the rug.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't face the final explanatory abyss
too, but I think it positions the mysteries much more insightfully.
>> The unavoidable consequence of the foregoing is that atoms, quarks and
>> numbers cannot be RITSIAR.
>
> That has not been demonstrated at all. At best you have an argument
> that they are not necessarily RITSIAR. Which is straightforwardly
> given
> by the observation that theories are less than certain. All you have
> writen
> boils down to the fallacy that "no necessarily true" implies
> "necessarily untrue"
should ever be seen as RITSIAR - only in some relation to it. The
difference between physics and comp is that in terms of the former
there's virtually no way of expressing this thought coherently,
whereas in terms of the latter it's a key aspect of the theory.
>> The unique feature of consciousness is not - as you claim - its
>> 'epistemic' certainty, but its status as what is *ontologically
>> certain*.
>
> Whatever that means.
indubitable aspects of 'what it is to be' something.
>>To regard consciousness itself (or in Bruno's terms the
>> ontological first person) as merely the object of 'knowledge' is to
>> commit the fallacy of taking 'observation' in a naively literal sense:
>> i.e. to require there to be an 'observer'. But this, self-evidently,
>> can only lead to infinite regress. Consequently, consciousness does
>> not consist in the 'observation' of epistemic entities, but in their
>> instantiation.
>
> Whatever that means. Surely if soemthign is insantiated, it exist and
> is therefore ontological.
functioning of our brains - it's what they experience. We probably
need a different term - like consciousness-related behaviour - for the
former to avoid this confusion. I also mean that 'epistemic entities'
- the things that we use to refer with - are instantiated in
consciousness. Mine are anyway.
>> Consciousness is, as it were, the 'ontology of
>> epistemology'. When you say that the physical is basic, you are
>> yourself mistaking the epistemological for the ontological.
>
> No, I am takign certain highly succesful theories to be true.
physics, then it is indeed what is assumed to be true by highly
successful theories. But this success is not what is necessary to
bridge the mind-body gap, because the theories aren't designed for
that particular job. In fact, they are designed precisely for the
opposite of that job - i.e. to describe a state of affairs in a way
that deliberately obscures the reversal of the relationship between
theory and reality. IOW, in this view, consciousness is theory and
the physical is the touchstone of reality. But this view relies on
the denial (in an unavoidably Freudian sense) that the physical is
known exclusively in terms of conscious representations on which all
extrapolation to an 'observable' reality rests.
Since such representations are not in themselves observable (though of
course not unknowable) it is unreasonable to suppose that any
putatively 'final' ontology known entirely on the basis of observation
could ever be considered a complete account of the situation. This is
a real issue. I'm by no means the only one who thinks that standard
physics lacks a natural way to address this, and I feel there must be
ways to re-position the issues more fruitfully - comp being one such
approach. I don't know what I can say to make this more compelling
so, if you still see this as nothing but the old category error stuff
again, I give up. No hard feelings.
>> As to
>> your evidence consisting in 'the whole of science', since the nature
>> and significance of this evidence is precisely what is in question, it
>> is inadequate merely to make such appeals to authority.
>
> Au cotnraire, it is inadequate to assume that theories are necessarily
> false bcause they are not necessarily true.
our divergence? I merely reiterate that if some aspect of the
scientific method and its interpretation is under dispute it is
insufficient merely to lean too heavily on the fact that lots of
scientists don't question it. Whilst it would of course be foolish to
disregard this, one may surely still have the temerity to question any
authority if we think it may be mistaken.
>> The problem is this: in the face of one indubitable ontology - that
>> exemplified in consciousness - you try get physically-basic ontology
>> for free.
>
> Free? The development of physics involves a huge effort. And note
> that I am not claiming cvertainty for it.
of science. I'm the last person to rubbish this effort. All I'm
saying is that in the mind-body domain the carefully designed
methodology of 'vexing nature' is seeking to get a 'theory of
everything' for free - because if you really believed that physics
could account for 'everything' on the basis of' any possible set of
observations, then IMO you don't take the 'gap' - between the
observable and the ontologically real - that seriously. Actually,
thinking about everything you've said, I conclude that you don't take
it seriously in that way. And that means that I'm worrying about
something unnecessarily in your view because you say it's just a
category error. OK, we can agree to disagree.
> And I don't think I get any ontology from consciousness. I'll grant
> that it is indubitable that it exists, but that tells me nothing
> about *what* it is. A brute fact is not an ontology.
>
>>In other words, you simply assume that if we take ourselves
>> to 'be' - what? - say, neural activity in 'computational' - or some
>> yet-to-be-established - guise, then - pouf! - the ontological first
>> person is conjured from mere description.
>
> No, the first person is conjured from the brain -- from the territory,
> not
> the map.
known) in its conscious aspect, not in in terms of the observably
'physical' referents of physics-as-theory. And saying that these two
categories are 'identical' is just pretending to monism whilst
continuing to think dualistically IMO, as I've said - and as you've
denied - repeatedly.
>> But there is no sense in
>> which one can simply 'be' an epistemic 'object' - a theoretical
>> construction.
>
> As noted before, that is an artificial problem. Since theories
> *can* be correct, one *can* be the referent of a theoretical
> description, and the referent of a theoretical construction, if it
> has one, is
> a real thing.
>
>>*This* is the explanatory gap,
>
> No, it is nto the standard one in the literature. You are just
> commiting a basica fallacy -- saying that because the map is not
> itself real, it cannot *represetn* a real territory.
the territory can be complete. In other words, the territory mapped
on the basis of observation is still only a partial account of the
complete state of affairs. However, I do realise that this amounts to
heresy according to the standard doctrine of physics.
>> > You still haven't said what the objection is to saying that
>> > the mental emerges from the physical.
>>
>> I'm saying that all that can 'emerge' from one class of description is
>> another class of description.
>
> The physical is not a description/map. Physics is the description/map.
description, theory or mapping - only (in certain of its aspects)
through consciousness. So if you want the mental to 'emerge' from -
or stand in true relation to - 'something', we must look beyond what
is needed to account merely for what is observed. This is the facer
for physics, because of course it is precisely committed to
restricting itself to accounting for what is observed, and I
understand the power and intent of this approach. But to extrapolate
from this to the causal closure of a physical ontology of everything,
independent of consciousness, is fatal to a coherent resolution of the
mind-body issues IMO.
>> If that exhausts your idea of the
>> 'mental' I say you are an eliminativist. But you say you're not.
>> What then?
>
> I do think there is an explanatory gap, and I also think it is very
> specific
> the the nature of the mental and the nature of phsycial
> *descriptions*. However
> that does not mean that it is impossible for the mental territory to
> emrge
> from the physical territory. There are two things here, the brute fact
> -- *that* the mental
> emerges -- and the explanation -- *how* it emerges.
> You have in fact *not* criticised
> the emergence of mental territory from physial territory, you have
> criticised the emergence
> of the mental territory from the physcical map. Well, you can't grow
> potatos in a map of Norfolk,
> but you can still grow potatos in Norfolk.
event. I just want to be convinced we're getting real potatoes, and
not just a load of stories about potatoes, that leaves us as hungry as
before.
>>This, I
>> take it, can be construed only as a particularly odd form of dualism,
>> or eliminativism.
