imaginary numbers in comp

[Roger Clough]

Hi everything-list

 

Since human thought and perception consists of both a logical quantitative or objective

component as well as a feelings-spiritual qualitative or subjective components,

would it make any sense to do comp using complex numbers, where

 

the real part is the objective part of the mental

the imaginary part is the subjective part of the mental

 

?  Isn't there an intuitive mathematics ?

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/13/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

 

 

[Craig Weinberg]

This is why I reject comp, because it cannot access feelings or qualities, whereas feelings can and do access arithmetic (even directly as rhythm, music, some forms of visual art, etc).

Because we know about feelings, we can project that knowledge on top of arithmetic ideas and conceive of 'numbers which are fundamentally unlike numbers' which metaphorically can remind of us the contrast between logic and feeling. There are some interesting ways to use that and explore concepts like imaginary numbers with that in mind which I do think can yield worthwhile results when we unpack them and reapply them as metaphors for subjectivity.

The problem is that arithmetic is the opposite of feeling. Machines are the opposite of living beings. Subjective numbers then are like a "Moon that treats the Sun like a Moon'.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 13 Sep 2012, at 17:44, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi everything-list

 

Since human thought and perception consists of both a logical quantitative or objective

component as well as a feelings-spiritual qualitative or subjective components,

would it make any sense to do comp using complex numbers, where

 

the real part is the objective part of the mental

the imaginary part is the subjective part of the mental

This is pleasant but far stretched.

You might appreciate the imaginary time (t' = it) making relativity euclidian (instead of Minkowskian), but the relation between subject and physical time is too much speculative for me, especially that I am currently doubting the old link between consciousness and subjective time.

Comp cannot use infinite objects, but you can do it with rational complex numbers, or rational octonions, it is most plausibly as much Turing universal. But real numbers are not, so an embedding of a number structure in another does not necessarily preserve the Turing universality.

 

?  Isn't there an intuitive mathematics ?

We can argue that intuitionist mathematics, and constructive mathematics, or the abandon of the third excluded middle lead to a more intuitive mathematics. It is the logic and math of a self which extends itself, as opposed to the self open to meet the non constructive "other", when you free the third excluded middle. But in arithmetic that chnages nothing, as the intuitionist can translate the "other" by the use of the double negation.

In comp, that intuitive solipsist first person is given by the Bp & p variants of Gödel's Bp.

You should (aslo) study more logic before restructing math to the quantitative. I doubt this already for topology, and certainly for logic and model theory. It is a confusion of the syntax and its possible interpretations, a process already studied in logic.

Bruno

 

 

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/13/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

 

 

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[John Clark]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I reject comp, because it cannot access feelings or qualities

And you have deduced this by using the "nothing but" fallacy: even the largest computer is "nothing but" a collection of on and off switches. Never mind that your brain is "nothing but" a collection of molecules rigorously obeying the laws of physics.

  John K Clark

 

[Craig Weinberg]

Not at all. From my perspective, it's obviously you who assumes that the brain is "nothing but" a collection of molecules. I don't assume at all that computers are limited by our description of them, just as stuffed animals I'm sure contain microcosmic worlds of styrofoam and dust mites, thermodynamic interiorities of God-know-what sorts of qualitative experiences. What I don't assume is that a Beanie Baby of a dragon is actually having the experience that we imagine a dragon should have.

This is the symbol grounding problem pointed out by Searle's Chinese Room, the China Brain, and Leibniz Mill Argument, and which I demonstrate easily by saying "These words do not refer to themselves." or "This sentence does not speak English".

It's hard for me to understand why this seems obscure to anyone who is familiar with these issues, but at this point I suspect it is like color blindness or gender orientation.

To review: My understanding is that the word computer does not refer to any real system, but rather it is a concept about how real systems can be controlled. It's like saying 'storyteller'. There is nothing that it is made of or experiences that it has. Experience depends on real interactions of matter, energy, space, and time, which are experienced as perception and participation. You can't park a real car (human experience) in a map of a parking lot (computer simulation). I understand completely that it is thrilling to imagine that the map is actually the reality, and the car is only a figment of the statistical model of 'parkingness', and I agree that this way of looking at things gives us useful insights and control, but it is ultimately a catastrophic failure when taken literally and applied to living beings - as bad as religious ideology.

Craig

  John K Clark

 

[Stephen P. King]

    What would be the logical complement of "nothing but _____"? Could it be: "All except ___"?

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html

[John Clark]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at  Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> would it make any sense to do comp using complex numbers, where the real part is the objective part of the mental the imaginary part is the subjective part of the mental

The names "real" and "imaginary" are unfortunate because imaginary numbers are no more subjective than real numbers, but for historical reasons I guess we're stuck with those names. From a physics perspective think of the real numbers as dealing with magnitudes and the imaginary numbers as dealing in rotations in two dimensions; that's why if you want to talk about speed the real numbers are sufficient but if you want to talk about velocity you need the imaginary numbers too because velocity has both a magnitude and a direction.   