>
> Don't take it, expalin how you came to that.
claim that two categories - conscious experience itself, and a
physical ontology characterised exhaustively in observable terms - are
equivalent. I say that any such claim is implicitly dualistic: IOW it
must appeal to 'something else' to fill what is not accounted for.
Alternatively, to deny that anything remains unaccounted for is to
*eliminate* the 'something else'.
At this point, I feel that the issues have had a good outing and
further detailed commenting would be otiose. I don't expect either of
us have shifted our position, though speaking personally I would
really welcome the opportunity to do so, if I could see a compelling
reason. If you can think of a new angle of attack, that could be
really helpful. But for now, I'm signing off.
David
Flammarion
On 15 Aug, 02:40, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/14 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com>:
cosnciousness wouldn't be able to account for itself.
> >> So far so obvious. But - as has again been recognised immemorially -
> >> solipsism is a dead-end and hence we seek a theory to capture the
> >> relation between the OFP and its environment. But immediately we are
> >> faced with the notorious 'explanatory gap',
> >> and it seems to me that
> >> its most precise expression is in the gap between ontology and
> >> epistemology.
>
> > I don;t know what explanatory gap you are talking about,
> > but is doesn't sound like Levine's one.
>
> Well, as I imply above, I'm using ontology in the sense of 'what it is
> to be' - not 'what it is to describe' - so maybe we need another term
> to avoid confusion. So the gap is the one between these two things.
> > What is "Ontological certainty"? Certainty belongs to epistemolgoy,
> > so "onotlogical" can't bve qualifying "certainty". Do you mean
> > something like "the one certain fact about ontology/existence"?
>
> My rhetorical question was "how do we reach a state of certainty about
> 'what it is to be' on the basis of 'what it is to describe'.
> To which
> my response is that we can't, because in the area of the first person
> we have indubitable acquaintance with at least some aspect of the
> former.
for lack of certainty in descriptions
> And in my view, this acquaintance is so alien to 'what is
> described'
> that the assumption of the gap being bridged on the basis
> of *any* model of observability can only be a brute apriori
> assumption. Now I know that many people aren't troubled by this, and
> some just are. Frankly, by this stage I'm ready to put it down to
> differences in imaginative style, what we're trying to achieve
> personally with our thinking, or something equally idiosyncratic. I
> don't really believe it can be resolved entirely by persuasion.
on --
are not part of any Hard Problem?
> > Realism doesn;t need the
> > existence of a non-mental world to be a certainty, it just needs
> > it to be more plausible than the alternatives.
>
> Yes, in general I agree with you.
>But I suppose on the mind-body
> question, the various positions that I've successively tried to hold
> on to (and I think I've traversed most of them over the last 30 years
> or so) having become less and less plausible to me. I don't want to
> be a mysterian, but I think that the assumption that with a bit more
> effort we've got the mind sorted on the basis of current theories will
> turn out to be more like Lord Kelvin's notorious dicta on black-body
> radiation and the ether wind. Actually, if that were the case, it
> would be a good omen, because that presaged relativity and QM.
of it should be retained as possible. hence the need to focus
on the key issues in the MBP
> >> Is there a coherent way
> >> to conceive what it could mean to *be* a theoretical entity (as
> >> opposed to postulating or observing one)?
>
> > Probably not, but that is because the question posed is somethign of
> > a category error. What the realist would say is that she can conceive
> > of theoretical statements havign real referents.
>
> Yes, but my view is that mind-body shows us that to consider the
> referent of a theoretical statement to be something 'external' is in
> fact the category error - i.e. the view from nowhere again.
theory ever has a referent. But you have not said why.
> Someone
> (can't remember who) put it like this: "what is the external world
> supposed to be external to?"
> Look, it may well be that you're capable
> of doing this sort of category-juggling in your head whilst still
> using the standard theoretical language. Part of the trouble is that
> I'm never quite sure if others are doing this, which is why I try to
> proceed in a painfully step-by-step way in enquiring into it - which
> probably makes me sound like the village idiot to you.
fallacies.
> >> There is something
> >> quintessential that stubbornly eludes capture, because epistemological
> >> access never tells us what an entity *is* - only what can be
> >> ascertained of its 'externalised' properties.
>
> > How do you know? If you can't detect some mysterious inner essence,
> > how do you know there is one?
>
> I certainly wouldn't put it like that. I don't think that the view
> from nowhere can 'detect' anything of the sort precisely because it
> doesn't - can't - say anything about the 'inner' at all - i.e. its
> externalised: that's its point.
or at least any "inner" other than your own.
> Theories represent the limit of what
> the world can *tell* us, not the limit of what it *is*.
you seem to have decided they necessarily don't.
If you can't peak over the horizon. how do you know there
is anything there?
> Do you
> really suppose that you are limited in any such way? That your
> existence as it is known to you by acquaintance is entirely exhausted
> by what I can glean by interacting with you or bouncing signals off
> you?
level,
you still wouldn't have captured all the information?
> What we know by indubitable acquaintance is something absolutely
> qualitatively different to what is described theoretically - it has to
> be - and whereas of course I'm not implying that this acquaintance
> gives us the ante on the whole nature of existence, I do believe that
> it should be a salutory corrective to any notion of the 'completeness'
> of our theories of observation.
information -- just somehow presented differntly.
> >>And lest we be tempted
> >> to accept the sum of these properties as exhausting 'existence', we
> >> need only turn to the self-evident corrective of the OFP.
>
> > THat passage is very far from self evident. Explain, please.
>
> What I said above.
> >> So the gap must remain, and I think that now I see why Bruno appeals
> >> simply to the 'ordinary' mathematical sense of existence - because
> >> COMP, under this analysis, is an epistemological schema, and its
> >> entities are theoretical constructions.
>
> > No, Bruno is a Platonist. He thinks numbers are RITSIAR
>
> Well, I don't suppose you'll ever agree on that. But I think, on the
> basis of my latest discussion with him, that he sees all theory -
> including number theory - as standing in relation (i.e. referring to)
> to what is RITSIAR, not as actually *being* RITSIAR.
truth. But arithmetic truth just is arithmetic truth.
> Elsewhere, he's
> distinguished between a representation of a number, and a number. It
> seems to me that you are using Platonic to characterise what is in
> principle unobservable, but surely that also applies to many of the
> theoretical entities appealed to by physics with equal force?
Platonic
to characterise the real-but-immaterial.
> >> Hence the question of jumping
> >> the ontological gap is in abeyance, perhaps permanently, but in any
> >> case in the realm of faith. And if this is true for COMP, then
> >> mutatis mutandis it is true for physics.
>
> > Of course not. Physics is about explaining the real world.
>
> Yes, I agree that physics is about explaining a real world - i.e. it
> stands in some theoretical relation to the describably real. But I
> reiterate that you can't jump the gap from description to 'what it is'
> for free - and this is not to rubbish the unique achievement of
> science in human understanding. It is simply to warn against hubris,
> I suppose. What has been extraordinarily successful in one domain of
> application may yet flounder when pushed too far beyond it.
> You see, the thing that interests me about comp isn't that I know that
> it's true. Rather it's because I think that it confronts the
> mind-body issue without sweeping the real problems under the rug.
of phenomenal consciousness and so
does Brouno's "comp"
> That doesn't mean that it doesn't face the final explanatory abyss
> too, but I think it positions the mysteries much more insightfully.
>
> >> The unavoidable consequence of the foregoing is that atoms, quarks and
> >> numbers cannot be RITSIAR.
>
> > That has not been demonstrated at all. At best you have an argument
> > that they are not necessarily RITSIAR. Which is straightforwardly
> > given
> > by the observation that theories are less than certain. All you have
> > writen
> > boils down to the fallacy that "no necessarily true" implies
> > "necessarily untrue"
>
> No, I think it boils down to the fact that no theoretical entity
> should ever be seen as RITSIAR - only in some relation to it.
"not necessarily real" to imply
"necessarily unreal". (NB: RITSIAR is not intended as a claim of
certainty. If you are just saying nothing is certain, you are nto
saying much).
At least you don't have any support for the conclsuion that nothing
theoretical
should be seen as real beyond the argument that it might not be
> The
> difference between physics and comp is that in terms of the former
> there's virtually no way of expressing this thought coherently,
> whereas in terms of the latter it's a key aspect of the theory.
> >> The unique feature of consciousness is not - as you claim - its
> >> 'epistemic' certainty, but its status as what is *ontologically
> >> certain*.
>
> > Whatever that means.
>
> It means its status as evidence by acquaintance of at least some
> indubitable aspects of 'what it is to be' something.
does not offer any gold-plated insight into what things are. including
itself.
> >>To regard consciousness itself (or in Bruno's terms the
> >> ontological first person) as merely the object of 'knowledge' is to
> >> commit the fallacy of taking 'observation' in a naively literal sense:
> >> i.e. to require there to be an 'observer'. But this, self-evidently,
> >> can only lead to infinite regress. Consequently, consciousness does
> >> not consist in the 'observation' of epistemic entities, but in their
> >> instantiation.
>
> > Whatever that means. Surely if soemthign is insantiated, it exist and
> > is therefore ontological.
>
> I mean that consciousness isn't what we observe in others - or in the
> functioning of our brains - it's what they experience.
diamond doesn;t seem to be the same as graphite.
> We probably
> need a different term - like consciousness-related behaviour - for the
> former to avoid this confusion. I also mean that 'epistemic entities'
> - the things that we use to refer with - are instantiated in
> consciousness. Mine are anyway.
> >> Consciousness is, as it were, the 'ontology of
> >> epistemology'. When you say that the physical is basic, you are
> >> yourself mistaking the epistemological for the ontological.
>
> > No, I am takign certain highly succesful theories to be true.
>
> Yes, given that the physical is what is deemed to be described by
> physics, then it is indeed what is assumed to be true by highly
> successful theories. But this success is not what is necessary to
> bridge the mind-body gap, because the theories aren't designed for
> that particular job. In fact, they are designed precisely for the
> opposite of that job - i.e. to describe a state of affairs in a way
> that deliberately obscures the reversal of the relationship between
> theory and reality.
> IOW, in this view, consciousness is theory and
> the physical is the touchstone of reality.
> But this view relies on
> the denial (in an unavoidably Freudian sense) that the physical is
> known exclusively in terms of conscious representations on which all
> extrapolation to an 'observable' reality rests.
You are blurring epistemology and ontoloy again. I can paint
the Taj Mahal in oils, that doesn't mean
here is anything oil-painting-ish abotu the Taj Mahal.
> Since such representations are not in themselves observable (though of
> course not unknowable) it is unreasonable to suppose that any
> putatively 'final' ontology known entirely on the basis of observation
> could ever be considered a complete account of the situation.
consciousness, and observe their neurological basis to boot.
> This is
> a real issue. I'm by no means the only one who thinks that standard
> physics lacks a natural way to address this, and I feel there must be
> ways to re-position the issues more fruitfully - comp being one such
> approach.
> I don't know what I can say to make this more compelling
> so, if you still see this as nothing but the old category error stuff
> again, I give up. No hard feelings.
> >> As to
> >> your evidence consisting in 'the whole of science', since the nature
> >> and significance of this evidence is precisely what is in question, it
> >> is inadequate merely to make such appeals to authority.
>
> > Au cotnraire, it is inadequate to assume that theories are necessarily
> > false bcause they are not necessarily true.
>
> How could I disagree?
taken as RITSIAR.
> Do you really think this is the substance of
> our divergence? I merely reiterate that if some aspect of the
> scientific method and its interpretation is under dispute it is
> insufficient merely to lean too heavily on the fact that lots of
> scientists don't question it.
necessarily ciorrect in problem areas.
>Whilst it would of course be foolish to
> disregard this, one may surely still have the temerity to question any
> authority if we think it may be mistaken.
>
> >> The problem is this: in the face of one indubitable ontology - that
> >> exemplified in consciousness - you try get physically-basic ontology
> >> for free.
>
> > Free? The development of physics involves a huge effort. And note
> > that I am not claiming cvertainty for it.
>
> Look, for most of my life, most of my heroes have been the champions
> of science. I'm the last person to rubbish this effort. All I'm
> saying is that in the mind-body domain the carefully designed
> methodology of 'vexing nature' is seeking to get a 'theory of
> everything' for free - because if you really believed that physics
> could account for 'everything' on the basis of' any possible set of
> observations, then IMO you don't take the 'gap' - between the
> observable and the ontologically real - that seriously.
> Actually,
> thinking about everything you've said, I conclude that you don't take
> it seriously in that way. And that means that I'm worrying about
> something unnecessarily in your view because you say it's just a
> category error. OK, we can agree to disagree.
between the way consciousness presents itself to the observer
and the way it appears in descriptions. That doesn't necessarily
mean we are dealing with an ontological divide, and it doesn't
necessarily
have to be part of some wider gap betwee any kind of description and
any
kind of reality.
> > And I don't think I get any ontology from consciousness. I'll grant
> > that it is indubitable that it exists, but that tells me nothing
> > about *what* it is. A brute fact is not an ontology.
>
> >>In other words, you simply assume that if we take ourselves
> >> to 'be' - what? - say, neural activity in 'computational' - or some
> >> yet-to-be-established - guise, then - pouf! - the ontological first
> >> person is conjured from mere description.
>
> > No, the first person is conjured from the brain -- from the territory,
> > not
> > the map.
>
> Yes, but the territory is entirely known (to the extent that it is
> known) in its conscious aspect, not in in terms of the observably
> 'physical' referents of physics-as-theory.
does nto
reveal its own workings -- we don't get to peak behind the curtain.
> And saying that these two
> categories are 'identical' is just pretending to monism whilst
> continuing to think dualistically IMO, as I've said - and as you've
> denied - repeatedly.
> >> But there is no sense in
> >> which one can simply 'be' an epistemic 'object' - a theoretical
> >> construction.
>
> > As noted before, that is an artificial problem. Since theories
> > *can* be correct, one *can* be the referent of a theoretical
> > description, and the referent of a theoretical construction, if it
> > has one, is
> > a real thing.
>
> >>*This* is the explanatory gap,
>
> > No, it is nto the standard one in the literature. You are just
> > commiting a basica fallacy -- saying that because the map is not
> > itself real, it cannot *represetn* a real territory.
>
> No, I'm not saying that. I'm casting doubt on whether the mapping to
> the territory can be complete.
the whole truth. or true at all in different passages.
>In other words, the territory mapped
> on the basis of observation is still only a partial account of the
> complete state of affairs. However, I do realise that this amounts to
> heresy according to the standard doctrine of physics.
> >> > You still haven't said what the objection is to saying that
> >> > the mental emerges from the physical.