The square root of negative one is essential if mathematically you want to calculate how things rotate. It you pair up a Imaginary Number(i) and a regular old Real Number you get a Complex Number, and you can make a one to one relationship between the way Complex numbers add subtract multiply and divide and the way things move in a two dimensional plane, and that is enormously important. Or you could put it another way, regular numbers that most people are familiar with just have a magnitude, but complex numbers have a magnitude AND a direction.

Many thought the square root of negative one (i) didn't have much practical use until about 1860 when Maxwell used them in his famous equations to figure out how Electromagnetism worked. Today nearly all quantum mechanical equations have an"i" in them somewhere, and it might not be going too far to say that is the source of quantum weirdness. The Schrodinger equation is deterministic and describes the quantum wave function, but that function is an abstraction and is unobservable, to get something you can see you must square the wave function and that gives you the probability you will observe a particle at any spot; but Schrodinger's equation has an "i" in it and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability distribution when you square it; remember with i you get weird stuff like i^2=i^6 =-1 and i^4=i^100=1.

All the rotational properties can be derived from Euler's Identity: e^i*PI +1 =0 .

  John K Clark




  John K Clark



 

[John Clark]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is the symbol grounding problem pointed out by Searle's Chinese Room

I've said it before I'll say it again,  Searle's Chinese Room is the single stupidest thought experiment ever devised by the mind of man. Of course even the best of us can have a brain fart from time to time, but Searle baked this turd pie decades ago and apparently he still thinks its quite clever, and thus I can only conclude that John Searle is as dumb as his room. 

  John K Clark

[Brian Tenneson]

We might as well just use ordered pairs of integers or rational numbers.

[Craig Weinberg]

The only way that you can think that it's stupid is if you don't understand it. It's the same thing as Leibniz Mill. His particulars may be a bit more elaborate than they need to be, but the point he makes is the same that has been made before by many others: The map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal.

To my mind, the fact that you have particular animus toward the Chinese Room can only be because on some level you know that it is a relatively simple way of proving something that you are in deep denial about. Why else would it bother you in particular? Are there other philosophical arguments that bother you like this?

Craig
 

  John K Clark

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

 

Right. The problem with the Chinese Room argument

is that there is no way to generate a reasonable answer.

 

9/14/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: John Clark

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-13, 15:58:20

Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp

[Bruno Marchal]

I am with Clark on this, Craig. Searle either begs the question or confuses a program with the machine running the program. Dennett and Hofstadter explains this already very well in "Mind's I".

It is the same error as believing that RA can think like PA when emulating PA. But when RA emulates PA, it is like when I emulate another program, or Einstein's brain, I don't become that other program, nor do I become Einstein, in such case. It is again a confusion of level. 

Bruno

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

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

Thanks very much for your enlightening response.

My original and still surviving purpose was to provide a means of
dealing with but not mixing two different categories. Perhaps set theory
would be better, but I am clueless there.

However, the existence of brain waves and the conflation there of mind
and body suggests a possi bly more fruitful model:

body= extended=wave amplitude
mind = inextended = wave phase

If there is any truth to that or any other model
it should be possible to see if this could make any physical sense.
Fourier transforms might also aid interpretation.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/14/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: John Clark
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-13, 15:40:51

Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at? Roger Clough wrote:



> would it make any sense to do comp using complex numbers, where the real part is the objective part of the mental the imaginary part is the subjective part of the mental

The names "real" and "imaginary" are unfortunate because imaginary numbers are no more subjective than real numbers, but for historical reasons I guess we're stuck with those names. From a physics perspective think of the real numbers as dealing with magnitudes and the imaginary numbers as dealing in rotations in two dimensions; that's why if you want to talk about speed the real numbers are sufficient but if you want to talk about velocity you need the imaginary numbers too because velocity has both a magnitude and a direction.? ?

The square root of negative one is essential if mathematically you want to calculate how things rotate. It you pair up a Imaginary Number(i) and a regular old Real Number you get a Complex Number, and you can make a one to one relationship between the way Complex numbers add subtract multiply and divide and the way things move in a two dimensional plane, and that is enormously important. Or you could put it another way, regular numbers that most people are familiar with just have a magnitude, but complex numbers have a magnitude AND a direction.

Many thought the square root of negative one (i) didn't have much practical use until about 1860 when Maxwell used them in his famous equations to figure out how Electromagnetism worked. Today nearly all quantum mechanical equations have an"i" in them somewhere, and it might not be going too far to say that is the source of quantum weirdness. The Schrodinger equation is deterministic and describes the quantum wave function, but that function is an abstraction and is unobservable, to get something you can see you must square the wave function and that gives you the probability you will observe a particle at any spot; but Schrodinger's equation has an "i" in it and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability distribution when you square it; remember with i you get weird stuff like i^2=i^6 =-1 and i^4=i^100=1.