>
> >> I'm saying that all that can 'emerge' from one class of description is
> >> another class of description.
>
> > The physical is not a description/map. Physics is the description/map.
>
> True. But we have no direct access to the physical-in-itself through
> description, theory or mapping - only (in certain of its aspects)
> through consciousness.
Note that if access is taken as some kind of causal indirectness,
it doesn't have any obvious epistemic implications whatsoever.
We are communciating through IP packets that are bounced around and
relayed all over the placve.
Our communication is indirect, but that does not make it innacurate.
> So if you want the mental to 'emerge' from -
> or stand in true relation to - 'something', we must look beyond what
> is needed to account merely for what is observed.
> This is the facer
> for physics, because of course it is precisely committed to
> restricting itself to accounting for what is observed, and I
> understand the power and intent of this approach. But to extrapolate
> from this to the causal closure of a physical ontology of everything,
> independent of consciousness, is fatal to a coherent resolution of the
> mind-body issues IMO.
out in the brain-scannign argument, there is good reason to think
that all the *information* in phenomenal cosnciousness is in fact
physically available. What is missing in physical descriptions is
the mode of presentation of that informaiton to the first person.
A red quale doesn't convey information over and above "that is red".
anything unaccoutned for.
> At this point, I feel that the issues have had a good outing and
> further detailed commenting would be otiose. I don't expect either of
> us have shifted our position, though speaking personally I would
> really welcome the opportunity to do so, if I could see a compelling
> reason. If you can think of a new angle of attack, that could be
> really helpful. But for now, I'm signing off.
>
> David>> The 'arbitrariness' is inherent in the burden of
> >> the term 'functionalism', which is intrinsically neutral as to the
> >> details of physical implementation.
>
> > No, there are two quite differnt claim here:
>
> > 1. A function can have multiple instantions
> > 2. Anything can instantiate any function.
David Nyman
>> My rhetorical question was "how do we reach a state of certainty about
>> 'what it is to be' on the basis of 'what it is to describe'.
>
> Why do we need certainty?
>> To which
>> my response is that we can't, because in the area of the first person
>> we have indubitable acquaintance with at least some aspect of the
>> former.
>
> That doesn't support the conclusion by itself. You also need to argue
> for lack of certainty in descriptions
>
>> And in my view, this acquaintance is so alien to 'what is
>> described'
>
> with regard to consciousness , or generally?
>> that the assumption of the gap being bridged on the basis
>> of *any* model of observability can only be a brute apriori
>> assumption. Now I know that many people aren't troubled by this, and
>> some just are. Frankly, by this stage I'm ready to put it down to
>> differences in imaginative style, what we're trying to achieve
>> personally with our thinking, or something equally idiosyncratic. I
>> don't really believe it can be resolved entirely by persuasion.
>
> Do you concede that many aspects of mind -- cognition, memory and so
> on --
> are not part of any Hard Problem?
can't end up at these destinations unless you buy the ticket at the
point of departure - the ticket being what I've called self-access
(i.e. as a characteristic of the situation as a whole, not of parts
taken in isolation). Look, when I asked you "how far down in our
analysis of the material do we have to go before the entities are no
longer material?" your reply was in effect "all the way down". In
essence, I don't think I'm saying anything different vis-a-vis
consciousness. Of course, as you imply in your question, nothing
complex comes for free, and we need to build up mechanisms, devices,
structures from their material-conscious building blocks - all the
'easy' stuff - to arrive at mind itself. I say a bit more on this
below.
>> > Realism doesn;t need the
>> > existence of a non-mental world to be a certainty, it just needs
>> > it to be more plausible than the alternatives.
>>
>> Yes, in general I agree with you.
>
> Then what is the significance of Ontological Certainty?
>
>>But I suppose on the mind-body
>> question, the various positions that I've successively tried to hold
>> on to (and I think I've traversed most of them over the last 30 years
>> or so) having become less and less plausible to me. I don't want to
>> be a mysterian, but I think that the assumption that with a bit more
>> effort we've got the mind sorted on the basis of current theories will
>> turn out to be more like Lord Kelvin's notorious dicta on black-body
>> radiation and the ether wind. Actually, if that were the case, it
>> would be a good omen, because that presaged relativity and QM.
>
> I think physicalism has been generally succesful and as much
> of it should be retained as possible. hence the need to focus
> on the key issues in the MBP
must continue to be alert to the possibility of gaps in some of our
basic assumptions. I think part of the trouble is that to be
successful at anything, one has to push like mad, and this inevitably
leads - most especially when a particular approach has been very
successful - to the tendency to push it beyond usefulness. It probably
can't be avoided. All I'm saying is that there is a long-standing
metaphysical corrective that has always stood to one side of
physicalism, and from time to time it's worth carefully reconsidering
it.
>> Yes, but my view is that mind-body shows us that to consider the
>> referent of a theoretical statement to be something 'external' is in
>> fact the category error - i.e. the view from nowhere again.
>
>
> Referents are external by definition. So you must be sayign that no
> theory ever has a referent. But you have not said why.
epistemic polarisations which, in terms of any consistent monism, must
be seen as aspects of a unique ontic continuum. When we carefully
examine what is entailed in conscious 'observation' we find that the
very act of qualitatively reifying or embodying local representations
entails the draining of proper ('internal') qualities from their
putative referents, thus 'externalising' them and abandoning them to
the realm of the 'non-conscious'. So the 'red apple' is embodied
'redly' in my consciousness, but the qualitative embodiment of the
referent is not thereby locally realised. This is the fons et origo
of the MBP, IMO. More below.
>> Someone
>> (can't remember who) put it like this: "what is the external world
>> supposed to be external to?"
>
> My head
I'm saying requires a shift in viewpoint. If you don't make it - even
experimentally - what I'm saying will inevitably sound like gibberish.
OTOH, trying it for size doesn't commit you to the purchase.
>> Look, it may well be that you're capable
>> of doing this sort of category-juggling in your head whilst still
>> using the standard theoretical language. Part of the trouble is that
>> I'm never quite sure if others are doing this, which is why I try to
>> proceed in a painfully step-by-step way in enquiring into it - which
>> probably makes me sound like the village idiot to you.
>
> Hmm. Well, I still think you are repeating standard map-territory
> fallacies.
which is the map, and which the territory.
>> > How do you know? If you can't detect some mysterious inner essence,
>> > how do you know there is one?
>>
>> I certainly wouldn't put it like that. I don't think that the view
>> from nowhere can 'detect' anything of the sort precisely because it
>> doesn't - can't - say anything about the 'inner' at all - i.e. its
>> externalised: that's its point.
>
> YOu still haven't said about how you got into contact with the inner--
> or at least any "inner" other than your own.
inner isn't that much different to yours. As for getting into
contact, perhaps this is the crux. I think that your view of
consciousness is that it is mere epistemology, and hence that it can't
in and of itself tell us anything fundamental about ontology. Well
you know of course that this is disputed - Bishop Berkeley, Vedanta,
the perennial philosophy, etc - and on what I think are good logical
grounds. If I assume that my experience is a matter *merely* of
observation, I can't help getting into an infinite regress of
observation - i.e. of epistemology. Consequently I'm forced to the
view that my fundamental relation to the qualitative is ontological,
and that the analysis of the qualitative into context and content is
what actually constitutes the apparent epistemological-ontological
'divide'.
Further, since I'm a monist, I must believe that if this applies to
consciousness, it must also apply to whatever it is that the
epistemological content refers to, and consequently it is this that I
must make sense of in any comprehensible account of the 'mental' and
the 'material'. Now, it's at this point that, adopting a
'materialist' stance, I might say to myself "well, all this is
obviously untrue because the universe would be a mass of qualities -
which it clearly isn't - and things wouldn't merely manifest and
behave objectively and materially - which they obviously do". But on
reflection, there's no contradiction here, because the very nature of
the epistemic-ontic split lies in the abstraction of quality from the
observable - it's represented qualitatively, but what-it-represents -
i.e. its referent - is what's left over relationally when the quality
is abstracted. And this is why any account constructed entirely from
relational properties must be incomplete.
Now clearly, if we can't agree on something reasonably close to the
foregoing as our point of departure on the way to what would be
acceptable as RITSIAR, it's hardly surprising that we find ourselves
in conflict further down the line. Nonetheless, I'm interested to
know, even though you clearly disagree with the analysis, if you
reject this out-of-hand as a coherent point of view. Do you think it
is demonstrably wrong, or simply an unnecessary assumption? If the
former, what specifically is wrong with it?
>> Theories represent the limit of what
>> the world can *tell* us, not the limit of what it *is*.
>
> Theories don't necessarily tell us the whole story. However
> you seem to have decided they necessarily don't.
> If you can't peak over the horizon. how do you know there
> is anything there?
to peek beyond it. I'm just saying that there's a gap that can't be
bridged by any quantitative-relational theory. It takes a shift in
viewpoint - or rather, a proper appreciation of what our 'viewpoint'
really implies - to acknowledge the gap. Without the shift, one ends
up either explaining it away, or vaguely hoping that it will be
bridged by more or different relationships.
>> Do you
>> really suppose that you are limited in any such way? That your
>> existence as it is known to you by acquaintance is entirely exhausted
>> by what I can glean by interacting with you or bouncing signals off
>> you?
>
> Do you think that if you scanned my brain right down to the atomic
> level,
> you still wouldn't have captured all the information?
arguing against the 'causal closure of the physical', but I think that
it's quite reasonable so to argue, as this assumption itself is
central to the MBP - see Chalmers for a review. There's often a weird
sort of self-abnegation that creeps into attitudes at this point, as
though to say "why should we suppose that mere human experience itself
sheds any light on the workings of the mighty and terrible universe
that glides on serenely without us?" But on reflection this is to
carry modesty beyond sense, because we're just a part of all this and
consequently what is true for us must be true - mutatis mutandis - for
the rest of it. In fact the whole of science - nay the whole of life
- rests on a version of this statement of faith.
And all that's required conceptually, I think, is to realise that
causality can't be 'closed' in the absence of mutual accessibility
between the interacting entities. The metaphysical intuition here is
of a self-accessible continuum nonetheless differentiated by
self-encounter ('self' because the differentiation doesn't really
create 'separate entities'). The fundamental justification here is
that any other assumption just makes the whole universe disappear -
i.e. without it, any conjectured universe, and everything in it, would
be zombified - i.e. beside the point, Occamistically speaking.
Furthermore, we have absolutely no reason to suppose that this is
contradicted by physical theory - there's nothing whatsoever in the
observable or theorised behaviour of fundamental explanatory entities
that implies that mutual accessibility isn't a prerequisite (i.e. not
merely an accompaniment) for the mutual 'activity' that is the limit
of what is entailed by 'observation'.
Consequently the qualitative basis of ontology is simply never
observed, because it is the unobservable *context* of observation.
It's not just the fish not seeing the water, it's the fish not seeing
the fish.
>> What we know by indubitable acquaintance is something absolutely
>> qualitatively different to what is described theoretically - it has to
>> be - and whereas of course I'm not implying that this acquaintance
>> gives us the ante on the whole nature of existence, I do believe that
>> it should be a salutory corrective to any notion of the 'completeness'
>> of our theories of observation.
>
> And the corrective to that corrective is that it must all be the same
> information -- just somehow presented differntly.
as I've said above. We're not that far apart, actually, once you
adjust for language and the status of the notorious 'gap'.
>> You see, the thing that interests me about comp isn't that I know that
>> it's true. Rather it's because I think that it confronts the
>> mind-body issue without sweeping the real problems under the rug.
>
> CMT has next to nothng to say on the issue
> of phenomenal consciousness and so
> does Brouno's "comp"
with the status of phenomenal consciousness. Bruno says that comp is
able to situate the quale, but that of course is a world away from
explaining it. My view, as I say above - is that the qualitative lies
completely outside the domain of explanation, because it is in fact
the domain itself - i.e. the context within which all explanation
occurs (or more strongly - is instantiated).
>> > That has not been demonstrated at all. At best you have an argument
>> > that they are not necessarily RITSIAR. Which is straightforwardly
>> > given
>> > by the observation that theories are less than certain. All you have
>> > writen
>> > boils down to the fallacy that "no necessarily true" implies
>> > "necessarily untrue"
>>
>> No, I think it boils down to the fact that no theoretical entity
>> should ever be seen as RITSIAR - only in some relation to it.
>
> That is the very fallacy I was complaining about. You are taking
> "not necessarily real" to imply
> "necessarily unreal". (NB: RITSIAR is not intended as a claim of
> certainty. If you are just saying nothing is certain, you are nto
> saying much).
claiming that, but I'm not. I'm just saying that *any* theoretical
entity - which is the limit of can what we possess epistemologically -
is necessarily an incomplete representation of what we take it to
refer to, for the reasons I've given.
>> The
>> difference between physics and comp is that in terms of the former
>> there's virtually no way of expressing this thought coherently,
>> whereas in terms of the latter it's a key aspect of the theory.
>
> Since the thought is unfounded, I don't see why that is an issue.
>> >> The unique feature of consciousness is not - as you claim - its
>> >> 'epistemic' certainty, but its status as what is *ontologically
>> >> certain*.
>>
>> > Whatever that means.
>>
>> It means its status as evidence by acquaintance of at least some
>> indubitable aspects of 'what it is to be' something.
>
> All that is delivered induibably is how things seem. Consciousness
> does not offer any gold-plated insight into what things are. including
> itself.
Whilst there clearly is nothing 'gold plated' about any particular
insight available *through* consciousness, we must nonetheless keep
tight hold of the fact that it is consciousness that is the unique
*vehicle* for such insights - and indeed for any hold on reality that
we possess. And one cannot coherently claim that this vehicle is
essentially radically other than it *appears*, because in this case to
appear is to *be* - and of course vice versa. So the extrapolation
from this is that the fundamental intuition of 'existence' on which
all - and I do mean *all* - the others parasitise, is that 'to be is
to appear'.
Of course this is hardly a new idea, but I feel that it is usually
(though by no means always) somewhat thoughtllessly dismissed, and
hence its consequences don't get fully worked out. There appears to
be a sort of 'embarrassment issue' connected with it in
'professionally respectable' circles! It is assumed - on no evidence
- that it must somehow contradict the known facts without adding
anything to understanding, because nothing was missing before. But
neither of these assumptions is the case IMO. Consequently I regard
this approach as a needful metaphysical illumination of - not a
replacement for - relational theories be they comp, PM, or whatsoever.