All the rotational properties can be derived from Euler's Identity: e^i*PI +1 =0 .

? John K Clark




? John K Clark



?

[Roger Clough]

Hi John Clark

The difference is that a computer has no intelligence, cannot
deal with qualia, and is not alive.

My brain has all of these features in spades.

ibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: John Clark
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-13, 13:15:54

Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



> I reject comp, because it cannot access feelings or qualities

And you have deduced this by using the "nothing but" fallacy: even the largest computer is "nothing but" a collection of on and off switches. Never mind that your brain is "nothing but" a collection of molecules rigorously obeying the laws of physics.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

I agree. But I never say never.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/14/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him
so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-13, 12:11:51

Subject: Re: imaginary numbers in comp

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[Stephen P. King]

On 9/14/2012 6:14 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi John Clark

 

Right. The problem with the Chinese Room argument

is that there is no way to generate a reasonable answer.

 

Hi Roger,

    The Chinese room argument is flawed becuase it does not consider the distinction of levels of meaningfulness.

[Stephen P. King]

Dear Bruno,

    I agree with you. What you are pointing out is that one needs a "discordant system" to distinguish the levels that are involved. More often than not we run into problems because a pair of different levels are considered to be the same level by the person that does not understand the difference. This is called "flattening".

[Stephen P. King]

On 9/14/2012 6:38 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi John Clark
>
> The difference is that a computer has no intelligence, cannot
> deal with qualia, and is not alive.

Dear Roger,

You are assuming ab initio that a computer has no capacity
whatsoever of "reflecting upon" its computations and to possible be able
to report on its meditation. You might say that you are intelligent
exactly because you assume that you have this capacity.

[John Clark]

On Thu, Sept 13, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The menu is not the meal.

In other words X is not "X" and that is perfectly true, use and mention are indeed not the same, but they are closely related.

> To my mind, the fact that you have particular animus toward the Chinese Room can only be because on some level you know that it is a relatively simple way of proving something that you are in deep denial about. Why else would it bother you in particular?

Searle's Chinese Room bothers me because it is so fabulously DUMB! What makes it so idiotic is its conclusion: The funny little man doesn't understand anything therefore the entire Chinese Room doesn't understand anything. Dumb dumb dumb.

Searle doesn't even attempt to explain why if there is understanding anywhere it must be centered on the silly little man, apparently he's such a crumby philosopher it never even occurred to him that he's assuming the very thing he's trying to prove!!  Even Aristotle never did anything that stupid. You could easily get rid of the little man altogether and replace him with a 1950's punch card sorting machine, it would be slow but mush faster than the man and produce fewer errors, and in such a situation I would agree that the punch card machine was not conscious, and I would also agree that a very very small part of a system, any system, does not have all the properties of the entire system. 

  John K Clark

[Jason Resch]

Exactly.  It is no different than concluding that brains cannot understand anything because inter-atomic forces do not understand anything.

Jason

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

 

I was wrong when I previously said that the problem with the

Chinese Room argument is that it doesn't explain how

to respond. That's a dumb comment, you just translate

your thought-out response back into mandarin characters.

 

It may be that Searle chose chinese language and characters

because although spoken chinese has some different meanings for

certain sounds, the written characters are completely unambiguous.

 

In case anybody would like to read an intelligent and entertaining

book on mandarin, look up "dreaming in mandarin" by Deborah Fallows. There's

a phrase before that phrase.Inside, it gives a 19 character short story

in which each character sounds very similar (although still different)

such as sih (hard to write the ping ying sounds in english). So the story goes

sih sih sih sih.... etc.

 

I can only speak a few phrases in mandarin but find it

fascinating. I teach english to chinese immigrants (ESL) in

my retirement.

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/15/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Stephen P. King

Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-09-14, 11:47:13

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

 

I believe that all or much of the brain calculations are done

aurally, phonetically. That has to be since we have to

be able to understand and create vocal language.

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/15/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

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Time: 2012-09-14, 11:52:52

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[Stephen P. King]

On 9/15/2012 8:44 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

 

I believe that all or much of the brain calculations are done

aurally, phonetically. That has to be since we have to

be able to understand and create vocal language.

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net

9/15/2012

Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him

so that everything could function."

Dear Roger,

    I agree with you but what happens if the parts of the brain that implement the aural type computations are miswired? You get dyslexia, a condition that I am very familiar with as I have it. I process ideas visually and proprioceptively. Ideas have a "look and feel" to them that cannot be exactly translated into words...