>
>> >>To regard consciousness itself (or in Bruno's terms the
>> >> ontological first person) as merely the object of 'knowledge' is to
>> >> commit the fallacy of taking 'observation' in a naively literal sense:
>> >> i.e. to require there to be an 'observer'. But this, self-evidently,
>> >> can only lead to infinite regress. Consequently, consciousness does
>> >> not consist in the 'observation' of epistemic entities, but in their
>> >> instantiation.
>>
>> > Whatever that means. Surely if soemthign is insantiated, it exist and
>> > is therefore ontological.
instantiated in consciousness - it is their ontic context. Further,
as I've said above, it is the *unique* ontic context. Of course this
is what is claimed by Plotinus, the Vedantic literature etc, and I'm
saying it bears careful scrutiny.
>> I mean that consciousness isn't what we observe in others - or in the
>> functioning of our brains - it's what they experience.
>
> Consciousness doesn't seem to be the funcitoning of brains. But then
> diamond doesn;t seem to be the same as graphite.
Surely you see the difference? Sometimes you seem to argue for
elimination, sometimes for dual-aspect. Which is it to be?
>> But this view relies on
>> the denial (in an unavoidably Freudian sense) that the physical is
>> known exclusively in terms of conscious representations on which all
>> extrapolation to an 'observable' reality rests.
>
> No it doesn't. Why shouldn;t consciousness know the non-conscious?
> You are blurring epistemology and ontoloy again. I can paint
> the Taj Mahal in oils, that doesn't mean
> here is anything oil-painting-ish abotu the Taj Mahal.
the conscious can't know the non-conscious. Rather, I'm trying to
clarify their relation. If I'm claiming that 'consciousness' (for
want of a less contentious term) is the unique ontic context, then it
would appear that to ascribe non-consciousness to anything is no
longer tenable. But this is not so - rather, we need to think in
terms of what is relevant in context. So it is relevant in context
that, for example, I possess a conscious representation of the Taj
Mahal, but what isn't relevant in context is what that representation
is conscious-of - i.e. it has become in effect non-conscious. If one
looks from the representation towards its referent, the same
reciprocal set of relations will obtain for it, in its own context.
In your oil painting example, the painted Taj Mahal is the Taj Mahal
as represented in consciousness (i.e. in the context of the painting).
But - monistically speaking - the 'external' Taj Mahal - the subject
of representation - itself has no place to exist outside the
generalised painted context. So it turns out - and this is where the
analogy breaks down - that the referent is another aspect of the
larger canvas, not 'external' to it. Now of course the devil is in
the detail - there's always the 'easy' problem! - but in general
'epistemic' and 'ontic' are *functionally* polarised aspects of a
single category - the painted canvas in your analogy, in which the
canvas represents the continuity and the painted lines the
differentiation.
At the risk of repeating myself (I suppose this must be irony!) I'm
not peddling anything new here, I'm just amplifying my own formulation
of the world-view of half the planet throughout half of history. But
I think it's worth spelling out, because - properly appreciated rather
than dismissed - it is the necessary corrective to many of the MBP
confusions.
>> Since such representations are not in themselves observable (though of
>> course not unknowable) it is unreasonable to suppose that any
>> putatively 'final' ontology known entirely on the basis of observation
>> could ever be considered a complete account of the situation.
>
> Who says they are unobsrvable? We can introspect them qua
> consciousness, and observe their neurological basis to boot.
of the regress. They're fundamentally be'ed (you see - we don't have a
word for it). IOW, to observe is to *be* the representation. That's
what makes it an ontic category, and that's what makes epistemology a
*functional* (what-it's-for) aspect of the ontic . What-it's-for is
to function as a reference to a more inclusive generalised context
'external' to the representation, but within the same ontic category.
>> Look, for most of my life, most of my heroes have been the champions
>> of science. I'm the last person to rubbish this effort. All I'm
>> saying is that in the mind-body domain the carefully designed
>> methodology of 'vexing nature' is seeking to get a 'theory of
>> everything' for free - because if you really believed that physics
>> could account for 'everything' on the basis of' any possible set of
>> observations, then IMO you don't take the 'gap' - between the
>> observable and the ontologically real - that seriously.
>> Actually,
>> thinking about everything you've said, I conclude that you don't take
>> it seriously in that way. And that means that I'm worrying about
>> something unnecessarily in your view because you say it's just a
>> category error. OK, we can agree to disagree.
>
> OK, good. That saves me some typing. There is a gap
> between the way consciousness presents itself to the observer
> and the way it appears in descriptions. That doesn't necessarily
> mean we are dealing with an ontological divide, and it doesn't
> necessarily
> have to be part of some wider gap betwee any kind of description and
> any
> kind of reality.
about the completeness of the descriptions. The ontological point of
departure is the crux, I think.
>> > No, it is nto the standard one in the literature. You are just
>> > commiting a basica fallacy -- saying that because the map is not
>> > itself real, it cannot *represetn* a real territory.
>>
>> No, I'm not saying that. I'm casting doubt on whether the mapping to
>> the territory can be complete.
>
> Now you are. You have been variously doubting whether maps can be
> the whole truth. or true at all in different passages.
argument as you. However if you press me I would say that the mapping
can be at worst incoherent, or at best incomplete. I'm not sure if
that captures all the nuance of "not true at all" or "not the whole
truth", but it's the best I can come up with.
>> >> I'm saying that all that can 'emerge' from one class of description is
>> >> another class of description.
>>
>> > The physical is not a description/map. Physics is the description/map.
>>
>> True. But we have no direct access to the physical-in-itself through
>> description, theory or mapping - only (in certain of its aspects)
>> through consciousness.
>
> How could we have got so far without the "access" argument?
>> for physics, because of course it is precisely committed to
>> restricting itself to accounting for what is observed, and I
>> understand the power and intent of this approach. But to extrapolate
>> from this to the causal closure of a physical ontology of everything,
>> independent of consciousness, is fatal to a coherent resolution of the
>> mind-body issues IMO.
>
> You are assuming that consciousness is unobserved. But as I pointed
> out in the brain-scannign argument, there is good reason to think
> that all the *information* in phenomenal cosnciousness is in fact
> physically available. What is missing in physical descriptions is
> the mode of presentation of that informaiton to the first person.
>
> A red quale doesn't convey information over and above "that is red".
assume you mean by consciousness in "consciousness is unobserved" its
putative observable correlates - which of course are ex hypothesi
observable. Your brain scanning point is similarly circular - IOW if
you take consciousness to be exhausted by its physical correlates then
obviously a complete account of these is equivalent to "all the
*information* in phenomenal consciousness is in fact physically
available". The bit you choose to gloss over is "the mode of
presentation of that information to the first person", as though it
were self-evident that this could be exhausted by third-person
description, and all that is missing is some processual account of its
'mode of presentation'.
I agree of course that "a red quale doesn't convey information over
and above "that is red", but this is because information - i.e. what
can be taken out-of-context - can only ever be ostensive in this way.
That's how it operates - it relies on *pointing* towards (i.e.
referring to) something that is instantiated qualitatively. The
redness consists in *being redly* - the abstractable content consists
in pointing and saying "like that". It's like a set of instructions
for *reproducing the experience in context*. And that - for perfectly
sound logical reasons - is why it can never be captured as
information. It's at this point that some people panic and become
eliminativists. I know you're not one of those, but then the problem
is that if you don't claim ontic primacy for qualitative existence,
you've backed yourself into unacknowledged dualism.
BTW, essentially similar issues are at the heart of my "little
theological divergence" with Bruno. I'm biding my time to see how the
seven-step math plays out before re-engaging on this.
>> The 'arbitrariness' is inherent in the burden of
>> >> the term 'functionalism', which is intrinsically neutral as to the
>> >> details of physical implementation.
>>
>> > No, there are two quite differnt claim here:
>>
>> > 1. A function can have multiple instantions
>> > 2. Anything can instantiate any function.
>
> It's a pity you didn't comment on that.
argument? Well, if a rock consistently output the results of
calculations I tapped into its surface, I might be convinced it
instantiated the relevant functions. Actually, a calculator is a sort
of rock that does precisely that, so maybe that says something about
the difference between 1) and 2).
But my complaint doesn't consist in the denial of 1), but rather in
its consequences for CTM+PM. IOW, if CTM+PM consists in the
conjunction of the two claims that a) specific physical processes
instantiate an (invariant) conscious state and b) any one of the
(variable) collection of physical processes functionally equivalent to
a specific computation instantiates the same (invariant) conscious
state, then c) I find this claim to be incoherent in virtue of its
sweeping the incompatibility of 'invariant' and 'variable' under the
rug. It highlights the invariance of computational outcome of a class
of processes whilst ignoring the physical variability of each process;
since it is the latter that is postulated as responsible for
consciousness, the former is irrelevant to the case. Gedanken
experiments like MGA and Olympia seek to make this more explicit by
reductio, but personally I find the contention prima facie
implausible.
David
>
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
On 21 Aug 2009, at 17:39, David Nyman wrote:
>> CMT has next to nothng to say on the issue
>> of phenomenal consciousness and so
>> does Brouno's "comp"
>
> Yes, I agree. One must be careful not to conflate the PM+CTM debate
> with the status of phenomenal consciousness. Bruno says that comp is
> able to situate the quale, but that of course is a world away from
> explaining it.
With UDA alone, of course not.
But AUDA does provides a a theory of qualia which explains why no 1-
person can and will ever explain the qualitative feature of its qualia.
And AUDA is "just" a translation of UDA in the language of a universal
machine. It provides a complete precise mathematical theory of both
quanta and qualia themselves related and surrounded by 6 other
hypostases.
AUDA gives the universal machine's theory of consciousness and matter,
among things.
When I talk on consciousness it means always what Ned Block calls
phenomenal consciousness. Consciousness is a quale. It is a quale
related to the instinctive bet on a reality, or on (self) consistency
and intensional variants. The Solovay G/G* splitting, or the
terrestrial/heaven splitting, inherited by the material hypostases
explains very well the qualia, including why we have the correct 1-
feeling that we cannot explain them in any 3-ways.
Roughly speaking:
UDA explains the comp reversal to humans.
AUDA: the universal machine explains the comp reversal to herself or
any universal machine which can hear.
AUDA can be weakened in the transfinite: "alpha-AUDA", where "alpha-
universal machine" can explain their alpha-comp reversal, and this
means AUDA applies to a very much larger class of entities that the
usual omega-machine.
The math for UDA is high school math.
The math for AUDA is usually called "advanced mathematical logic,
recursion or computability theory, modal logic".
I am aware that I am a scientist wandering on philosophical,
theological, ideological territories, but comp, once assumed and taken
seriously, makes possible to translate many questions in those "human"
fields in arithmetical exact problem.
And don't make any misunderstanding here: it makes us more ignorant
and modest, and necessarily.
That's what I like there, that the "theology of the machine" we get is
non normative. She gives almost a constructive warning like "As far as
I am consistent, I will defeat all your complete or total theories",
or "You can't know who I am, can you?".
I love that being.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the
importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the
information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which
of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However,
those concerned about the "hard problem", will point out that this
misses the fact that the information represents or "means" something.
To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the
world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of
evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a
crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary
history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the
meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just
computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with
meaning, which means within a certain context of action.
Brent
In fact the fact that we can't see the workings of consciousness is
inherent it it. We see through it. It is notorious that thoughts come
into consciousness with no discernible cause - as in the Poincare effect.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
On 21 Aug 2009, at 22:01, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Flammarion wrote:
>>
>> Do you think that if you scanned my brain right down to the atomic
>> level,
>> you still wouldn't have captured all the information?
>>
>
> That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the
> importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the
> information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine
> which
> of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However,
> those concerned about the "hard problem", will point out that this
> misses the fact that the information represents or "means" something.
> To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the
> world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of
> evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found
> in a
> crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the
> evolutionary
> history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the
> meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just
> computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with
> meaning, which means within a certain context of action.
If the context, or even the whole physical universe, is needed, it is
part of the "generalized" brain. Either the "generalized" brain is
Turing emulable, and the reversal reasoning will proceed, or it is
not, and the digital mechanist thesis has to be abandoned.
Humans, and actually, any mechanical entity cannot understand their
own patterns in their brains, but we don't need to do that to be able
to "use" our brain and be conscious. If the crash at Roswell has not
demolished the brain of E.T., or if the scan of his brain his
faithful, so that his brain can be reconstituted, nobody has to
understand the brain pattern for the E.T. himself to have an
experience of his consciousness.
> In fact the fact that we can't see the workings of consciousness is
> inherent it it. We see through it.
Exactly, and this can related to what I say above.
> It is notorious that thoughts come
> into consciousness with no discernible cause - as in the Poincare
> effect.
That is most plausible, and there are evidence that life (notably the
heart and the brain) exploits the so called deterministic chaos (like
in Verhulst bifurcation, and the Mandelbrot set).
Bruno
Brent Meeker
materialists suppose that a brain can be replaced by functionally
identical elements with no dimunition of consciousness and that a
brain is Turing-emulable BUT the "generalized brain" may not be
Turing-emulable. I personally would say no to a doctor who proposed
to replace the whole physical universe (and me) with an emulation.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
On 22 Aug 2009, at 20:06, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> If the context, or even the whole physical universe, is needed, it is
>> part of the "generalized" brain. Either the "generalized" brain is
>> Turing emulable, and the reversal reasoning will proceed, or it is
>> not, and the digital mechanist thesis has to be abandoned.
>
> That's what makes the point interesting. Many, even most,
> materialists suppose that a brain can be replaced by functionally
> identical elements with no dimunition of consciousness and that a
> brain is Turing-emulable BUT the "generalized brain" may not be
> Turing-emulable. I personally would say no to a doctor who proposed
> to replace the whole physical universe (and me) with an emulation.
OK.
Do you agree that this, not only entails the falsity of CTM
(computationalist theory of mind), but also on any computationalist
theory of matter.
Your consciousness has to be related to a non computable physical
process, in actuality. Quantum computer would not be universal in
Deutsch sense.
I am OK, with this. My point is not to convince people that comp is
correct, but only that comp makes physics "coming from number dreams",
to be short.
Saying "no" to the doctor, is your right (even your comp justifiable
right), but relatively to the reasoning it is equivalent with stopping
at step zero.
So now, your mind is free to look if the reasoning is valid. No worry
with the uncomfortable consequences, given that you don't believe in
the initial axiom. Right?
Well, you may be not interested in the consequence of a theory in
which you don't believe, but you may be intrigued.
Unless you believe the comp hypothesis is inconsistent? I don't think
you believe this either.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
>
> On 22 Aug 2009, at 20:06, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If the context, or even the whole physical universe, is needed, it is
>>> part of the "generalized" brain. Either the "generalized" brain is
>>> Turing emulable, and the reversal reasoning will proceed, or it is
>>> not, and the digital mechanist thesis has to be abandoned.
>> That's what makes the point interesting. Many, even most,
>> materialists suppose that a brain can be replaced by functionally
>> identical elements with no dimunition of consciousness and that a
>> brain is Turing-emulable BUT the "generalized brain" may not be
>> Turing-emulable. I personally would say no to a doctor who proposed
>> to replace the whole physical universe (and me) with an emulation.
>
>
> OK.
> Do you agree that this, not only entails the falsity of CTM
> (computationalist theory of mind), but also on any computationalist
> theory of matter.
Yes, so long as by "computation" you mean only the Church-Turing
definitions of computation.
>
> Your consciousness has to be related to a non computable physical
> process, in actuality. Quantum computer would not be universal in
> Deutsch sense.
>
> I am OK, with this. My point is not to convince people that comp is
> correct, but only that comp makes physics "coming from number dreams",
> to be short.
>
> Saying "no" to the doctor, is your right (even your comp justifiable
> right), but relatively to the reasoning it is equivalent with stopping
> at step zero.
>
> So now, your mind is free to look if the reasoning is valid. No worry
> with the uncomfortable consequences, given that you don't believe in
> the initial axiom. Right?
>
> Well, you may be not interested in the consequence of a theory in
> which you don't believe, but you may be intrigued.
I am interested. I don't believe or disbelieve. Maybe the
"generalized brain" is Turing emulable. I'm just not nearly so
confident that it is as I am that my brain is emulable.
>
> Unless you believe the comp hypothesis is inconsistent? I don't think
> you believe this either.
Not inconsistent; but I have considerable empathy with Peter's view.
My general attitude is that "exist" is just a word to name a concept
we invent and we can invent different kinds of existence: physical
it-kicks-back existence, mathematical it's-provable-from-axioms
existence, etc. I may not agree that arithmetic is what's really
real, but I regard your theory as an interesting model and I hope it
leads to predicting something we don't know.
Brent
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Stathis Papaioannou
> That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the
> importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the
> information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which
> of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However,
> those concerned about the "hard problem", will point out that this
> misses the fact that the information represents or "means" something.
> To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the
> world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of
> evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a
> crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary
> history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the
> meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just
> computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with
> meaning, which means within a certain context of action.
You wouldn't be able to guess what the alien is thinking by scanning
his brain, but you could then run a simulation, exposing it to various
environmental stimuli, and it should behave the same way as the
original brain (if weak AI is true) and have the same experiences as
the original brain (if strong AI is true).
--
Stathis Papaioannou
Brent Meeker
True. But the point was directed at the MGA. Part of the simulation
must be outside the brain - and possibly are very great deal. So
while it seems intuitively clear that the brain can be emulated, it's
not so clear that the brain + enough environment can be.
Brent
David Nyman
to recovering meaning from 'information' is at the heart of my
response to Peter's question. The 'complete' brain scan is -
literally - meaning-less independent of its embodiment in some
interpretative context of action (and its environment) . Were we to
imagine an 'eliminativist' account of brain events (which to carry
meaning for us would inevitably be an account in terms of alternative
higher-level concepts) it's all too easy to forget (i.e. the 'fish in
water' effect) that the *meaning* of any such reinterpretation is also
solely recoverable by re-embodiment in some interpretative context.
The ultimate attempt to 'eliminate' this entails the shift to the
'view from nowhere', which results in the complete stripping of
meaning from the universe itself, as 'observed' abstracted from any
interpretative context whatsoever. What can make this hard to see, in
the gedanken experiment, is that we can't help embodying this
impossible view in an imagined context that we carry with us, and
hence we continue to rely - illicitly - on the historical continuity
of our interpretations.
In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the
context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local
embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example
of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether
simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable
exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current
context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis,
that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally
meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise
relational causal configurations against their intelligible
reinstantiation in some context of meaning and action. Absent such
reembodiment, all that remains is noise.
David
>
> >
>
Stathis Papaioannou
> In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the
> context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local
> embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example
> of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether
> simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable
> exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current
> context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis,
> that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally
> meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise
> relational causal configurations against their intelligible
> reinstantiation in some context of meaning and action. Absent such
> reembodiment, all that remains is noise.
Wouldn't the meaning (to the alien) still be there if the brain did
its thing without us understanding it, creating its own context? You
can divide it into two interacting parts, one the brain proper, the
other the virtual environment. The brain finds meaning in and
interacts with the environment, but to an outside observer it all just
looks like noise.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
David Nyman
or our" here splits into:
1) Any meaning available to the alien would be situated in terms of
its locally embodied historic and current interpretative context.
2) Any meaning recoverable by an observer would be bounded by her own
historic and current interpretative context.
3) No meaning is recoverable outside the foregoing interpretative contexts.
I should perhaps emphasise that purely for the purposes of the
argument I'm assuming brain = mind to be a one-for-one correlation.
Having said all this, it is interesting to reconsider your formulation
to be self-referentially available, but hides it beyond possibility of
recovery from 'observation'? Again this is the crux of the question
that Peter poses. If one hold that *all* the information is in
principle available to external observation, how could the foregoing
be true? And indeed, if one consistently follows an eliminativist
path, one cannot consistently hold it to be true; rather one must hold
that colour-deprived Mary, because of the extraordinary scope of her
'objective knowledge' of colour, has in fact no surprises in store
when she finally 'sees redly'.
Can this be made plausible? Well, oddly, if I try this for size in
the form of a gedanken experiment, I can find one - and only one - way
to make it so. It is to conclude that - given Mary, for the
experiment to be viable, must possess the intrinsic capacity for
colour vision - her interpretation of the objective data is so
complete that it permits her to *imagine redly*. IOW the
meaning-in-context for Mary - the immediate local effect of
stimulation of her retinas by red-wavelength light - is in fact
recoverable in the context of her locally available interpretative
capacities, just as it will be again when she finally leaves the
laboratory.
David
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> >
>
Stathis Papaioannou
> Having said all this, it is interesting to reconsider your formulation
> "the brain did its thing without us understanding it, creating its own
> context". What is it about *being* the brain that causes this context
> to be self-referentially available, but hides it beyond possibility of
> recovery from 'observation'?
Whether it can be hidden beyond the *possibility* of recovery is an
interesting question. Certainly it would be very difficult to figure
out what an alien brain is thinking about from observation, like
cracking a very difficult code, but could it be made so that it's
impossible to figure out? We would be able to figure out something
about an alien code, such as a written language, by observing various
regularities, but we would be unable to figure out the actual meaning
of words unless we had some extra-language information; that is, we
could figure out the syntax, but not the semantics. Similarly with the
brain, we might be able to figure out certain patterns and
regularities, but without further information obtained by connecting
I/O devices or perhaps by obtaining the instruction manuals, we would
have no idea what the brain activity means, let alone what it feels
like from the brain's point of view. But would it be possible for the
brain's activity to be deliberately obscured such that not even the
syntax can be guessed at, the equivalent of encryption using a
one-time pad?
--
Stathis Papaioannou